Emancipation or Enclosement? The Spatialization of Difference and Urban Ethnic Contestation in Colombia

Abstract: The focus of this article is a paradox inherent in the political effects of spatial claims undertaken by multicultural policies in many nation states: though territory is considered as one of the primary means of achieving autonomy and self‐determination, it is at the same time a mechanism that encloses difference. Through a combination of archival and ethnographic research I study the political effects of binding indigenous people's minority rights with indigenous reservations in Colombia. I focus on analyzing the legal ways in which an “ethnic indigenous type” has been attached to an “ethnic indigenous rural topos” in the jurisprudence of the Colombian Constitutional Court. I also examine how ethnic groups in the capital city of Bogotá have questioned the multicultural ideals of indigeneity and the romantic desires of what an indigenous place should look like. Ultimately, my intention is to draw attention both analytically and politically, to the necessity of more thorough analyses of the consequences of strict forms of spatializing ethnicity.     

Gendered frontiers of land control: indigenous territory,women and contests over land in Ecuador

Agricultural and rural land has become the site of considerable policy, governmental and scholarly concern worldwide because of violence and dispossession, food insecurity and contests over private property regimes. Such issues are highly gendered in territories with majorities of indigenous populations where overlapping legal regimes (statutory, multicultural, customary) and histories of dispossession have created complex spatialities and access patterns. States' formalization of indigenous rights, neoliberal restructuring and land appropriation are the backdrop to Ecuadorian women's struggles to access, retain and pass on land. Despite a burgeoning literature on Latin American indigenous territories, women are often invisible. Using collaborative research among two indigenous nationalities, the article analyses the political–economic, legal and de facto regimes shaping women's claims to land and indigenous territory. Focusing on Kichwa women in the rural Andes and Tsáchila women in a tropical export-oriented agricultural frontier area, the article examines the criteria and exclusionary practices that operate at multiple scales to shape women's (in)security in tenure. Women's struggles over claims to land and territory are also discussed. The article argues that Latin America's fraught land politics requires a gendered account of indigenous land–territoriality to unpack the cultural bias of western feminist accounts of multiculturalism and to document the racialized gender bias across socio-institutional relations.     

Unstrategic essentialism: material culture and Hawaiian articulations of indigeneity

Often rendered synonymous with deep historical attachments to particular landscapes, indigenous identities are inseparable from questions of geography. The meeting ground of place and nativeness is fecund with politics. All over the world, claims of indigeneity have become indispensable in struggles over territory, natural resources, and basic political rights in place. This article focuses on both a handful of cases from the secondary literature and empirical research on Hawai′i's Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail. It discusses essentialist expressions of indigeneity around the preservation and interpretation of Native Hawaiian material culture. Engaging with the literature on articulation theory and indigeneity, it suggests that these essentialisms emerge unintentionally rather than strategically. Its central claim is that the materiality of heritage objects, artifacts, sites, and landscapes plays an unnoticed role in shaping discourses around indigenous identity. The article concludes by suggesting that such unstrategic essentialisms pose real political risks for Native Hawaiians and offer suggestions for a more intentional engagement with the essentializing properties of indigenous material culture.     

An Experimental Act: Formations of Wildness and Indigeneity in Far North Queensland

In this article, I focus upon the recent Wild Rivers Act controversy in Queensland, Australia, as an ‘experimental event’ that drew together a diverse cast of actors – including Indigenous traditional owners, state politicians, bureaucrats, environmentalists, mining companies, the late Steve Irwin, and waterways – to contest the future of a region historically (over)coded as ‘wild’. In attending to these actors, and the discourses and arguments mobilised, I argue that this controversy reveals emergent trends in the imaginaries of wildness and indigeneity surrounding indigenous lands and waters in contemporary settler colonial nations. Critical insight into such issues, I show, requires reconceptualising the static ‘matters of being’ through which indigenous territory is often captured – such as tradition and development – as contingent and contested ‘matters of becoming’. It is precisely in events such as the Act controversy that the contemporary politics of indigenous territory, and its contingent and contested foundations, becomes visible.     

Ethnic cleansing and the formation of settler colonial geographies

Taking into account that ethnic cleansing not only undoes the legal and spatial formations within a given territory but also is a productive force aimed at securing and normalizing a new political order within a contested territory, we examine its impact on settler colonial geographies. We show that the relative completeness or incompleteness of ethnic cleansing helps shape the specific configuration of two intricately tied sites of social management – spatial reproduction and legal governance – within settler colonial regimes. We claim that complete ethnic cleansing produces a ‘refined’ form of settler colonialism resembling the colonial geographies of North America and Australia and is more readily normalized, while incomplete ethnic cleansing produces an ‘intermediate’ form of settler colonialism similar to the colonial regime in Rhodesia before the settlers lost power and is impossible to normalize due to a series of contradictions stemming from the presence of the ‘indigenous other’. To uncover this less acknowledged feature of ethnic cleansing we compare two territories that were colonized by Israel during the 1967 War: the Syrian Golan Heights and the Palestinian West Bank.     

Territory,sovereignty and entitlement: Diplomatic discourses in the United Nations Security Council

This paper builds upon feminist approaches within political science, international relations and geography that study how bodies haunt global politics, by exploring how entitlement to power connects through the scale of the body to that of the state. In a context of rising populism and political bluster, as well as post-#metoo discussions of personal entitlement displayed by well-known political figures, there is a need to take seriously how discourses of statehood within security crises are gendered in specific ways. This paper argues that the concept of entitlement offers potential for geographic enquiry by opening up new perspectives on masculinist framings of territory and state in critical geopolitics and in critical international relations. It considers specifically how diplomatic discourses ground and naturalize claims to territory by showing how states’ entitlement to territory and masculinist forms of personal entitlement are connected. Drawing upon feminist approaches to language, discourse and power, this paper studies diplomatic interventions at the United Nations Security Council in New York in 2014–2017 on the crisis in Ukraine. Methodologically, it analyses diplomatic speeches through the concept of entitlement to show how territorial claims are naturalized through rhetorical devices grounded in hegemonic forms of masculinity. It argues that a clearer understanding of the connections between discourses of personal entitlement and state territorial sovereignty can further our understanding of territory.     

Conceptions of Australian political thought: A methodological critique

This paper takes issue with a number of standard interpretations of Australian political thought and the methods of argument by which they have been reached. It confronts the substantive claims (a) that Australia has produced no significant indigenous political thought, ideology, or ideological conflict, and (b) that which passes for political thought is generally derivative, lacking in originality and inferior. It is argued that such claims are based upon unduly narrow conceptions of political thought and misplaced categories of evaluation. Finally, the paper demonstrates that by expanding our conceptions of political thought beyond that of ‘epic’ or universalist political philosophy, and applying methods of evaluation appropriate to the subject matter, more sensible conclusions can be drawn about the existence and quality of Australian political thought, as well as its place in political life.     

A political geography of walking in Jordan: Movement and politics

The past 10-15 years has seen the growth of walking groups taking walkers from Amman to rural parts of Jordan at weekends and the development of the Jordan Trail. Through the narration and analysis of everyday accounts of walking, this paper explores political geographies of identity, movement, and territory in Jordan. Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I suggest that at the heart of a growth of walking for leisure in Jordan are important political questions. How is walking conditioned by situated cultural politics? How can walking unearth intimate and embodied accounts of territory in Jordan? I build upon three developments in political geography to do this. First, research on political geography and walking; second research on everyday political geographies of the Middle East; third, critical and feminist work on territory. Literature on political geography and walking is developed by centring Jordanian walkers and the (post)colonial context of Jordan to explore what walking means under different political conditions and for individual bodies. In doing so I contribute to work on identity and nationalism in Jordan and the importance of the everyday to explore political geographies of the Middle East. I develop critical and feminist work on territory by arguing that walking bodies make and contest territory and in doing so calling for greater synergies between cultural and political geography. These arguments are made in two empirical sections. The first explores how different people talk about walking, the language for walking, and assumptions about walking bodies. The second explores how walking connects different bodies to territory, and creates territorial nationalist narratives, but also how walking can highlight indigenous and embodied relations with territory. This paper concludes that walking is political because it shapes and is shaped by situated political geographies and because it enables embodied and intimate accounts of territory to emerge.     

Ontological politics of hydrosocial territories in the Salween River basin,Myanmar/Burma

In this paper, we question an often-unchallenged assumption that we all talk about the same ‘thing’ when talking about water. Taking the Salween River in Myanmar as a case study, we draw on a growing body of hydrosocial literature to analyze the multiple ontologies of water. Conceptually, we take each ontology to be constituted of – and enacted within – a human-more-than-human assemblage, the spatiotemporal dimensions of which demarcate a ‘hydrosocial territory.’ We present three illustrations, namely: the role of the Union Government's National Water Resources Committee and how it manifests and is situated within an ontology of ‘modern Water’; a Karen indigenous initiative to establish a Salween Peace Park and an associated revealing of an ‘indigenous’ ontology; and plans for the construction of mainstream hydropower dams and electricity export to neighboring Thailand, where different water ontologies and their hydrosocial territories collide. We examine how multiple ontologies of water are contested through ‘ontological politics’, whereby human actors compete to further their own interests by naturalizing their ontology while marginalizing others. While not downplaying the role violent conflict plays, we argue that in the Salween basin ontological politics are an underappreciated terrain of contestation through which political authority and the power relations that underpin it are (re)produced, with implications for processes of state formation, territorialization and the ongoing peace negotiations.     

Magic darts and messenger molecules: Toward a phytoethnography of indigenous Amazonia

Recent scientific findings on plant intelligence are forcing anthropologists to reconsider indigenous theories of plant vitality. In this article, the authors compare original ethnographic and ethnobotanical research among two different peoples from opposite extremes of lowland South America – the Makushi of Guyana and the Matsigenka of southern Peru – and explore how somatic experiences and the chemosensory properties of plants permeate indigenous understandings of the aetiology of illness and medical efficacy in both the cosmological and microbiological domains. The authors synthesize emerging theory in ecosemiotics, embodiment, plant personhood and plant intelligence with the concept of ‘sensory ecology’ to recast multispecies ethnography as a phytochemical as well as a philosophical endeavour.     

In vino veritas? Indigenous wine and indigenization in Israeli settlements

In recent years, wineries have proliferated in Israel’s West Bank settlements, some of which are now producing world-class wine. However, growing grapes and making wine in this context represents more than simply commercial viticulture. These wineries are part of a trend to re-establish ancient Jewish winemaking practices, which fosters the imagination of returning and reconnecting to biblical sites. Moreover, high-tech grape science is now being employed to engineer wines from so-called indigenous varietals to create a wine identity for Israel. Some religious settlers regard these developments as the fulfilment of a messianic biblical prophecy. This pursuit of indigenous wine thus bolsters a religiously inflected historical imagination of indigeneity that naturalizes the Jewish presence in this contested territory. This article shows that claims to authentic indigeneity emerging from viticulture entangle high-tech grape science, biblical prophecy and an aesthetic connection to the land so that indigenous wine and an indigenous identity are co-produced in a mutually constitutive process.     

Cartographically constructing Kurdistan within geopolitical and orientalist discourses

Maps are powerful geopolitical tools, which are widely used to represent conflicts over territory, boundaries, citizens, and resources. But maps do more than represent. They are also discursive tools, which reflect, express, and help create geographic knowledge, political agendas, and social stereotypes. Through a longitudinal study of American journalistic cartography of Kurdistan – an ambiguously defined region that has often been in the midst of geopolitical conflict – this paper argues that maps reflect and recreate dominant geopolitical discourses, which are often intricately linked to orientalist discourses. A critical analysis of the design elements of place names, map text, border demarcation, and symbology revealed that these representations not only reflected the political and social narratives of the time and space in which they were created, but also constructed and communicated subtle and blatant positions towards the Kurds and Kurdistan. More specifically, these maps frequently marginalized the Kurds by questioning their geopolitical territorial claims, and also portrayed them in typical orientalist discourse as violent rebels or backward victims depending on the U.S. agenda in the region at the time. This paper will show how these interrelated discourses worked together in the cartographic image to portray the Kurds in a manner that generally supported and legitimated the dominant U.S. geopolitical position of a particular event.     

Entre souveraineté indigène et sécurité nationale : Négocier la sécurité frontalière et la culture Mohawk à Akwesasne

Based on the case of the Mohawk territory of Akwesasne, wedged between Ontario, Quebec, and New York state, this paper provides an analysis of the links between the affirmation of indigenous culture and the implementation of security policies on borderlands. The focus extends beyond political conflicts over border issues to encompass the ways in which Aboriginal sovereignty is affirmed within processes of negotiation and cooperation in the matters of identification requirements, border agents’ cultural sensitivity, and law enforcement. We find that the enhancement of border security can paradoxically be a political opportunity for local leaders to reaffirm indigenous sovereignty, and that this reaffirmation through cooperation is, at the same time, emerging as a key factor in the implementation of border security policies.     

A new Mexican nationalism? Indigenous rights,constitutional reform and the conflicting meanings of multiculturalism*

ABSTRACT. This article focuses on the recent Mexican controversy about the legal status of the indigenous population and the nature of nationalism, which is linked to recent constitutional amendments and new policy strategies. Changes in legislation and policy are examined in the context of a widespread economic and political crisis of the populist regime after 1982, which radically affected the previous indigenist discourse; but they are also seen as having been motivated by Indian demands and mobilisations against the official vision of citizenship as a function of cultural homogeneity and mestizaje. The article analyses the implications of the new constitutional amendments and the heated debates that they have provoked among different political actors, including indigenous organisations. In particular, it examines two areas of disagreement. The first concerns the multiple meanings of multiculturalism – as a threat of fragmentation and fundamentalism, a new form of state control or a strategy for indigenous national participation and empowerment. The second concerns the definition and levels of implementation of indigenous political autonomy. Negotiation over such disagreements, leading to inclusive citizenship, constitute a great challenge for ethnic intellectuals and theoreticians of Mexican nationalism.     

(RE)MAPPING INDIGENOUS ‘RACE’/PLACE IN POSTCOLONIAL PENINSULAR MALAYSIA1

ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on how indigeneity has been constructed, deployed and ruptured in postcolonial Malay(si)a. Prior to the independence of Malaya in 1957, British colonial administrators designated certain groups of inhabitants as being ‘indigenous’ to the land through European imaginings of ‘race’. The majority, politically dominant Malays were deemed the definitive peoples of this geographical territory, and the terrain was naturalized as ‘the Malay Peninsula’. Under the postcolonial government, British conceptions of the peninsula were retained; the Malays were given political power and recognition of their ‘special (indigenous) position’ in ways that Orang Asli minorities—also considered indigenous ‐ were not. This uneven recognition is evident in current postcolonial political, economic, administrative and legal arrangements for Malays and Orang Asli. In recent years, Orang Asli advocates have been articulating their struggles over land rights by drawing upon transnational discourses concerning indigenous peoples. Recent judicial decisions concerning native title for the Orang Asli potentially disrupt ethno‐nationalist assertions of the peninsula as belonging to the ‘native’ Malays. These contemporary contests in postcolonial identity formations unsettle hegemonic geopolitical ‘race’/place narratives of Peninsular Malaysia.     

Geographies of Indigenous Identity: Spatial Imaginaries and Racialised Power Struggles in Bolivia

This article examines racial power struggles in Bolivia through a spatial lens. It analyses the process of resistance to the oligarchic elites mounted by indigenous‐popular sectors in Bolivia in the first decade of the 21^st century as well as the subsequent eruption of conflicts between different indigenous sectors, and argues that political conflicts in Bolivia in the 21^st century are, among other things, also conflicts over spatial imaginaries and the different territorialising and (re)territorialising projects corresponding to them. Social movements against racial neoliberalism challenged the colonial spatial imaginary. The partial success of those struggles brought into relief two distinct indigenous spatial imaginaries, one rooted in the defence of ancestral territory and indigenous autonomy, and the other based on a redefinition of territoriality as centrality within the state and society at large. The article reads contemporary inter‐indigenous conflicts as manifestations of the differences between these two spatial imaginaries.     

Rubber Erasures,Rubber Producing Rights: Making Racialized Territories in West Kalimantan,Indonesia

This article makes connections between often‐disparate literatures on property, violence and identity, using the politics of rubber growing in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, as an example. It shows how rubber production gave rise to territorialities associated with and productive of ethnic identities, depending on both the political economies and cultural politics at play in different moments. What it meant to be Chinese and Dayak in colonial and post‐colonial Indonesia, as well as how categories of subjects and citizens were configured in the two respective periods, differentially affected both the formal property rights and the means of access to rubber and land in different parts of West Kalimantan. However, incremental changes in shifting rubber production practices were not the only means of producing territory and ethnicity. The author argues that violence ultimately played a more significant role in erasing prior identity‐based claims and establishing the controls of new actors over trees and land and their claims to legitimate access or ‘rightfulness’. Changing rubber production practices and reconfigurations of racialized territories and identity‐based property rights are all implicated in hiding the violence.     

Talking about others: archaeologists,indigenous peoples and heritage in Argentina

Abstract

In the process of creating the Argentinean nation, the indigenous peoples were dispossessed of their lands and their sacred sites. The indigenous past was therefore neglected in a nation that was thought to be formed by European immigrants. As a result, pre-Hispanic heritage was considered part of the public domain of the State and a subject of scientific enquiry. In the last few decades, legal and political changes have encouraged indigenous peoples' claims on heritage issues. The aim of this paper is to analyse a number of contested heritage issues in which indigenous communities were involved, as well as a few examples in which archaeologists, authorities and indigenous groups have succeeded in building a dialogue regarding the care of specific archaeological sites. These issues are further discussed in the context of the current socio-political and economic crisis in Argentina.     

Unearthing feminist territories and terrains

The constructs of ‘territory’ and ‘terrain’ are the subject of increasing scrutiny within political geography. While momentum builds in their interrogation as both diverse and lively practices, and complex political technologies, this article takes pause. Drawing on a rich and diverse range of feminist scholarship, it seeks to reflect upon existing trajectories and provide provocation for further accounting. Inspired throughout by, and seeking to bring to bear, a feminist perspective on territory and terrain, this article follows a tripartite structure. First, it critically explores the bodies of knowledge historically underpinning the concepts of territory and terrain. Developing a call for a feminist historiography of territory and terrain, we reflect upon both the gendered evolution of the concepts, and their ongoing reproduction in conceptual debates. Second, it seeks to both highlight and diversify embodied accounts and accountings of these concepts. Here, thinking with and beyond the body, we turn to the non-human and spiritual to explore territory and terrain in expanded and extended ways. Lastly, we examine bodies of expertise, reflecting on academic territories and terrains, and highlighting potential concepts and methodologies seeking to (re-)sculpt and (re-)articulate understandings of territory and terrain. The paper, whilst not all-encompassing, serves as an important provocation that seeks more equitable accounts of political geography's messy, muddy, and lively territories and terrains.     

Wasting Coconuts? Consumption Versus Commerce in Colonial Wallis and Futuna

ABSTRACT

Early colonial officials and other newcomers frequently lamented the poor copra production in Wallis and Futuna, positioning the continued consumption of coconuts by Islanders as a waste. This article explores the contested uses of coconuts and the divergent visions of the islands’ landscape and future held by Islanders, officials, missionaries and traders during opening decades of French colony rule. In particular, a variety of incidents in the 1920s – from an indigenous co-operative to French expulsions – highlight the centrality of the emergent copra trade to the social and political status of these different groups. More broadly, however, the article demonstrates the failure of elites – both indigenous and newcomer – to substantially increase copra exports prior to the Depression in 1930, indicative of the limits of their ability to demand labour and transform the lifeways of the wider population.