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| Instructor: Dr. Joe Bryan email: jbryan@berkeley.edu office phone: office: 187 McCone office hours: Th 1-3 |
Class Location: 123 Wheeler Class Time: TuTh 11-12:30 Course control number: 36591 Units: 4 |
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| The course: Since the end of the Second World War, indigenous peoples have gone from being obstacles to targets of development policy. This increased visibility is due in part to the rise of social movements organized around the concept of indigenous rights, particularly in Latin America. But any analysis of that success must be combined with an attention to the advent of neoliberal economic reforms, democratization, environmentalism in the aftermath of the Cold War. This class will explore the ways in which these changes have created new political and economic opportunities for indigenous peoples while foreclosing other options, addressing a range of postcolonial theoretical and political concerns. By the end of the course, you will have a foundation in the cultural politics of development, with particular attention to ways in neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and human rights have contributed to the prominence of indigenous rights in a variety of contexts. A number of caveats: while much of the course material involves cases from Latin America, their successes, however limited, have prompted people in a diverse range of historical and geographic settings to use indigenous right as a way to gain a foothold in debates over development. You need not have a background in Latin America to take this course; however it is important that you have some familiarity with the basic concerns of development and, to a lesser extent, political ecology. This course is not an effort to teach indigenous ‘world views’ or otherwise introduce you to what indigenous peoples think, how they live, and so forth. It is about trying to understand how the context of development opens up certain opportunities, however constrained, for indigenous peoples to make their voices heard. Goals: 1) Place current emphasis on indigenous rights in relationship to historical trends in Latin America and beyond 2) Develop an understanding of which sorts of indigenous rights are recognized and which ones are not, and why 3) Develop an understanding of how race, class and ethnicity shape inequality 4) Develop skills in critical reading, written and oral communication, and research Course overview: There will be two lectures given a week. You will be expected to do the reading assigned for that day in advance of lecture. Lectures will generally take up the first hour of our meetings, leaving a half hour for discussion in small groups or as a class. Assignments: The mid-term is due at the beginning of class on October 10. It will be a short essay (5-7 pages) on a topic of your choice from a list of questions/ideas that I will circulate in class. The mid-term will be worth 30% of your final grade. A final research paper (12-15 pages) is due December 7 at the beginning of class. The paper should be on topic that you have chosen with my approval. You are expected to meet with me during office hours to discuss your paper topic with me well in advance of the due date. The final will be worth 50% of your final grade. Prior to turning in your final paper, you will be responsible for giving a short presentation (approximately 10 minutes) in class on that summarizes the main argument or finding of your work as well as a review of relevant sources. The presentation will be your opportunity to present your work and get feedback from your classmates prior to turning in the written product. Both the mid-term and the final must be in 12 point font and double spaced, with the exception of any footnotes. Both should have a complete bibliography of works reviewed and cited. While not mandatory, your attendance in lectures is expected. Participation in lectures (doing the readings, participating in discussions, in class exercises, etc.) will count for 20% of your final grade. Mid-term essay 30% Participation 20% Final essay 50% Late policy: Unless you have previously received my permission to turn in an assignment late, your grade will be reduced by a full letter grade for each day that it is late. Plagiarism: (from the UCB General Catalog) “… an instructor has the right to give you an F on a single assignment produced by cheating without determining whether you have a passing knowledge of the relevant factual material. That is an appropriate academic evaluation for a failure to understand or abide by the basic rules of academic study and inquiry. An instructor has the right to assign a final grade of F for the course if you plagiarized a paper for a portion of the course, even if you have successfully and, presumably, honestly passed the remaining portion of the course. It must be understood that any student who knowingly aids in plagiarism or other cheating, e.g., allowing another student to copy a paper or examination question, is as guilty as the cheating student.” Required texts: All required readings are included in a course reader available from Copy Central on Bancroft, though I may hand out supplementary readings in class. As possible, I will post electronic copies of articles on a bSpace site listed for “Dev Std 150 001 F06.” If so, it will be your responsibility to get the handout, read it, and be ready to discuss it accordingly. Additional sources may be placed on reserve during the course of the semester. I will announce them in class. Additional resources: For a general overview of the issues discussed in class, you may also find helpful the Annotated Bibliography on Indigenous Peoples and the Environment available for download from http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/EnvirPol/Bib/B06-AshtonBryan.pdf While most of the readings for class are from academically oriented, there is a wealth of information available online of varying quality. Some of these sites contain statements, articles and declarations made by indigenous peoples themselves that I encourage you to read on your own. I have listed a few useful sites for getting started here; you should become familiar with a least a couple of them. There are many more sites that are relevant, and I encourage you to consider adding any particularly good sites to the list of online resources on the bSpace site. &Mac183; Native Web http://www.nativeweb.org/. One of the first internet sites intended to disseminate news and information by and for indigenous peoples primarily from the Americas. In addition to providing a database of articles, press releases and statements, NativeWeb also hosts websites for a number of indigenous organizations. &Mac183; Center for World Indigenous Studies/Fourth World Documentation Project http://cwis.org/ Another major electronic clearing house for documents relevant to indigenous rights, with a particular emphasis on international human rights, indigenous political philosophy. Many of the sources are from the United States and Canada. &Mac183; International Work Group for International Affairs http://www.iwgia.org/ Founded by anthropologists in the late 1960s, IWGIA coordinates a network of researchers and activists, publishing a quarterly journal, annual reports, and occasional publications on topics and issues concerning indigenous rights. Their coverage is worldwide and often offers comparative perspectives. &Mac183; Both the Zapatistas in Mexico and the Mapuche in Chile have used the internet extensively to disseminate information about their respective struggles and reach an international audience. See http://www.ezln.org.mx/and http://www.xs4all.nl/~rehue/, respectively, for examples though there are many other sites. &Mac183; The World Bank (http://www.worldbank.org/indigenous) and the Inter-American Development Bank (http://www.iadb.org/sds/IND/index_ind_e.htm) have produced extensive documentation in support of their ongoing development initiatives and operating principles. |
| Download syllabus as pdf |
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Week#
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Date
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Subject
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Required reading |
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I. Course overview
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| 1 | August 29 | Course introduction and logistics | |
| 1 | August 31 | Overview of course | Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 2004. "Reclaiming the Nation." NACLA Report on the Americas 38(3): 19-23. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo. 2002. “Indigenous peoples and the state in Latin America: an ongoing debate.” In Rachel Sieder, ed. Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous rights, diversity, democracy. : Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan Pp. 24-44 |
| 2 | September 5 | The right to have rights | De las Casas, Bartolome. 1522. A brief account of the devastation of the Indies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 27-43, 119-132. Locke, John. 1704. “Of Property,” and Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. 1755. “The origin of inequality.” In C.B. Macpherson. 1978 Property: Mainstream and critical positions, pp. 15-37. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. |
| 2 | September 7 | From objects of history to political subjects | Wolf, Eric. 1982. “Iberians in the America” (Chapter 5). In Europe and the people without history. Berkeley: UC Press. Asad, Talal. 1987. “Are there histories of peoples without Europe? A review article.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29(3); 594-607. |
| 3 | September 12 | Ramos, Alcida. 1998. “Development does not rhyme with Indian, or does it?” In Indigenism, pp. 195-221. Madison: Univeristy of Wisconsin Press. | |
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II. Colonial States
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| 3 | September 14 | Finding a place for indigenous peoples | Harley, J.B. 1992. “Rereading the maps of the Columbian encounter.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82(3):522-542. |
| 4 | September 19 | Indigenous peoples and Nature | Steward, Julian. 1955. “The concept and method of cultural ecology.” In Theory of Culture Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Denevan, William. 1992. “The Pristine Myth.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82(3): 369-385. |
| September 21 | Agrarian frontiers | Alonso, Ana Maria. 1995. “What is the frontier?” and “The social organization of warfare,” (pp. 15-50), in Thread of Blood: Colonialism, revolution and gender on Mexico’s Northern Frontier, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. | |
| 5 | September 26 | Nations and states | Gould, Jeffrey. 1993. “‘¡Vana Ilusión!’ The highlands Indians and the Myth of Nicaragua Mestiza, 1880-1925.” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 73(3): pp. 393-429. |
| September 28 | State formation continued | Rus, Jan. 1994. “The ‘Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional’: the subversion of native government in highland Chiapas, 1936 – 1968.” In Joseph and Nugent, eds. Everyday forms of state formation: Revolution and the negotiation of rule in modern Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. | |
| 6 | October 3 | Alternative alliances | Becker, Marc. 2004. “Indigenous communists and urban intellectuals in Cayambe, Ecuador (1926-1944).” International Review of Social History 49 (Supplement); pp. 41-64. |
| October 5 | Alternative alliances, cont’d. | Rubenstein, Steven. 2001. “Colonialism, the Shuar Federation, and the Ecuadorian state.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space19 (pp. 263-293). | |
| 7 | October 10 | From objects of history to political subjects Hand in mid-terms |
Indigenous declarations: Barbados (1971) and Quito (1990), UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. |
| October 12 | Hale, Charles. 1994 “Between Che Guevara and the Pachamama: Mestizos, Indians and the identity politics in the anti-quincentennary campaign.” Critique of Anthropology14(1):9-39. | ||
| 8 | October 17 | The language of rights | ILO Convention 169 Brysk, Alison. 1996. “Turning weakness into strength: the internationalization of Indian rights.” Latin American Perspectives 23(2): 38-57. |
| October 19 | Social Movements | Sawyer, Suzana.1997. “The 1992 Indian Mobilization in Lowland Ecuador.” Latin American Perspectives, 24(3): pp. 65-82. | |
| 9 | October 24 | Indigenous peoples and conservation | (Map of indigenous peoples and biodiversity in Central America – on course website) Conklin, Beth and Laura Graham. 1995. “The shifting middle ground: Amazonian Indians and eco-politics.” American Anthropologist 97(4): 695-710. |
| October 26 | Alternatives to development | Nietschmann, Bernard. 1995. “Defending the Miskito reefs with maps and GPS: mapping with sail, scuba and satellite.” Cultural Survival Quarterly. Gordon, Edmund, Galio Gurdian, and Charles Hale. 2003. “Rights, resources, and the social memory of struggle.” Human Organization 62(4): 369-381 (Optional) Peluso, Nancy. 1995. “Whose woods are these? Counter-mapping forest territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia.” Antipode 27(4):383-406 |
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| 11 | October 31 | Mulitcultural reforms | Van Cott, Donna Lee. 2001. “Explaining Ethnic Autonomy Regimes in Latin America.” Studies in Comparative International Development 34(4): 30-58. |
| November 2 | Neoliberal mutliculturalism | Hale, Charles. 2005. “Neoliberal multiculturalism.” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 28(1): 10-28. Davis, Shelton and William Partridge. 1999. “Promoting the development of indigenous peoples in Latin America.” The World Bank. (6p.) |
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| 12 | November 7 | Neoliberal reforms and participatory development | Bebbington, Anthony. 2001. “Globalized Andes? Livelihoods, landscapes and development.” Ecumene 8(4): 413-436. |
| November 9 | Chapin, Mac. 2004. “A Challenge to Conservationists” and “Responses.” World Watch Institute. | ||
| 13 | November 16 | New models, old problems | Speed, Shannon and Jane Collier. 2000. “Limiting indigenous autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico: the state of the government’s use of human rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 22:p. 877-905. |
| November 21 | Hooker, Juliet. 2005. “Indigenous inclusion/black exclusion: race, ethnicity and multicultural citizenship in Latin America.” Journal of Latin American Studies 37(285-310). | ||
| November 23 | Holiday | ||
| 14 | November 28 | Speaking for themselves? | Stefano Varese, Commentary on Barbados III and reply from Aucan Huilcaman |
| November 30 | Student presentations | ||
| 15 | December 5 | Student presentations | |
| December 7 | Wrap up | Final papers due | |