Paper short abstract:

My paper explores the socio-legal dynamics of water rights in conflictive contexts. I particularly explore how the contents of local water rights are transformed to encompass the ecological systems that are being threatened by the activities of extractive industries.

Paper long abstract:

Irrigation as well as ethnographic studies have frequently depicted water rights as a settled bundle of rights closely linked to irrigation. Scarce efforts beyond structuralist and functionalist approaches to water rights have been made to describe how they have changed historically in relation to extractive economic activities that risk local comprehension of the ecological system and use of water sources. Through three case studies, my paper explores the socio-legal dynamics of water rights in conflictive settings in Peru. I analyze how indigenous peoples in the Andes and Amazonia reconstruct the content of water rights when confronting corporate interventions that risk their economic activities and livelihoods. These contents usually encompass not only global environmental references to ecological and hydrological systems, and integrated water management but also delve into reconstructions of Andean and Amazonian "traditional" conceptions of water and ecology.

The case studies here show that in contexts of power asymmetries local indigenous peoples reformulate the content of their water rights to encompass ecological concerns and cultural understandings of water in order to guarantee their access to water and their livelihoods. Global, national and local environmental, cultural and political influences produce these legal assemblages of water rights endeavoring to protect their local livelihoods vis-à-vis extractive industries. Here, I contend that in order to understand the historical socio legal transformation of water rights we have to pay attention to the productive consequences of water struggles in terms of upgrading and 'glocalizing' the content of water rights.

Paper short abstract:

Through an ethnographic exploration of justice practices in the region of Santa Cruz del Quiché, Guatemala, this paper analyses the ways in which indigenous peoples’ practices of alternative forms of justice –or sovereign claims- affect the nature of the postwar state.

Paper long abstract:

A constructivist perspective points to the ways in which states are historically constituted by a combination of ideas, material practices and outcomes. By considering the interplay between past and present ideas and practices of justice and governance in postwar Guatemala, this paper hopes to contribute to wider debates about violence and the contemporary state in Latin America. Through an ethnographic exploration of justice practices in the region of Santa Cruz del Quiché, the paper describes some of the social forces that compete to exercise sovereignty within a context of social violence and impunity in Quiché, including both indigenous communal authorities who assert specifically "Mayan" forms of justice by appealing to alternative epistemologies and common ethnic identity, and "mob justice" or vigilante acts of spectacular violence in response to perceived insecurity. Drawing on research that seeks to understand sovereignty from an anthropological perspective together with recent theoretical contributions to the anthropology of the state, it reflects on the implications of these sovereign claims for the nature of the postwar Guatemalan state.

Paper short abstract:

My paper explores links between land and persons created through familial social relationships over generations in Botswana. Exploring connections between tangible and intangible domains it examines temporality, linking present and past in ways that give rise to social inequality among the population.

Paper long abstract:

Based on an ethnographic study located in Botswana, I move beyond conceptions of the local as physically or territorially grounded to one that examines how it is constituted through links between persons and land derived from life histories extended over several generations. This not only takes account of a specific site in which social relations are bounded and locally constituted but also how perceptions of locality are discursively and historically constructed. Viewing land as both a tangible and intangible universe constructed through social relationships, I highlight ways in which individuals, as part of a 'local' community, find their life courses shaped by wider transnational and global processes, including law, that have an impact on their everyday lives. For some, this provides opportunities for upward mobility and future gains, while others find scope for action severely curtailed. In documenting these uneven, diverse effects of globalisation what emerges are processes of 'internalisation' and 'relocalisation' of global conditions allowing for the emergence of new identities, alliances and struggles for space and power within specific populations. Thus what exists in the here and now as a form of temporality is constantly remade, drawing on the past while fashioning new prospects for the future

Paper short abstract:

It is common knowledge today that property and citizenship are closely related. This paper addresses the question what the driving forces are that shape the dynamics of the property - citizenship - identity nexus and how do actors negotiate within this nexus?

Paper long abstract:

It is common knowledge today that property and citizenship are closely related. This paper addresses the question what the driving forces are that shape the dynamics of the property – citizenship – identity nexus and how do actors negotiate within this nexus? I suggest that these processes not only occur in different contexts but also have to be understood as unfolding at different, interlocking scales. At each of these scales we find different constellations of actors that pursue different issues and interests. And the interests that dominate at one scale may not be so important at other scales where other issues may be more central. I also suggest that the dynamics are to an important degree shaped by law, but that the relevant laws may differ at each of the scales. This not only concerns legal regulations of state institutions at different levels. Property relations and citizenship are often subject to plural legal orders that in turn claim validity at different scales. In Post Suharto Indonesia the laws of the state at different levels coexist with, with international law, religious law and local laws, and to some extent transnational law that comes in through development cooperation and transnational corporations. Struggles over property in important ways have been struggles over which law is the valid frame of reference for determining legitimate categories of property holders and their rights and obligations, and for defining citizenship to polities and other social formations that in turn may be defined in a variety of ways by different legal orders. I shall suggest that the particular systemic character of these plural legal orders and the property regimes of each of the component legal orders shape not only property struggles, but that this also has implications for identity politics that in turn affect notions and practices of citizenship, which feed back into property relations. The paper will argue that land has been a central issue from colonial times until the very present, subject of intense power struggles of local population groups with the state, and a core issue for citizenship.

Paper short abstract:

In Latin America, and in many other parts of the world, there exists an enormous gab between the state and the communities with their citizens.

Paper long abstract:

In Latin America, and in many other parts of the world, there exists an enormous gab between the state and the communities with their citizens. Constitutional law, with its emphasis on individual rights and obligations, dominates and is in permanent conflict with traditional community law, which has a much more collectivistic character. In many parts of the world traditional citizens, peasants and Indians, have been forced to organize to defend themselves against the state, which promised in its constitution to respect and defend the rights of the citizens. In the paper there organizations of this type will be presented: the "policía comunitaria" in Guerrero in Southern Mexico, the "guardia tribal" of the Nasa and Guambiano Indians in Southern Colombia, and the "ronda campesina" in Peru.

Paper short abstract:

Historically, law was a tool of colonization. It was broken, manipulated and rewritten to allow the victimization of Indigenous peoples. It laid the foundation for their modern day victimization by government, corporations and individuals.

Paper long abstract:

It is well-known that one of the most effective processes for bringing Indigenous people under colonial control was the use of law. During the early era of colonization international laws and church laws were broken and manipulated both overtly and covertly by colonizing governments and leaders. Later new laws were written making colonial efforts not only legal but government policy priorities. It is argued that, using social harm theory, all of these efforts were "criminal", including the actions redefined as legal. The Conquistadors manipulation of Church rulings on Indigenous sovereignty in Mexico and elsewhere, American president's Andrew Jackson defiance of Congress to set in motion the Trail of Tears for the theft of Cherokee lands, the deliberate mistranslation of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand to give the colonial government more control over Maoris, and other examples are discussed showing the historical "criminal" use and impact of law. Early use of laws to legitimize illegal government activities laid the ideological, political and legal for the modern day victimization of Indigenous people by corporations, governments and individuals.