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- Convenors:
-
Agata Hummel
(University of Warsaw)
Radosław Powęska (University of Warsaw)
Diana Rodríguez Herrera (Technological University of Pereira)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 03/012
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The aim of the panel is to discuss ethnographic studies on Transformation Initiatives in Latin American countries looking at their different dimensions (sociocultural, political, territorial, economic and technological) and paying particular attention to conceptual approaches adopted by researchers.
Long Abstract:
Covid-19 pandemics affected dramatically many Latin American countries, accentuating doubts about mainstream approaches to citizens' well-being. Facing health and economic crisis with many rural/indigenous communities virtually forgotten by state policies and deprived of vital assistance, bottom-up strategies of social change were made apparent. Territorial self-isolation, non-state health-care systems, own food production and distribution of resources going in pace with local values, norms and needs, converted communities into essential buffer against the crisis, safe haven for jobless urban residents and a source of new hope, challenging once again the official development discourse and reissuing debate on alternative thinking.
The panel focuses on Latin American local strategies of social change that can be identified with Transformation Initiatives (TIs) - owned by communities, groups, organizations and socio-ecological movements, thus constituting institutions and politics beyond/below the state or global agencies.
In spite of their relative independence from the state and other institutions, it is important to emphasize that TIs are situated in the local, regional, national and global context. We are interested in empirical identification of that multiscale set of conditions that shape them. In that context, the discussion on the importance of communal values and structures and the relationship between TIs relative autonomy and hope, understood as a search for a new way of life, seems promising.
We also look for an anthropological perspective that fosters a relational approach to how ontologically different lifeworlds are created, narrated, juxtaposed or commensurate in alternatives to the politics of growth and the mainstream development discourses.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
From an ethnoecological approach, we analyze the practices of seed custodians in a scenario agroextractivist. Through their territorial defense strategies, the custodians seek to transform their practices, thereby generating processes of alternative territoriality.
Paper long abstract:
The formation of networks of seed custodians is part of a conjunctural moment in the debate on OGM in Colombia. In this agro-extractivist context, different local struggles are activated where the custodians interact with various actors on different geographical scales to generate resistance strategies against OGM. On a local scale, the "Red de Custodios in Riosucio-Colombia", through its agroecological practices, generate multi-territorial processes that position their actions as alternatives to development.
From the "Red de Custodios in Riosucio-Colombia" we ask ourselves how the agroecological practices of seed custodians are currently manifested and what happens with these practices in times of crisis. The temporality in these transition processes is worked from an ethnographic approach in the indigenous reservations of Riosucio-Caldas, using semi-structured interviews, participant observation and workshops. The temporal and spatial particularities in the practices used by the seed custodians are part of a process of reactivation of knowledge, which in turn is complemented by the knowledge and information acquired in the scenarios of transgenic struggles. This struggle is added to an agroecological movement that positions a discourse of resistance that adheres to multiple extractivist struggles for the defense of territories of life.
Paper short abstract:
This study analyzes tensions between EZLN's demands for autonomy and its relations with international solidarity networks, focusing on the efforts to legitimize commercial exchanges within movements who characterize their identity through demonizing "market economy" and its dehumanizing powers.
Paper long abstract:
Since long before their public uprising in 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army has been progressively building an alternative social, economical and political organisation through the reappropriation of the land directly by rural communities. Their fight for autonomy sets an example for many Transformation Initiatives that criticize current capitalist society ruled by market values.
Solidarity demonstrations towards EZLN has been constantly present, guaranteeing visibility to the cause, shaping its identity and influencing its hopes of impact. Most of the coffee produced by cooperatives from Chiapas is exported, making coffee trade the main income from international solidarity networks. The question arises about strategies adopted to conciliate demands for autonomy and economical asymmetries between Zapatista cooperatives producing coffee and European collectives who hold purchasing power, differentiating themselves from development organizations and labeled as Fair Trade economy.
This paper analyzes, from an engaged anthropological perspective, how international solidarity activities are narrated in order to build opportunities for action within a highly politicized economic sphere in which commercial exchanges are continuously legitimized through the attribution of ethical criteria to transactions. The meaning conveyed by coffee is constructed on a symbolic level, making imaginary one of the main contents of exchange. The social, cultural and political spheres are invested by ethics, which penetrates all aspects of militant action. The notions of "trust", "dignity" and "reciprocity" are repeatedly mobilized to negotiate discontinuous and multidirectional flows in the attempt to justify commercial relations in a politicized context that characterizes its own identity through demonizing "market economy" and its dehumanizing powers.
Paper short abstract:
We analyze political acts of the use of the past in rural Andean communities in response to dehistoricizing development policies. We understand them as processes of decolonial heritagization, an important part of transformation initiatives.
Paper long abstract:
Agroecological transformation initiatives, based on revaluations and reterritorializations of ancestral forms of Andean-Amazonian agriculture, which are supposed to be authentic, are one of the responses to pressures of agribusiness peasants face in their everyday life in rural Andean communities. Communities, groups of activists, networks and social movements pretend to return to tradition seeing it, paradoxically, as a way of promoting change.
Ethnographic fieldwork carried out in some rural Andean communities, in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, in 2020 and 2021 allowed us to observe such practices and narratives of transformation as: an overall return to traditional values, establishing local museums and banks of peasant memory, creation of seed conservation networks, as well as traditional medicine clinics and local libraries; agriculture on communal lands, eco-markets and fairs, among others.
These political acts transform people’s relations to the past, challenge the modern separation of humans from nature, as well as differences between social groups. For this reason, we consider them as processes of heritagization inspired by decolonial attitudes, through which communities resist conflicts of representation that underlie conflicts over the distribution of natural resources. We suggest that it is important to research the social use of authenticities, their social agents, narratives, intentions, and negotiations.