This article studies ethnic social movement autonomy claims in three regions of Colombia. It maintains that place-based and regime-specific political processes condition institutional change affecting common property regimes. The article finds that to assert local self-determination and territorial control, ethnic social movements (a) respond to territorial regimes threatening local autonomy; (b) use innovative tactics to negotiate autonomy; and (c) engage in deliberation to redefine identities and understand the conditions limiting local autonomy.

To rein in violence and address issues of social justice and environmental sustainability, the 1991 Constitution reconfigured Colombia's territorial regimes, decentralized politics, and formalized ethnic-political autonomy. However, uneven implementation of the reforms and armed conflict are limiting local decision making. To evaluate the effects of these processes in one region, the article studies the Naya River basin located in Colombia's Pacific littoral. There, Eperara-Siapidaara and Nasa Indians, traditional Afro-Colombians and Black and mestizo peasants are losing territorial control as a result of violence, a growing coca economy, and government failure to offer security and formalize collective land titles. Locally devised interethnic governance agreements were accorded as a strategy to address these problems but were constrained by (a) the violent alteration of land use practices, (b) overlapping legislations on ethnic rights that encourage differing intermediation strategies, and (c) uncoordinated nongovernmental organization involvement in local affairs.

Instant-response technologies, or clickers, are student response devices that help address some of the challenges involved in teaching large classes, namely student motivation and engagement with the material. This article evaluates a diverse set of teaching and learning strategies enabled by clicker technology and their impact on student learning. We highlight five aspects of teaching that are enhanced by the use of clickers, describe an experiment comparing student performance in traditional and clicker lectures, and report results of a survey of student perception about the effects of this technology on motivation, learning, and engagement. We argue that while the use of clickers is time-consuming for the instructor and presents a steep learning curve, clickers improve teaching effectiveness in large classes and hold promise for increasing student learning.A lthough large classes have become common in higher education, many instructors are not fully prepared to address the challenges they present. These challenges include low student interest, irregular class attendance, low grades, and limited studentinstructor interaction. Furthermore, research shows that increased class size has "a negative and statistically significant impact on the amount learned, instructor rating, and course rating" (Monks and Schmidt 2010, 15). Facing some of these challenges, we adopted instant-response technology, or "clickers," in each of our sections of Introduction to Comparative Government and Politics, which normally enroll 110-190 students. Clicker use refers to "an electronic application where a receiver located in the instructor's computer captures information from student keypads in response to questions posed by the instructor" (Premkumar and Coupal 2008, 146).We share the results of a course redesign to introduce clickers. We analyzed the restructured lectures and how we incorporated clickers, organized a learning experiment, and gathered survey results. The work is based on two courses taught in the fall semester of 2010. Section 1 had 108 students enrolled and met three times a week in 50-minute lectures. Section 2 enrolled 151 students and met twice a week in 75-minute lectures. The teaching experiment was performed in section 2, and both sections produced data for the survey. Here we argue that while the use of clickers is a time-consuming endeavor that presents the instructor with a steep learning curve, using clickers makes teaching large classes more effective and promises to increase student learning. HOW TO INCORPORATE CLICKERS INTO THE CLASSROOMIncorporating clicker questions into lectures requires a major restructuring of the course slides or outlines. We find that at most, five or six questions can be included in a 50-to 75-minute lecture. Incorporating clicker questions is time-consuming work, and instructors need to plan the pace of the lecture accordingly. We also find that student participation rises considerably when responses receive a grade or when students know that some clicker questions wil...

In the 1990s, Colombia decentralised politics and passed multicultural reforms as part of wider strategies to strengthen the state. Multiculturalism produced a complex institutional environment marked by jurisdictional overlap and legal plurality. The literature on Colombia's multiculturalism confirms that violence, indigenous rights abuses and the lack of enabling legislation on indigenous territorial entities limited ethno-political autonomy and instead enhanced the capacity of the state to transform indigenous identity and bureaucratise local decision-making practices. However, some indigenous authorities used the new institutions to take control of communal matters, changing local governments along the way. The better-known case of indigenous self-government is that of the Nasa people in Cauca, characterised by the capture of local institutions to advance ethnic rights. In my study of the Embera Chamí of Karmata Rúa (Antioquia) I argue that they represent an alternative approach centred on institutional embeddedness, or the repetition of ethnic autonomy rules by multiple layers of government.

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