Indigenous peoples in Latin America struggle for autonomy because in the twenty-first century, they are still colonies.Francisco Ló pez Bárcenas, Mixtec Indian lawyer (cited on p. 23)Peoples of the Earth is a rich and well documented work that not only covers several dimensions of the problem of incorporation of indigenous peoples, but also follows a clear agenda that aims at intervention and influencing policy design. It is therefore a book that should be read as both an academic piece of work and, perhaps more importantly, as a contribution to the political analysis for the accomplishment of indigenous demands and needs. The author structures his book in three main sections. First, he frames the historical context and the main debates regarding indigenous movements and demands. He emphasises the influence that Marxist thought has had in Latin American Left and indigenous activism. Further, he presents the problematic of ethnonationalism in the context of ungoverned spaces, the wars on drugs, militarism and paramilitarism, and ideas of national security. In the second section of the book, he presents the particularity of the ethnonationalisms of Bolivia, Perú , Ecuador, Guatemala, Chile and Colombia. For each case, he presents a thorough historical, journalistic and anthropological analysis. The last section is an attempt to contrast these Latin American cases with the Inuit in Canada, and with the American model of tribal justice Á suggesting that these have been the most successful examples of modern self-government in which tribal values have informed contemporary legal issues. Andersen proposes that these cases can shed light on the improvement of the indigenous situation throughout the American continent.Andersen analyses how peoples' demands for justice and rights have been successful in achieving transformations in national and international agendas, most importantly with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and the modification of various national constitutions that have declared multicultural and plurinational states. Yet, these agendas have been framed within the context of a neoliberal logic, and historical developments have demonstrated that indigenous rights are still violated: many of the measures taken by states have become empty signifiers and have generated new and more complicated forms of exclusion and domination within the discourse of multiculturalism. He explores the tensions that emerge in the attempts to incorporate indigenous peoples' interests into the logic of diverse nation-states in Latin America; these tensions are the thread that links the various pieces of Andersen's book, the case studies illuminating the question of whether it is possible to incorporate indigenous peoples as full citizens while respecting their rights and diversity. He is hopeful here, and argues that possibilities lie in democracy, while he affirms that 'the search for new and more effective forms of incorporation of indigenous peoples in nation-states is necessarily circums...
Let's start with the contested term "Anthropocene": contested because of its association with overzealous rewilding schemes, deprioritizing of intact ecosystems, potentially enabling the use of "degraded" environments, and creating public pessimism. Or not-let's just explore 294 pages of catastrophes in primate conservation.The editors clearly want to ensure the continued existence of the species that they study by moving from a focus on behavioral ecology to multidisciplinary teams working at the human/nonhuman interface (using Fuentes's constructs of humans and primates as "co-resident in ecological and social landscapes"). This is a passionate perspective, but do we have an either/or problem of "threats vs. theory"? Malone (chapter 2) discusses the "dynamics of shared human-gibbon spaces." While I'd be the first to recognize that "sharing space" is necessary for creating coexistence, when humans build places of worship, log, and extract honey, this is commercialization, not sharing. As Fernandez shows for the endemic Tanzanian Sanje mangabey (chapter 3), understanding the factors influencing female mangabey reproductive success contributes to long-term population viability. Even here, however, economic arguments (primates as a long-term commoditized resource) come into play. Can one separate capitalism from conservation? The ecotourism arguments now appear to be hollow: it has long been challenged for a lack of environmental sustainability and vulnerablity to terrorist threats, civil wars, or diseases such as MERS and Ebola before COVID-19 ended tourism. And surely the editors should have caught the use of the term "human-wildlife conflict." Conflict is what happens between humans, not between baboons, elephants, and farmers. The animals are merely foragers on something new in their habitats. We would do far better calling these conservation conflicts between the Tanzanian National Parks Authority and people around Udzungwa Mountains
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