Broken grounds: The politics of the environment in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Item
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Title
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Broken grounds: The politics of the environment in Oaxaca, Mexico.
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Identifier
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AAI3024782
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identifier
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3024782
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Creator
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Doane, Molly Ann.
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Contributor
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Adviser: June C. Nash
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Date
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2001
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural
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Abstract
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This dissertation is an ethnography of an environmental mobilization in Oaxaca, Mexico. The study centers on the a joint NGO/community effort to establish a campesino ecological reserve in the forest of Chimalapas. Chimalapas is an important zone ecologically. The communities of the region are embroiled in agrarian conflicts and a protracted battle with the state of Chiapas over the region's boundary. NGO and community activists in the area hope to resolve these problems and, through the legal designation of a Campesino Ecological Reserve, restrict development projects in the area. This Reserve would be mapped and managed by the communities and would be founded on community autonomy. The project is fraught with tensions, since government agencies in the area have major development plans for the area and regard the community activists and NGO working in the area as a threat to the local social order. This case shows the tensions between free market policies of globalization and local self-determination. It suggests that decentralization itself is an authoritarian force which civil society actors attempt to challenge using a model of decentralized action. It also raises questions about the role of civil society in general and their ability to challenge hegemonic forms of development. Some of the paradoxes that emerge include: private organizations like NGOs are working against the privatization that they themselves embody; international funding for their project comes with institutional strings attached that undermine ideals for social change; and calls for localism and particularism are supported by international activists and international environmental ideologies.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
