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Social Justice and the New Indigenous Politics: An Analysis of Guatemala, the Central Andes, and Chiapas

Susan Eva Eckstein and Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley

in What Justice? Whose Justice?: Fighting for Fairness in Latin America

This chapter appraises the initiative and activism practiced by the Latin American indigenous populations in achieving social justice, in recognition of difference. This end has been reached through ... More

This chapter appraises the initiative and activism practiced by the Latin American indigenous populations in achieving social justice, in recognition of difference. This end has been reached through emphasis on class/economic issues and cultural identity. The colonization of South America commenced a thorough disruption in the community and autonomous lives of the indigenous population. The dominant approach to indigenous affairs since the 1930s may be called indigenismo, a movement among white or mestizo intellectuals that affirms the indigenous heritage of Latin America while advocating the integration of the indigenous into the mestizo nation. In the Chaco War (1932–35), indigenous peoples were politically mobilized in Bolivia and Paraguay for the first time, especially in Bolivia, where the mobilization led to their being treated, for the first time, as part of the nation. This was followed by the subsequent formation of peasants unions and the great revolution (1952).Less

We are still here

Patrick Thornberry

in Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

This chapter presents raw statistics which claim to account for an indigenous world. It begins with a discussion of the identities and names of indigenous peoples. It then considers debates over the ... More

This chapter presents raw statistics which claim to account for an indigenous world. It begins with a discussion of the identities and names of indigenous peoples. It then considers debates over the question of how many indigenous populations exist on the planet, followed by a discussion of the rights abuses and other assaults upon the dignity experienced by indigenous peoples. It describes the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, a Permanent Forum for Indigenous People, the draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, summits, and regional organizations.Less

Aspects of the Process of Hellenization in the Early Middle Ages

Judith Herrin

in Margins and Metropolis: Authority across the Byzantine Empire

This chapter examines the inherent forces that remained to sustain medieval Hellenism in the early Middle Ages. It discusses two aspects to the hellenization process that was at work in parts of the ... More

This chapter examines the inherent forces that remained to sustain medieval Hellenism in the early Middle Ages. It discusses two aspects to the hellenization process that was at work in parts of the Balkan peninsula during the “Dark Ages” of Byzantine history, each helping to preserve distinct parts of the Hellenistic tradition: the continued use of spoken Greek, and the preservation of Byzantine political, cultural, and religious practices. In both cases, the agents of this process were the indigenous population of Greece, who sought refuge from the Slavs on Aegean islands, in mountain fortresses, and along the littoral. The chapter shows that despite the “grande brèche” in continuous imperial rule, the inhabitants of Greece were able to reassert their identity as citizens of the empire of Constantinople.Less

The Melting Pot of the Pacific

Ellen D. Wu

in The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority

This chapter deals with the concept of Hawaiʻi as a racial paradise. In the 1920s and 1930s, intellectuals began to tout the islands' ethnically diverse composition—including the indigenous ... More

This chapter deals with the concept of Hawaiʻi as a racial paradise. In the 1920s and 1930s, intellectuals began to tout the islands' ethnically diverse composition—including the indigenous population, white settler colonists, and imported labor from Asia and other locales—as a Pacific melting pot free of the mainland's social taboos on intermingling. After World War II, the association of Hawaiʻi with racial harmony and tolerance received unprecedented national attention as Americans heatedly debated the question of whether or not the territory, annexed to the United States in 1898, should become a state. Statehood enthusiasts tagged the islands' majority Asian population, with its demonstrated capability of assimilation, as a forceful rationale for admission.Less

The Impact of the First Conquest on the Indigenous Populations of the Philippines (Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries)

Miguel Luque-Talaván

in Historical Archaeology of Early Modern Colonialism in Asia-Pacific: The Asia-Pacific Region

Every process of discovery, conquest, and colonization, regardless of its magnitude and historical implications, entails a transformation in those societies in which contact takes place. Such a ... More

Every process of discovery, conquest, and colonization, regardless of its magnitude and historical implications, entails a transformation in those societies in which contact takes place. Such a transformation, though, must not make us assume that there was no resistance, in different ways and intensity, aimed at the outsiders by the receiving population. The Philippines was no exception. In the present investigation, we will address aspects such as the impacts on the settlement patterns, the social structure, and the population shock and consequences of the conquest on the economical structure, culture, and spiritual world of the Philippine indigenous populations between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.Less

Ainu: From a Dying Race to an Indigenous People

Kiyoteru Tsutsui

in Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan

This chapter starts with an examination of the long history of Ainu’s subjugation to mainland Japanese and their quiet acquiescence until the 1970s, when the Hokkaido Utari Association began to ... More

This chapter starts with an examination of the long history of Ainu’s subjugation to mainland Japanese and their quiet acquiescence until the 1970s, when the Hokkaido Utari Association began to engage in international exchange. The international experiences from the 1970s gradually transformed Ainu leaders’ movement actorhood, leading to much more assertive collective mobilization by Ainu that leveraged international human rights forums with help from transnational activists. Their international activities exerted significant pressures on the Japanese government, prompting legislation of new laws to protect and promote Ainu culture and an official recognition of Ainu as an indigenous people. Ainu activists also contributed to the consolidation and expansion of international human and indigenous rights forums, legitimating the issue of indigenous rights outside typical settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, and Australia, and bringing in some resources to international indigenous forums.Less

The Myopia of Colonialism: Zama

Gerd Gemünden

in Lucrecia Martel

Her latest feature to date, Zama, is a groundbreaking achievement. This chapter argues that Martel’s adaptation of Di Benedetto’s novel turns the modernist text into a postcolonial vision of the past ... More

Her latest feature to date, Zama, is a groundbreaking achievement. This chapter argues that Martel’s adaptation of Di Benedetto’s novel turns the modernist text into a postcolonial vision of the past that radically reimagines the position of women, slaves, and indigenous populations. Combining both meticulous research and a stunning artistic imagination, Zama provides a representation of the colony that refutes most North American and European productions while also exceeding efforts by contemporary Latin American filmmakers. Building on, and exceeding previous thematic concerns and stylistic preferences, the film must count as one of the most accomplished and complex films of the 21st century.Less

: The Politics and Pragmatics of Managing Health

in Mixed Medicines: Health and Culture in French Colonial Cambodia

This chapter, which discusses the infrastructure of the new medical service for the indigenous population, the Assistance Médicale (AM), and its context of operation, also determines the specific ... More

This chapter, which discusses the infrastructure of the new medical service for the indigenous population, the Assistance Médicale (AM), and its context of operation, also determines the specific aspects of French medicine in relation to the variety of indigenous medical practices it confronted. The instability in medical infrastructure was mirrored by instability in personnel assignments. Respect for the role of a Western doctor never materialized among the indigenous population, and salaries remained low while training became more straining. François-Marius Baudoin's acceptance of various Khmer medicines would cause some friction with the AM bureaucracy. His efforts to “localize” Western medicine by incorporating bits of Khmer traditional medicine were blocked by the medical administration. Henri-Charles Gérard's efforts to move medicine in the other direction, by transforming the hospital into a rationalized, depersonalized site of care, were thwarted by the lay population.Less

Leaving Salta: Recent Shorts and a Lost Film

Gerd Gemünden

in Lucrecia Martel

This chapter investigates the nine-year period between Martel’s third and fourth features. It argues that after completing the Salta trilogy, the director deliberately sought to alter the direction ... More

This chapter investigates the nine-year period between Martel’s third and fourth features. It argues that after completing the Salta trilogy, the director deliberately sought to alter the direction of her career. The project of adapting the sci-fi graphic novel, El Eternauta, even though ultimately abandoned, points toward her making of Zama, while several of the surreal shorts made during this period allow glimpses of what her sci-fi film might have looked like. Other shorts, both from this period and earlier, highlight her interest in the fate of Argentine native populations, which becomes very important in Zama, while also pointing to her current work in progress.Less

European Alcohol in Contact 1500–1700: Non-European Worlds

Rod Phillips

in Alcohol: A History

This chapter looks at the role alcohol played in the efforts of Europeans to contact, conquer, and colonize regions in the Americas, Africa, and Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When ... More

This chapter looks at the role alcohol played in the efforts of Europeans to contact, conquer, and colonize regions in the Americas, Africa, and Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. When Europeans sailed the vast distances to the Americas, Africa, and Asia, they took alcohol with them. Early explorers shared alcohol with the indigenous inhabitants they met, just as they used alcohol for hospitality purposes in Europe. As contact with specific regions became more regular and European settlements were established, traders and settlers began to introduce their alcoholic beverages on a more regular basis to the indigenous populations of regions as disparate as Peru, New England, and India. Eventually, as Europeans established permanent settlements, they planted vineyards, built breweries, and later constructed distilleries, making themselves self-sufficient in alcohol production in many parts of the non-European world.Less

Conclusion

Richard Pugh and Brain Cheers

in Rural social work: International perspectives

This book has emphasised the importance of recognising the diversity of rural contexts and rural lives, the necessity of an informed appreciation of local context, and, following from these, a ... More

This book has emphasised the importance of recognising the diversity of rural contexts and rural lives, the necessity of an informed appreciation of local context, and, following from these, a rejection of any homogenised approach to rural-social-work policy and practice. Some of the commonalities between Western developed countries are due to similarities in social-welfare systems and the fact that these countries are relatively wealthy and, thus, have considerable expenditures allocated to ‘professionalised’ systems of social work. There are other commonalities that derive from the social dynamics of small communities, in which higher social visibility and local cultures, and patterns of relationships, play a great part in how people view social difference and social problems and how these things are experienced. In some countries, similarities arise from the experience of colonisation, whose legacies have resulted in the marginalisation of indigenous populations, the health and welfare prospects of whom are, typically, considerably worse than those of the overall population.Less

Alcohol and Native Peoples 1800–1930: Race, Order, and Control

Rod Phillips

in Alcohol: A History

This chapter examines the interplay between alcohol and colonialism in Africa. Europeans brought their alcoholic beverages, attitudes, and consumption patterns with them to the rest of the world, and ... More

This chapter examines the interplay between alcohol and colonialism in Africa. Europeans brought their alcoholic beverages, attitudes, and consumption patterns with them to the rest of the world, and in Africa they encountered indigenous populations with their own alcoholic beverages and modes of consuming them. Europeans confronted alcohol in their far-flung colonies with policies ranging from laissez-faire to prohibition. In most cases policies went through a number of phases, each representing a different level of coercion and rigor. Colonial alcohol policies were fashioned from competing interests, notable among which was the revenues that colonial powers could obtain from taxing alcohol in their colonies.Less

This place was here before our nations: Anacaona’s Jaragua

Maria Cristina Fumagalli

in On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic

This chapter discusses three fictional reconstructions of the life of the Taíno Queen Anacaona, an important figure in early modern Hispaniola, by writers born in the Dominican Republic and Haiti: ... More

This chapter discusses three fictional reconstructions of the life of the Taíno Queen Anacaona, an important figure in early modern Hispaniola, by writers born in the Dominican Republic and Haiti: Salomé Ureña de Henríquez's Anacaona (1880); Jean Métellus's Anacaona (1986); and Edwidge Danticat's Anacaona: Golden Flower: Haiti, 1490 (2005). The chapter puts these texts in dialogue with each other and argues that they dramatise the ongoing tension between national narratives and island history while revisiting Anacaona's complex renegotiations of the ‘border’, which, in her time, was supposed to ring-fence the indigenous population from the Spanish colonists; Anacaona's renegotiations take place in an area which partly overlaps with the current borderland.Less

The literary anthology as a tool of literary history

Rosemary Chapman

in What is Québécois Literature?: Reflections on the Literary History of Francophone Writing in Canada

The study of a selection of literary anthologies, used over the last one hundred years in Quebec shows the emergence of a core of literary texts, the exact composition of which has varied across the ... More

The study of a selection of literary anthologies, used over the last one hundred years in Quebec shows the emergence of a core of literary texts, the exact composition of which has varied across the decades as definitions of the literary corpus of francophone Canada have shifted, following changes in policy, population, and dominant ideology (from catholic to secular). The chapter begins with a survey of literary textbook production in Quebec from its beginnings in the 1830s to the present day, mapping the slow process of ‘Canadianization’ of textbooks in Quebec, in terms of authorship, production and content. It then analyses the presence of francophone Canadian literature within literary anthologies, the means by which francophone Canadian pupils would have been familiarized with the emerging literary canon. In the final section of the chapter the analysis focuses on the representation of First Nations, Inuit and Métis cultures within the corpus. Less

Discrimination and Human Rights Law: Combating Racism

THEO VAN BOVEN

in Discrimination and Human Rights: The Case of Racism

This chapter describes the different ways of fighting racism through the human rights law. The first section explores the perception of racism as an alien phenomenon and the denial and ... More

This chapter describes the different ways of fighting racism through the human rights law. The first section explores the perception of racism as an alien phenomenon and the denial and acknowledgement of these phenomena and related practices in different countries. The second section considers the victims of racial discrimination. It stresses that the first step in addressing racism is to ascertain the fate of the victims, among them the ‘untouchables’ in India, indigenous populations, and the migrant workers excluded from their communities despite their significant economic contribution. The third section looks at the role of the state in addressing such issues. The last section analyses the approach of Europe to the policies regarding racial discrimination.Less

Soviet Power and Life in the Colonies, 1925–1929

Jonathan L. Dekel-Chen

in Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924-1941

The collaboration between foreign philanthropies and the Soviet authorities enabled thousands of Jews to leave the shtetls and settle in the agricultural colonies every winter throughout the second ... More

The collaboration between foreign philanthropies and the Soviet authorities enabled thousands of Jews to leave the shtetls and settle in the agricultural colonies every winter throughout the second half of the 1920s. The colonists faced fundamental difficulties as they made the transition from urban to rural life. The colonization was opposed by Tatar communists, who perceived it as a violation of the national integrity and political legitimacy of the Crimean Tatar Oblast. This chapter focuses on Soviet power and Jewish life in the agricultural colonies in Crimea and southern Ukraine in 1925–1929. It first examines the role of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)'s Joint Agricultural Corporation as a surrogate authority in the colonies before turning to a discussion of Moscow's propaganda campaign for the colonization. The chapter then examines the activities of rural cooperatives in Agro-Joint colonies during the 1920s, the impact of colonization on religious practices that engulfed Soviet Jewry during the New Economic Policy period, and the political conflicts with the indigenous populations triggered by Jewish colonization.Less

I Tano’ i Chamorro/Chamorro Land: Situating Sustainabilities through Spatial Justice and Cultural Perpetuation

Michael Lujan Bevacqua and Isa Ua Ceallaigh Bowman

in Sustainability: Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Defense announced its intention to drastically increase their military presence on the island of Guam. Although this “military buildup” was predicted to cause severe ... More

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Defense announced its intention to drastically increase their military presence on the island of Guam. Although this “military buildup” was predicted to cause severe damage to the island in environmental, social and economic terms, discourse from island leaders and media reports focused primarily on this increase as being the key to future “sustainability” for the island. This chapter argues that the notion of the military build-up as being “sustainable” was tied to historical militarization and colonization of the indigenous Chamorro people of the western Pacific over centuries, during which the United States has been elevated to the stature of a liberator and socioeconomic savior. This chapter surveys the scholarly literature on the effects of U.S. military "Draft Environmental Impact Statements" on indigenous populations, with particular regard to effects on the indigenous Chamorro people. This chapter also discusses the ways in which demilitarization and decolonization activists from local indigenous Chamorro groups such as Nasion Chamoru used the public comment period for the U.S. military’s plans in order to disrupt the fantasy of the build-up’s sustainability and help the local community develop a more critical position in relation to the military's own stated environmental impacts.Less

Redefining the ‘problem’ and challenging the assumptions

Vaughan Robinson

in Spreading the 'burden'?: A review of policies to disperse asylum seekers and refugees

This chapter addresses the same ‘facts’ of the problem of clustering, but views them from a different perspective. It first considers whether the clustering of asylum seekers and refugees is an ... More

This chapter addresses the same ‘facts’ of the problem of clustering, but views them from a different perspective. It first considers whether the clustering of asylum seekers and refugees is an anomaly that is problematic and needs to be corrected. It then outlines the justifications that have been provided for dismantling clusters. Several arguments on dispersal are provided, as well as a suggestion that dispersal may be a response to a ‘moral panic’ within the indigenous population about the extent to which it feels it is losing its ability to maintain the purity of space. The chapter ends by listing some alternative solutions to the reconceptualised ‘problem’, which might render dispersal policies unnecessary.Less

Living Apart Together

Peter Boomgaard

in Frontiers of Fear: Tigers and People in the Malay World, 1600-1950

This chapter focuses on the main features of the historical relationship between tigers and people in the Malay world. The features examined are fear of the tiger, the struggle for power between ... More

This chapter focuses on the main features of the historical relationship between tigers and people in the Malay world. The features examined are fear of the tiger, the struggle for power between humans and tigers, and the tiger as a symbol of the frontier between nature and culture. The chapter argues that in many areas in the Malay world, the indigenous population had sufficient reasons to fear the tiger. Locally, the number of people killed by tigers could be quite high, and in many districts and villages the man-eater threat was permanently present. The chapter explores whether the notion that people and tigers are somehow related can be held simultaneously with ideas on fear and power struggles as main features in the tiger–human relationship. It also discusses the mutual influences of the two species, and the influence of both on their environment.Less