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- Convenor:
-
Marc Simon Thomas
(Utrecht University)
- Location:
- Malet 252
- Start time:
- 3 April, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel provides a showcase of the wide variety of recent research conducted by members of the Netherlands Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (Nalacs).
Long Abstract:
Nalacs, the Netherlands Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, is an association for everyone in the Netherlands who is interested in Latin America and Caribbean. Its mission is to promote insight and debate on issues related to the region in the Netherlands. Nalacs endorses the commonly held view that the region is changing rapidly. Since the start of the 21st Century its societies have been transformed by complex interactions between market forces, government interventions and individual and collective initiatives in civil society. A wide variety of resources plays a crucial role in this process. In addition to natural resources, Latin America and the Caribbean also hold a wealth of cultural, political, legal and economic resources which are constantly being used, appropriated and developed by citizens, companies and state institutions at all levels. Whether leading to new conflicts or new collaborations, the use of resources is central to the region’s current and future development.
This panel provides a showcase of the wide variety of recent research conducted by members of Nalacs on the use of these different resources.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses discourse on motherhood as site for political struggle, addressing female activism within the PAN, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Making intelligible, the imaginary on motherhood as a governmentality that informs female activism, and the discourse of the PAN.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the cultural repertoire of gender, in particular the discourse on motherhood as site for political struggle in the context of female political activism within the Partido Accion Nacional, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. We aim to make intelligible how the imaginary on motherhood becomes a governmentality that informs the activism of women as well as the institutional discourse of the PAN, which was the ruling party in Mexico for the last twelve years. This governmentality tends to gain importance at particular moments of transition, crisis, or key-shifts in Mexico's political history. As part of the struggle for democratization and modernization processes, when ideas about modernity challenge more traditional values, women, their sexuality, and in particular their traditional roles as mothers, tend to become a site for contestation. We will analyse and discuss, based on the case of Ciudad Juárez, and research executed in 1986, 1992 and 2013, how this discourse on motherhood figures, and gains meaning, within the political power struggle at different moments in time. We find that, although very strongly manipulated in the past by the PAN, and still present in the way women negotiate their spaces and agency as political activist, the significance of this discourse is changing. Within the Northern border dynamics on violence, the recent shift of female activism from the political to the civil society arena marks the gaining political impact and importance within this last arena of the cultural repertoire on motherhood, in particular concerning mothers and feminists as activists.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores teachers' agency in creating social justice, based on research on gender equality in the Bolivian education system. Our analysis uses the strategic relational approach to uncover how the dialetical relationship of structure/agency shapes teachers' attitudes to gender equality.
Paper long abstract:
Historically, the Bolivian context and education system is characterised by marginalisation through poverty, ethnicity, culture and gender. The Morales government strives to redress this imbalance and create a society in which all Bolivians can 'live well', using 'decolonization' and interculturality as the cornerstone of their agenda. The latest education reform in Bolivia seeks to decolonise the education system to achieve educational equality, and ultimately social justice, establishing teachers as the 'soldiers of change' to implement this process. However, whilst the international agenda sees gender equality as important for an egalitarian education system, the Bolivian education reform gives gender equality diminished importance in favour of the focus on interculturality. Drawing from a range of interdisciplinary fields, this paper explores the agency of teachers to effect social change in relation to gender in unequal/unjust societies. Our analysis draws from a critical realist perspective, using the strategic relational approach to uncover the dialetical relationship of structure/agency to explore teachers' attitudes to gender equality in the classroom. The paper engages with critical pegagogical literature and social and gender justice theories to connect these to ongoing debates on education and gender in Bolivia. The paper is based on a long standing research engagement of the authors as well as empirical research conducted in Bolivia.
Paper short abstract:
Re-invention of traditional identity is used by quilombola communities in Alto Acará in Brazil to protect their land against land grabbing by expanding palm oil companies. This process, coined "quilombolization" by the author, will be analysed using the framework of institutional bricolage.
Paper long abstract:
The paper analyses a land property conflict between five traditional quilombola (Afro-Brazilian slave) communities, large landowners and palm oil companies in Alto Acará in Brazil, using the theoretical framework of institutional bricolage.The quilombola communities have submitted an official request to demarcate the area under scrutiny as inalienable communal ancestral territory, as enabled by the Constitution of 1988. The demarcation of ancestral territory is usually considered as a way to protect the social organization and cultural traits of traditional communities and to repay ancient social debts to badly treated citizens. The author states, however, that the particular request of the quilombola communities in Alto Acará appears to be a strategy to protect their land against the aggressive expansion of the palm oil industry in the region, which is being promoted by a national programme stimulating the production of biodiesel.The local quilombola history and identity, which meaning had largely faded away in the course of time, were rescued, re-invented and eventually used to increase the bargaining power of the local population in the existing land property conflict. This process, which is coined "quilombolization" by the author, can be considered as one of the few strategies available to poor communities to protect their land against large-scale land grabbing.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the daily practice of the teniente político in Ecuador in its juridical role – which can be seen as an example of interlegality. While formally bound to state law, often parts of local customary law are used too when local disputes are settled at the teniente político’s office.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the daily practice of the teniente político in Ecuador in its juridical role. While formally bound to state law, often parts of local customary law are used too when local disputes are settled at the teniente político’s office. From a legal anthropological perspective, this can be seen as an example of interlegality in a situation of formal legal pluralism. Starting with an historical overview of the ambiguous role of the teniente político, this paper then describes the daily routine in the parish of Zumbahua. It is shown that historically seen the teniente político always has been assigned a dual task of representing the state (both politically and juridically), and of acting the same time as protector of local and indigenous autonomy. While strategically managing the performance of its task, the teniente político gained a great deal of power. Nowadays, he has to collaborate with indigenous authorities like cabildos on the one side, and with a Junta Parroquial on the other, which effects his local power. This paper finally hypothesizes about his role in the near future, since recent legislation limits his formal role.