Rural Development Sociology

The oil palm scheme developed in Kalangala is part of the Ugandan Vegetable Oil Development Programme, an initiative coordinated by the Government of Uganda to reduce the country’s import of edible oils. The oil palm component established a public-private partnership that integrates plantations production run by Oil Palm Uganda ltd (OPUL) and smallhold farms. The coexistence of these two components is believed to generate local development by increasing off-farm job opportunities and farmers’ income.  Even though the involvement of smallhold farmers is often presented as an alternative to the dispossession caused by plantation economies, it can reinforce existing gender inequalities, because of differentiated access to land and strong gender division of labour.
The Kalangala oil palm project is located in Buganda, a monarchy within the Uganda State. In Buganda, a patriarchal society, women face several constraints in accessing land, and enjoying the economic benefits of commercial agriculture. Moreover, in Kalangala they are strongly affected by the increasing scarcity of arable and forested land driven by the harvesting of oil palm that has consumed over one third of the island’s territory.
This article explores the emergence of new actors and mechanisms that constitute previously unseen patterns of land control due to oil palm expansion. Employing an engendered access analysis the differentiated benefits generated by oil palm are identified and the study pinpoints the various access mechanisms, considered multi-layered strands of power, that determine winners and losers in the expansion of oil palm production. Finally, focus shifts to the household, where negotiations between men and women are analyzed, taking into account their positions with the community, the State and the market, given that extra-household bargaining power influences intra-household power relations.
The analysis reveals the development of a new territory, dominated by an oil palm economy, governed by formalized land property relations, and strong patterns of male migration. In this context, the original pro-poor measures of the Kalangala oil palm project have been minimized, and only men and women farmers that controlled land prior to the investments have success stories to tell.
Among those not able to benefit from oil palm women are the most prevalent. Furthermore, these women are even further marginalized when men’s power is reinforced by increases in cash-income. Their negotiating power within the household is undermined by the reduced access to forest and arable land, and the lack of viable off-farm labor alternatives in OPUL’s plantations.

Against the backdrop of emerging indigenous movements in Latin America, the Maya Movement appeared as a political actor in the 1980s, bringing “the Indian Question” to the fore in Guatemalan politics. Rejecting racism and assimilationalist State policies, the Maya Movement seeks to recapture indigenous community organizing and indigenous law in her imagination of the multicultural nation-state. This has resulted in, among others, recognition of indigenous authorities in the Peace Accords as an indigenous right. Indigenous rights have futhermore been laid down in different international agreements. This book, based on extensive research in Santa Mar�quimula and Quetzaltenango—two municipios in K’iche language territory—explores the processes that take place behind those national discourses and legislation that tend to portray the indigenous population as static and homogenous. Considering local government as an arena where indigenous identity and the constitution of multicultural democracy is constantly contested, the book focuses on local contentious practices that surround the constitution of (local) multicultural democracy in the two localities studied: the election of Quetzaltenango’s first Mayan mayor and the abolition of one of the traditional community services in Santa Mar�quimula. This approach allows exploring the multilayeredness of universal and ethnic citizenship claims, not only disclosing differences between national and local indigenous identity constructions, but also revealing the many faces of indigenous identity at the local level, shaped by socio economic positions and religion, showing that the articulations of indigeneity are very fragmented and multifaceted. This makes the constitution of multicultural democracies a complicated and dynamic process.

Against the backdrop of ethnic political mobilisation in Latin America, this article examines how, as Quetzaltenango's first Mayan mayor, Rigoberto Quemé Chay transformed two interrelated dimensions of citizenship: political culture and the politics of belonging. It analyses the way in which citizenship is constituted at three levels. The first is within Xel-jú as an indigenous political organisation whose practices contrast with ladino ways of doing politics. The second is in relation to internal divisions between the militant indigenous line and the intercultural group. The third is within Xel-jú as a city-centred, middle-class-oriented indigenous organisation rather than a rural, indigenous community organisation. This article argues that transformations in citizenship are limited by the political, economic and ethnic context, and that overlapping systems of repression still prevent the participation of marginalised groups in Quetzaltenango.

Resumen: En 2003 se abolió uno de los servicios del sistema de cargos en Santa María Chiquimula, Guatemala. Sin embargo, los Acuerdos de Paz suscritos en diciembre de 1996 habían marcado el inicio de una era en la que había más espacio para gobernar al estilo Maya. La abolición del servicio en el contexto de las políticas multiculturales latinoamericanas que reconocen la existencia de las autoridades indígenas suscita interrogantes, por una parte, sobre procesos locales de identificación con las categorías nacionalizadas y esencializadas de 'lo Maya' que se ha definido como una manera de exigir los derechos indígenas y, por otra, sobre las relaciones locales de poder que determinan las negociaciones sobre 'lo nuestro' y 'lo que es Maya'. En este artículo se propone enmarcar las identificaciones con 'lo Maya' y 'lo nuestro' dentro de las relaciones locales de poder y los intereses políticos y religiosos. El artículo está estructurado en torno a cuatro áreas de tensión que moldean los procesos de identificación: la cabecera municipal vs el área rural, la evangelización vs las costumbres locales, la profesionalización vs las costumbres locales y, por último, los discursos sobre derechos humanos e indígenas vs las costumbres locales. En la última parte se presenta un análisis de 'cómo se llegó a quitar la costumbre' como producto de estas tensiones. Palabras clave: Guatemala, sistema de cargos, gobierno indígena, autoridades indígenas, Mayanidad, identidad indígena.

Since the 1990s Latin America has witnessed the emergence of ethnic, often social movement-based, political parties. Within this context Rigoberto Quemé Chay became the first indigenous mayor of Quetzaltenango, the second-largest city of Guatemala, a place that until then had been marked by indigenous political exclusion and racism. This article seeks to explain why Quemé was victorious in 1995 and also why he subsequently lost the election in 2004 through an analysis of the ideational struggle within the (indigenous) political organisation, Xel-jú, which backed Quemé's candidacy twice. I use the movements of ‘departure’, ‘manoeuvre’ and ‘arrival’ in the process of the constitution of hegemonic visions of power to analyse Xel-jú's rise to political power.

In this article, I analyze how Guatemalan indigenous citizens claim their rights to be citizens and agents of their own development through local resistance to large-scale mining projects. These indigenous communities face massive resource extraction by multinational mining companies that endangers the quality of land and water, adversely affects community relations, and impedes indigenous self-determination. At the same time, the political recognition of indigenous peoples allows them to negotiate the regulation of natural resources on the basis of their ethnic identity, as neoliberal reforms have led to decentralization and greater responsibilities for development at the municipal level. I argue that narratives of “alternative development and citizenship” are not only shaped within the multi-scalar character of the anti-mining movement but also constructed within the different ways the resistance is framed, that is, as an indigenous struggle, as a class-based resistance, or as resistance against neoliberal development policies in general. To understand the complex ways that citizenship is constructed from below, we need to take these two dimensions of analysis into account.

Resumen: Este artículo analiza la relación entre conflictos mineros, desarrollo y procesos de participación democrática en Guatemala. A través del estudio de caso de San Idelfonso Ixtahuacán, un municipio en el departamento de Huehuetenango, explora cómo los casos de activismo se pueden entender en relación a las experiencias de la ciudadanía en Guatemala. Se relata primero la marcha de los mineros de Ixtahuacán y cómo ella puede ser entendida dentro del marco del conflicto armado interno . Después se analiza cómo el conflicto armado moldea las maneras contemporáneas con las que la población resiste a la minería, y cómo el Estado guatemalteco reacciona ante estos actos de protesta.

Rasch, Elisabet Dueholm. “Nos ven como terroristas porque defendemos las tierras que ellos invadían. Conflictos sobre la gestión de los recursos naturales en el noroccidente de Guatemala”. In: Guatemala: gobierno, gobernabilidad, poder local y recursos naturales (Editores: Gema Sánchez Medero & )Rubén Sánchez Medero) (2016): 153-172.

This article analyzes how indigenous peoples actively engage in the negotiation of international, national and local legal frameworks in Guatemala. The aim of the article is to explain paradoxical outcomes of global legal pluralism through an actor-oriented approach to the construction of legal frameworks and the meaning of rights. It does so by means of a case study of the dissolution of an indigenous social institution: the cargo system. The case study involves a multiplicity of power relations. It is argued that these power relations enable an understanding of the different ways in which local actors engage in processes of constructing legal frameworks ‘on the ground’. This article will provide insight into how new legal frameworks constitute social realities. In addition, it will show how personal identifications and experiences are translated into legal practices. Finally, the case study reveals how the struggle for rights both reflects and produces tensions among ethnic, national, social economic and religious identities.

In Latin America grassroots organizing against megaprojects such as open pit mining, oil extraction, hydro dams and large plantations goes hand in hand with increased criminaliza-tion of social protest and violations of the human rights of activists. This results in numerous communities demanding a clean environment, participation, and justice – all at the same time. They not only face foreign companies, but are also caught in the middle of armed and non-armed actors that contest the same territory and its natural resources. Their resistance is considered as a threat to internal security; citizens are increasingly viewed as criminals. This paper suggests new avenues for research that is located at the nexus of local resistance towards megaprojects and the increase of human rights violations and criminalization in natural resource conflicts. It proposes, first, to approach natural resource conflicts as hybrid spaces where citizenship is constructed in relation to multiple actors that engage in processes of providing, protecting and violating citizenship rights, and second, to study such processes by way of slow ethnography. Such an approach to natural resource conflicts paves the way not only for understanding how citizens engage in acts of resistance and experience violations of human rights, but also how such processes shape new subject-positions.

Resumen: Ciudadanos como criminales: Ciudadanía, criminalización y violencia en conflictos sobre recursos naturales En América Latina la resistencia a mega proyectos como la minería a cielo abierto, la ex-tracción de petróleo, la construcción de hidroeléctricas y el monocultivo de grandes exten-siones va de la mano con la criminalización de la protesta social y violaciones de los dere-chos humanos de los activistas. Eso resulta en comunidades que demandan un ambiente sano, participación y justicia social al mismo tiempo. Estas comunidades no solamente en-frentan las compañías extranjeras, sino también se encuentran atrapadas entre actores arma-dos y no armados que compiten por el control de sus territorios y los recursos naturales aso-ciados. La resistencia de las comunidades es considerado como una amenaza a la seguridad interna; los ciudadanos son vistos cada vez más como criminales. Este artículo sugiere nue-vas vías para investigar el nexo de la resistencia local a los megaproyectos por un lado, y el aumento de las violaciones de los derechos humanos y la criminalización de actores sociales

Renewable energy technologies are often idealized as environmentally innocent alternatives to fossil fuels. Fossil fuel extraction is often considered as 'unjust' and renewable energy as the 'just' alternative. At the same time renewable energy projects, such as wind parks, are often resisted because of the uneven impacts of its infrastructure. This paper analyses such ambiguous meanings of energy justice (social justice issues related to energy) along the lines of its three tenets: distributional, procedural and recognition justice, aiming to understand how energy justice is constructed from below. It does so on the basis of a case study in the Noordoostpolder (the Netherlands) where plans for extracting shale gas went together with both large-scale and small-scale renewable energy practices. The paper analyses how energy justice is 'made' by how people resist shale gas and engage in 'renewable energy practices' and as such produce new imaginations and normativities of energy justice. Such an ethnographic approach helps to understand energy justice as a process of coconstruction of activists, policy makers and scholars and as such responds to recent calls for a human-centred approach to the study of energy transitions. The paper is based on two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Noordoostpolder.

Cortland where she has taught anthropology and teaches women's studies. She has studied and published extensively on the American garage sale, in addition to working to stop hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and the growth of its infrastructure. n