The Ecological Native: Indigenous Peoples' Movements and Eco-Governmentality in Columbia (Indigenous Peoples and Politics) [Hardcover]

Astrid Ulloa (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415972884 | ISBN-13: 978-0415972888 | Publication Date: April 18, 2005

This text analyzes indigenous peoples' processes of identity construction as ecological natives. It opens space for reconstructing all the different networks, conditions of emergence, and implications (political, cultural, social and economic) of one specific event: the consolidation of the relationship between indigenous peoples and environmentalism. This text is based on ethnographic information and focused on the historical process of the emergence of indigenous peoples' movements in Latin America, in general, and indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta do Columbia (SNSM), in particular. It demonstrates the process of the construction of indigenous peoples' environmental identities as an interplay of local, national and transnational dynamics among indigenous peoples and environmental movements and discourses in relation to global environmental policies.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Astrid Ulloa is an Associate Professor of Geography at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She has carried out extensive fieldwork in Colombia, mainly in Chocó and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Her research focuses on indigenous peoples' movements, ethnicity, and the anthropology of the environment and climate change. She is the author of various books about community-based management of fauna and the cultural and environmental politics of indigenous peoples in Latin America and Colombia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 318 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (April 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415972884
• ISBN-13: 978-0415972888
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,446,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars important contribution, June 6, 2005

By 

Walter Sondey "flaco" (usa) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ecological Native: Indigenous Peoples' Movements and Eco-Governmentality in Columbia (Indigenous Peoples and Politics) (Hardcover)

This book is an important contribution to the analysis of how indigenous peoples and their environments have become central to the debate on how transnational and national governmental institutions, NGOs, corporations and the indigenous peoples themselves (particularly those of Colombia) are interacting in the emergent process of forming the means to govern the global environment. The great virtue of the book is its linkage of practical activities at the local, national and transnational levels to cultural imagery (pictorial, filmic, textual, etc.)in a manner that demonstrates the importance of the media or the imaginary at all those levels of practical activity. The book also makes good use recent and contemporary French and American social and anthropological theory, Foucault being put to particularly good use in the first chapter.

The focus is on the indigenous peoples' role in this emergent governmentality. The book is of particular interest to anthropologists, ecologists and those responsible for development programs. The book addresses the manner in which indigenous peoples have responded to the growing interest and concern of the West in those areas of cultural diversity and biodiversity that exist in Colombia--the Kogui people and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta being of central importance. Particular emphasis is given to the effects of colonial and post-colonial imagery that affects the power dynamic between indigenous peoples in their relationship with the West, both historically and with respect to contemporary events. The analysis is empirical with respect to recounting policies, social movements and historical developments, and it is theoretical with respect to western images of indigenous peoples and how they have impacted the indigenous as elements in the western imaginary. It addresses the development of both indigenous and western history in terms of social movements and institutional policies as well as the manner in which western imagery and desire regarding the indigenous has affected those practical arenas.

The basic focus is on the extent to which the indigenous and their environments have been subsumed under conceptions of western development and the needs and desires of western peoples. The book examines a variety of options to western development and eco-governmentality originating among the indigenous and their western supporters that may offer practical alternatives to current western models of development. The main point of the book is to emphasize how the status of indigenous peoples of Colombia serves as a focal point and microcosm of the larger issues surrounding the management of the environment on a global scale.