1.
Lacbawan, Macario
(författare)
The Burden of Responsibility : Predicaments of Environmental Life in the Caraballo Mountains, Northern Philippines
2022
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Indigenous people are not obviously, or naturally, stewards of the environment. But when the idea that they are such custodians gains legal traction, and when indigenous land-use practices are codified to reflect environmental principles, they become a burden of responsibility that has significant consequences for the lives and the livelihoods of indigenous communities.This thesis is about Ikalahan people of the Caraballo Mountains in Northern Philippines and the vicissitudes of their obligation to the environment. Based on twelve months’ ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis explores what happens when the legal recognition of Ikalahan people as an indigenous group demands that they re-fashion their ancestral land from a place where they practice swidden agriculture into a space where they are supposed to ensure environmental conservation. It explores how the Philippine state utilizes scientific knowledge such as cartography and forestry to facilitate the expulsion and estrangement of Ikalahan people from their land even as it relies on those people to maintain their ancestral land as an exclusive ecological sanctuary.How do Ikalahan communities enact this environmental responsibility, and how do they contest it? The different chapters explore how villagers deploy the cultural power of shame to impose ecological obligations, how they also create tactics to evade and subvert such obligations, and how they use the rhetoric that the land should not be monetized to, precisely, monetize it. The chapters also discuss how traditional moral principles provide a means for Ikalahan people to both understand and facilitate the economic inequalities that have emerged since their land was transformed into an ecological zone. By addressing how Ikalahan communities negotiate the consequences of their legal recognition as indigenous people, the thesis contributes to the expanding literature that shows how indigeneity is not a neutral label, but is, rather, a potentially burdensome positionality whose attachment to the environment is anything but straightforward.
2.
Kollnig, Sarah
(författare)
The Coloniality of Taste : A political ecology of middle class food practices in a Bolivian city
2018
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Cochabamba city, also referred to as the “gastronomic capital of Bolivia”, is a place where different cultures and tastes meet. Indulging in rich culinary traditions is a part of everyday life, but so are social differentiations reproducing long-standing inequalities between the indigenous and the non-indigenous population. In this thesis, the practices and politics surrounding food are used as a lens on social inequalities in Cochabamba city and Bolivia in general. The thesis consists of an introduction and three articles. Conceptualizing food as having symbolic as well as material aspects, I investigate food from production to consumption, bringing out the inequalities inherent in the food system. A particular focus is linking social inequalities with their biophysical (i.e. corporeal and ecological) implications. The research follows a critical realist approach, looking into mechanisms and structures underlying the surface experiences of everyday life. The analysis of the production end focuses on one product, industrially produced chicken meat. The production and consumption of poultry have been soaring in Bolivia. Factory-farmed chicken has replaced subsistence and small-scale chicken rearing. The economic accessibility of chicken meat, but also the seductive nature of Western food practices, have made chicken a popular fast food. I show that these developments have ecological consequences as well as impacts on human health. My research also reveals that it is mostly the well-established Bolivian elites that have benefitted from the popularity of chicken meat. The more symbolic aspects of food are revealed in my analysis of the “distinctions” expressed in the food habits of the privileged middle class of Cochabamba city. While indulging in traditional Cochabamba meals, the privileged often feel the need to distinguish themselves from the urban population characterized as “indigenous”. In high-end restaurants and supermarkets, traditions are “sanitized”, symbolically cleared from any contact with indigenous producers and food vendors. The notion that markets and market women need to be “controlled” by the local authorities prevails, without any improvements in actual working conditions. Both the introduction of chicken meat as a cheap protein source as well as the more “distinguished” food practices of the privileged population of Cochabamba are expressions of what I call the coloniality of taste. Through judgments of “good” and “bad” taste, people in Cochabamba and elsewhere contribute to keeping up patterns of exploitation with deep colonial roots. The success of chicken meat provides benefits for the elites while reproducing the position of the less privileged as providers of cheap labor and recipients of charity. The taste of the more privileged population reproduces the symbolic and material exclusion and exploitation of the population conceptualized as “indigenous”. I propose that a critical re-appreciation of the food practices of Cochabamba city may provide a way to address and go beyond social divisions.
3.
Paju, Martin, 1956-
(författare)
Hälsingegården i omvandling : en studie av världsarvsprocessen i Hälsingland
2016
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Under våren 2012 väntade ett stort antal människor runt om i landet på ett besked som bekräftade att ett antal jordbruksfastigheter och kulturmiljöer, i Gävleborgs län skulle kunde klassas som världsunika och föras upp på listan över världsarv. En lista vars innehåll styrs av konventionen om skydd av världens kultur- och naturarv, världsarvskonventionen, som är ett av FN-organet Unescos normativa instrument på natur- och kulturområdet.I avhandlingen beskrivs och diskuteras processer och förhandlingar som uppstod i samband med att nomineringen av dessa fastigheter genomfördes. Ett samlande begrepp för denna agrara byggnadstradition är hälsingegårdarna. Med stöd från olika projektaktiviteter skapade enskilda personer, ideella organisationer och myndigheter uppmärksamhet kring gårdarnas kulturvärden. Studien visar på att arbetet med nomineringen till världsarvslistan blir grund för förhandlingar om definitionsrättigheter och positioner i ett socialt fält och att bruk och förvaltning av ett kulturkapital som hälsingegårdarna sker inom ramen för särskilda sociala ordningar.Världsarvsarbetet i Gävleborgs län visar på två olika styrkepositioner. En utvecklingsorienterad där besöksnäringens aktörer, med världsarv som en del av en regionalpolitisk agenda antas kunna driva en ekonomisk utveckling. Här fanns också en position orienterad kring bevarande, där kulturvärden anses utgöra ett symboliskt kapital som inte kan underkastas instrumentella krav. De sociala fält inom vilket aktörerna söker positionera sig är i många stycken formade av formella regelverk som hävdas av en nationell och internationell kulturmiljövård.Diskussioner kring landsbygdens förändringspotential är ofta inriktade på näringslivets utveckling och när världsarvsfrågan i Gävleborg initierades såg många aktörer detta som en möjlighet att artikulera sina ståndpunkter för hälsingegårdarnas och världsarvets roll för regionens ekonomiska framtid.Exemplet hälsingegårdarna visar hur lokal mobilisering kan utvecklas i samband med en världsarvsnominering, där enskilda och organiserade aktörer på lokal och regional nivå möter en förvaltningskultur som för fram och bevakar byråkratiska och formella aspekter på världsarvet.Hälsingegårdarna kom att utvecklas till ett viktigt verktyg för att organisera regionens utvecklingsintressen och blev en konfliktfylld symbol i samspelet mellan deltagande aktörer där varje enskild gård har en egen, unik karriär, som privatbostad, som produktionsenhet eller som en del av besöksindustrin.
4.
