The Títulos de Ebtún,Yucatan, Mexico: Mapping Maya Communal Identity in a Colonial Spanish Notarial Context

ABSTRACT

The main focus in this article is on four maps from colonial Yucatan, Mexico (c.1542?1821). The maps illustrate a two-volume set of Maya notarial documents called the Títulos de Ebtún and concern disputed communal rights to Tontzimin, one of the sparse water sources (cenotes) of this arid limestone region, and its surrounding arable land. Mention is also made of two maps of the province of Mani that were included in treaties agreed with the Spanish authorities as a final record of Maya claims to traditional agricultural rights. Although all these maps were produced by Spanish officials, they relate to broader colonial mapping traditions in Yucatan and embody a clear Maya influence. At the same time, they reveal the effect of Maya mapping practices on Spanish notarial and mapping traditions at the close of the colonial period.     

SWEDEN AND THE LONG ‘1968’: BREAK OR CONTINUITY?

The first part gives a chronological overview of the Swedish ‘1968’, in this article defined as a phenomenon with its roots in the late 1950s and it's end around 1980. Three phases are identified: a ‘liberal’ until 1965, a ‘red’ in the late 1960s and the ‘diversified’ 1970s. Underlying this time schedule are two characteristics of the Swedish ‘1968’ in its extended form: the role of the social movements and the interaction between old and new movements; and the unique role of the intellectuals. The second part discusses the (late and limited) research so far on this topic in Sweden. The academic works are still few and the critical debate little developed. One of the topics discussed is to what extent ‘1968’ was something fundamentally new and to what extent it was influenced by older social movements.     

Notes from a French perspective

This article uses John Kingdon's “multiple streams” model of the policy process to explore the role of French public intellectuals in processes of cultural and educational policy formation. The relative autonomy attributed by Kingdon to the “primeval soup” of ideas constituted by the policy stream (as distinct from the “problems” and “politics” streams posited by his model) provides the basis for this exploration. However, Kingdon's model is not developed with any reference to France, public intellectuals or cultural policy. The corresponding adjustments required are themselves enlightening. Public intellectuals must thus be distinguished from policy experts. They are characterised by their public visibility, the broad frame of reference that they bring to bear on the issues of the moment, certain limitations in technical expertise, and a capacity not simply to work through policy alternatives, but also to project their own counter‐agendas. These issues are explored particularly in relation to a selection of policy reports produced by public intellectuals.     

Millennium development goals (MDGs) and indigenous peoples' literacy in Cambodia: erosion of sovereignty?

Nation‐building throughout Southeast Asia has been undertaken in contexts where minority groups, living on the margins of society, are being forced into recent state constructions, and have had their cultures eroded as a result. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for education have provided international benchmarks for literacy. These have been adopted by the Cambodian state, and a number of donors and NGOs have funded and enacted policies with the explicit aim of improving the language skills of Cambodia's highland communities. However, these are being implemented in communities that do not speak Khmer (the Cambodian national language), and do not have indigenous systems of writing. Drawing on fieldwork in Cambodia, this paper argues that the impact of the MDGs has been to depoliticize an inherently contested terrain, and to ironically silence communities on fundamental issues by teaching them to read, write and speak the national language. This has limited their capacity to perform sovereignty by restricting the very voice they are entitled to speak.     

‘Por decir ser yndia’: las difusas fronteras del mestizaje en la ciudad de Quito (siglo XVII)

The pluriethnic reality in Hispanic-American cities in the seventeenth century is a perfect field in which to study the social dynamics developed by city-dwelling Indians. Indigenous people soon developed a wide variety of strategies in order to survive in Quito. The socio-ethnic categories that developed during colonial times have been shown to be much more flexible than those witnessed by the administrative powers. This study analyzes these categories as social identifications related to elements such as ‘habito’ which could be changed and modified. These elements allowed this modification to become a mechanism and a strategy for survival used by indigenous peoples. It became an important element that influenced the city Indians and the construction of the urban society of Quito in the seventeenth century.     

Indigenous migrants negotiating belonging: Peticiones de cambio de fuero in Cajamarca,Peru, 17th–18th centuries

Prehispanic corporate social units in northern Peru, the pachacas or ayllus and the guarangas, continued to structure social life in Cajamarca throughout the Spanish colonial period. They were restructured by Spanish rule, as they had been by the Inca conquest before. Spanish rule also reshaped indigenous migration and the social categorization of the migrants, which was closely intertwined with the regime of land tenure. This article takes a look at the integration of new and old migrants and their descendants into the local social structure and examines how they negotiated their belonging in petitions to change or defend their fuero. The petitioners successfully argued on the basis of their ancestry, whether legitimate or not, and activated personal networks on their behalf. In that, they paralleled mestizo and mulatto petitioners who, like migrants, benefited from fiscal prerogatives, which were however challenged during the course of the 18^th century, leading to a partial re-categorization. The redistribution of land was an important motive in these late colonial re-categorizations, but also earlier in the colonial period the absence of bonds to the land was an essential characteristic of being categorized as a ‘migrant.’     

Are universities ready for interculturality? The case of the Intercultural University ‘Amawtay Wasi’ (Ecuador)

This article focuses on the creation of the Intercultural University ‘Amawtay Wasi’ in 2003, and its evolution up until its final suspension from the university system in Ecuador. I reflect on the difficulty of implementing educational approaches based on locally situated cultural identities that involve epistemologies different from those which are hegemonic in academic spheres on the global level. From the point of view of the indigenous movement, the current situation is solely the result of the ignorance and arrogance of the state, which ‘has led to a backlash against the gains made by indigenous people that has even led to a decline in terms of indigenous rights’, calling the current government a government of ‘a new colonization’ (Salvador). However, interviews conducted in the years after the closure of Amawtay Wasi bring to light certain discourses and opposition that go beyond the obvious intellectual and political reluctance of the current government to maintain the Amawtay Wasi Intercultural University.     

Evaluating Comanagement for Social‐Ecological Fit: Indigenous Priorities and Agency Mandates for Pacific Walrus

Governance arrangements such as comanagement are regarded by many as promising arenas for effective natural resource management. However, measuring comanagement's success at achieving conservation goals has been equivocal. Our research evaluates the lack of conclusive outcomes through a critical consideration of how different goals and values inherent in comanagement affect the institutional (or policy) diagnostic of “fit.” More narrowly, sustaining natural resources requires that management policies foster fit between the scales of sociopolitical processes governing resource use and the scales of ecological processes regulating a resource. Without a process that encourages such harmonization, theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that comanagement regimes are unlikely to accomplish long‐term conservation goals. We use a case study of walrus comanagement under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act to demonstrate that when the formal institutions preconditioning comanagement do not develop out of a deliberative process among comanagement partners, two major problems can arise: (i) Policy institutions mismatch ecological and social processes relevant to resources and communities; and (ii) data to assess the fit of institutions and support learning is more difficult to acquire. In our case study, both these factors constrain the ability of comanagement to foster walrus conservation or support the capacity of Native Alaskans to adapt to contemporary social and environmental conditions. Our research concludes that to achieve marine mammal conservation, previous institutional arrangements framing comanagement that are predicated on static conceptions of people and ecosystems must be redesigned to provide better policy fit across local to international priorities. To do so requires opening up deliberative spaces, where Western science and priorities are confronted with indigenous perspectives. However, the benefit of enhancing deliberation carries risks and costs related to trade‐offs between the values of democratic process, and protections for both wildlife species and indigenous groups.     

清末新式知识分子的文化心态及现代启示

19世纪末20世纪初,在中国形成了具有新的知识结构与价值取向的知识分子群体,他们对中国文化进行了许多有益的探索。然而,在晚清时期,由于诸多社会矛盾相互交织,社会改造任务紧迫,因而新式知识分子群体形成了矛盾、急躁和激进的文化心态,并成为一种根深蒂固的传统,对现实社会产生了不可估量的影响。     

中国近代知识阶层的开明专制思想

寻求富强和争取民主是近现代中国知识阶层政治思想的两个重要面相,但是为寻求快速富强所需要的集权专制与民主追求、必然的分权之紧张与冲突,撕裂了整个知识阶层。作为缓解这种紧张和冲突之设计,用专制实现现代化的开明专制思想持续地影响着数代知识分子。开明专制思想虽然受到批驳,在实践上也遭遇过失败,但在清末至抗战前几十年间仍被不少知识分子视做一种合理的过渡政体和发展模式,被赋予了救亡和启蒙的双重任务。作为西方政治思想中国化的大胆尝试和众多知识分子的希望寄托,开明专制思想不仅具有重要的思想价值,也是了解近现代中国知识分子的一把钥匙。