Browsing by Author "Copeland, Nicholas M."
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- The Democracy Development Machine: Neoliberalism, Radical Pessimism, and Authoritarian Populism in Mayan GuatemalaCopeland, Nicholas M. (Cornell University Press, 2019)Nicholas Copeland sheds new light on rural politics in Guatemala and across neoliberal and post-conflict settings in The Democracy Development Machine. This historical ethnography examines how governmentalized spaces of democracy and development fell short, enabling and disfiguring an ethnic Mayan resurgence. In a passionate and politically engaged book, Copeland argues that the transition to democracy in Guatemalan Mayan communities has led to a troubling paradox. He finds that while liberal democracy is celebrated in most of the world as the ideal, it can subvert political desires and channel them into illiberal spaces. As a result, Copeland explores alternative ways of imagining liberal democracy and economic and social amelioration in a traumatized and highly unequal society as it strives to transition from war and authoritarian rule to open elections and free-market democracy. The Democracy Development Machine follows Guatemala's transition, reflects on Mayan involvement in politics during and after the conflict, and provides novel ways to link democratic development with economic and political development.
- Development and Indigenous Ecopolitics in Post-Genocide GuatemalaCopeland, Nicholas M. (SAGE, 2023)How do Indigenous and peasant political paradigms interact? This essay examines the relationship between Indigenous-ontopolitical critiques of development and peasant-oriented demands for alternative development in the Guatemalan defense of territory (DT), an Indigenous-led alliance against extractive development. Drawing on politically-engaged ethnographic and historical fieldwork, I argue that theories that counterpose indigenous ecological values of reciprocity and human-nature interrelatedness to “development” oversimplify Indigenous responses to the multi-dimensional nature of colonization. I describe how cosmological critiques coexist with demands for progressive (redistributive) extraction and agrarian struggles for food sovereignty and integral development. I suggest that the ascendance of post-development critiques crowds out demands for anticolonial development in the DT, limiting its potential to present a compelling alternative for poor communities. I point to a convergence between ontopolitical critique and counterinsurgency and propose holding critiques and demands for development in creative tension to strengthen decolonial struggles.
- Egyptian Attitudes toward Democracy: What the Afrobarometer Reveals about the Influence of Individuals' Social CharacteristicsRukhin, Sofia (Virginia Tech, 2015-06-23)This study intends to investigate the influence of age, education, gender, degree of religiosity, income, type of residence, interest in public affairs, social and political trust, and employment status on attitudes toward and interpretations of democracy among 1200 Egyptians living in urban and rural areas who participated in Afrobarometer survey in 2013. The author uses principle component and regression analyses to test hypotheses about the state of political culture in Egypt after the Arab Spring of 2011 and before the military coup. The variables age, gender, employment status, residence type, and social trust have not been found significant in any of the observed models. Higher income individuals, compared to those with lower incomes valued democratic principles less - instead preferring unlimited control by one party or President - and were more likely to access the term democracy negatively. More educated citizens tend to positively evaluate occupational gender and rejection of one party-one man rule, while less educated prefer material rights over free and fair elections and freedom of speech. Religious citizens tend to show more support for lawful actions imposed by executive governmental bodies on ordinary citizens than less religious people. Higher levels of political trust is positively associated with attitudes toward the term democracy and one-party and one-man rule. Finally, people interested in public affairs vs. those who are not interested tend to possess negative attitudes toward the term democracy.
- Establishing Nourishing Food Networks in an Era of Global-local Tensions: An Interdisciplinary Ethnography in TurkeyKennedy, Rachael Eve (Virginia Tech, 2017-05-08)This dissertation ethnographically explores the social concerns related to the global, agro-industrial system's impact on many communities' potential for livelihood and health. At the core of this study is the desire to understand the complex and dynamic ways that communities strive to develop, and make sense of, networks that address these wicked problems and to understand how these strategies might aggregate to promote community resiliency. An investigation of alternative food networks (AFNs) was contextualized in one province in Western Turkey. The AFNs were articulated by an ethnographic design that utilized tools from different fields of study. Integrating actor-network theory, new social movements theory, and the nourishing networks framework allowed for robust triangulation of data. I conclude that AFNs in this province are nascent and remain fragmented. At present, AFNs have not been leveraged for community resiliency efforts. However, they hold the seeds of what may become a food sovereignty social movement. This ethnography reveals that the province has assets, including numerous affinity groups, and a durable connection to heritage with strong reverberations of a nature-culture. I illuminate the broad spectrum of submerged and visible actants and actors that prime the AFNs' development. The wide variance creates diffuse and contradictory cultural implications. Actors report they constantly negotiate cultural aspects related to AFNs. They conceptualize this work as a polymorphous phenomenon of fragmented communities and a culture of dependency; but they show fortitude by negotiating multi-phasic actions and multi-vocal resistance messaging. By way of this study I illustrate that their cultural politics take place where economy and identity interface. Actors seek legitimization. They speak of infusing heritage-based ideals into projects. They are firm that agricultural modernization must come from Turkish values. And, they are formulating and strengthening ideological-based discourses. I further clarify their development strategies by showing how AFNs are experimenting with new governance strategies and focusing on social embedding. Promotion of niche markets has begun. However, public and private resources are limited, which hinders the momentum of AFNs. Additional research is needed to better understand the processes for high functioning AFNs in Turkey.
- From Dispossession to Surplus Production: A Theory of Capitalist Accumulation in Neoliberal BangladeshMondal, Lipon Kumar (Virginia Tech, 2020-09-11)Dispossession has been playing a central role in capitalist accumulation over the last four-hundred-year history of modern capitalism. This dissertation theorizes how dispossession contributes to producing and reproducing the capitalist mode of production in Bangladesh. To do so, the dissertation empirically examines three interrelated aspects of dispossession in its three analytical chapters. First, it explores how the state and the market work in tandem to organize and control dispossession while grabbing land and expelling peasants from their places. Next, it investigates how dispossession contributes to providing 'potential capitals,' such as grabbed land and dispossessed peasants, to the production sites to be converted into 'constant capital' and 'variable capital' and to creating antagonistic class relations. Finally, it explores how market and non-market actors control those dispossessed peasants-turned-workers inside and outside factories to produce surplus values in order to reproduce the capitalist system locally and globally. These three interactive components of dispossession show three successive phases of capitalist accumulation: land-grabbing by divorcing independent producers from their livelihoods (the initial phase), converting land into capital, peasants into wage workers, and non-capitalists into capitalists (the intermediate phase), and controlling and exploiting those wage workers to produce surpluses or a cycle of new capital (the final phase). This dissertation accordingly advances a full-scale theory of dispossession in its concluding chapter by examining how the starting, intermediate, and ending points of dispossession contribute to capitalist accumulation. The dissertation draws on a wide range of empirical evidence collected from Panthapath, Dhaka, Bangladesh. These include 77 life histories, 50 interviews, a land-use survey of 1,007 structures, and a short survey of 147 slums. It also uses various historical records and archival documents. The three major findings of this dissertation are as follows. First, the dissertation shows that the state acts as a class to organize land grabs, often working in tandem with the private sector, but also in direct competition with the market. Not only does the state monopolize extra-economic means to grab land, but the market also often gains access to extra-economic means. Next, the dissertation shows that dispossession works to privatize the commons, proletarianize subsistence labor, create antagonistic class relations, and redistribute wealth upward. Finally, the dissertation identifies a new regime of labor control, called social despotism, that dominates and exploits workers in factories to produce surpluses. I conclude this study with policy recommendations designed to address the various dimensions of structural injustice described in this dissertation.
- Munda Politics and Land: Understanding Indigeneity in Jharkhand, IndiaRaonka, Pallavi (Virginia Tech, 2021-02-02)The eastern state of Jharkhand in India has been the site of contention between Adivasi communities, like the Munda, and the national government. This is a relationship between these communities and centralized, outside power that has existed for centuries in different forms. To understand this ongoing conflict, we need to understand the root causes of contention. Various scholars have traced this to a general rejection by Adivasis of State-sanctioned neoliberal development projects like land-grabbing and mining. I analyze, based on a fifteen month long ethnographic study conducted from May 2017 to December 2018, the meaning of land for the Munda community, and how these meanings underlie the Adivasi-State conflict, based on several forms of qualitative data. I argue that at the core of this ongoing conflict lie questions of identity construction and representation, neoliberal market forces, gender, and a historical narrative of resistance against outsiders. Importantly, to best understand Adivasi politics and their relationship to their local environment, one must actively listen to how these communities represent themselves.
- Native voices: Native peoples' concepts of health and illness - Panel discussionBowers, J. Michael; Copeland, Nicholas M.; Ferguson, Victoria; Hester, Rebecca; Hey, Christina K. Mae; Cook, Samuel R.; Pannabecker, Virginia; Trinkle, David B. (Virginia Tech. University Libraries, 2016-09-20)This panel discussion was a joint effort between University Libraries, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and American Indian Studies. Virginia Pannabecker, Health, Life Science, and Scholarly Communications Librarian; David Trinkle, Associate Dean for Community and Culture, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine; and Sam Cook, Director, American Indian Studies at Virginia Tech led the planning effort. Panelist Victoria Ferguson (not featured in the video recording) provided an introduction and led a discussion at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine event location in Roanoke.
The panel was part of a series of events complementing the display of the exhibit Native Voices: Native Peoples' Concepts of Health and Illness (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/) at Newman Library from September 16th to October 25th, 2016. The exhibit was developed and produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM). The American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office, in partnership with NLM, toured the exhibition to America’s libraries. It was brought to Virginia Tech by University Libraries; Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine; American Indian Studies; Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise; Division of Student Affairs: Intercultural Engagement Center; and the Moss Arts Center.
The exhibit examined concepts of health and medicine among contemporary American Indian, Alaska native, and Native Hawai'ian people. The traveling exhibition, produced by the National Library of Medicine, featured interviews and works from native people living on reservations, in tribal villages, and in cities. Topics included: Native views of land, food, community, earth/nature, and spirituality as they relate to Native Health; the relationship between traditional healing and Western medicine in native communities; economic and cultural issues that affect the health of Native communities; efforts by Native communities to improve health conditions; and the role of Native Americans in military service and healing support for returning Natives veterans. - The NGOization of Indian Agricultural Development and Implications for the Agrarian QuestionHammond, Erin Elizabeth (Virginia Tech, 2024-06-27)India failed to answer the agrarian question after independence by not undertaking expansive land reforms and rural redistribution of resources and wealth. Instead, India followed the national bourgeois path of development, liberalizing agricultural production systems based on rural bourgeoisie and foreign interests. This path of development has led to unequal rural development and the NGOization of agricultural development. For agrarian and peasant producers in India, the liberal and privatized NGO development path of the Indian agriculture sector has had significant implications for their social, political, and economic well-being. The role of the private, for-profit NGO in the liberal, capitalist agriculture production system has not been given as much attention as the role of the Indian and foreign governments, international institutions, and transnational corporations. This thesis argues that private, for-profit non-governmental development organizations working in rural India reproduce imperial structures of foreign dependency and increases the subsumption of peasant and agrarian producers. NGOization conceals the global power structures at play within Indian agricultural production and can impede upon alternative solutions to the Indian agrarian question by appropriating local thought leaders, grassroots movements' narratives, and Indigenous knowledge, which further perpetuates imperial and colonial structures of rural communities and leads to the de-depeasantization of rural production systems.
- Niggaz Wit Aesthetic: A Sociological Conceptualization of Diasporic Hip-Hop Identities in the Era of Mass IncarcerationMiles, Corey J. (Virginia Tech, 2019-04-18)When mainstream institutions fail to provide adequate avenues for black Americans to develop humanizing understandings of their identities and exclude them from full citizenship, how do black Americans develop identity, belonging, and community within structures of oppression? Through ethnography and archival research this study documents how the aesthetic realm historically and contemporarily serves as a site of articulation where rural black Americans recast notions of black subjectivity and local belonging. To understand the process of rural black Americans using the aesthetic realm to reposition the importance of mainstream institutions, this research uses a 'socio-diasporic' framework to view the ways those socially positioned as black come to understand that positioning via the way institutions structure their day-to-day reality; and how through the forging of diasporic connections black people have been able to construct knowledge within, alongside, and independently of those institutions. Specifically, this ethnography situates the criminal justice system as a primary institutional apparatus in defining the societal significance of blackness in northeast North Carolina. Hip-hop has served as a performative avenue to engage negotiations of identity, and through this search for identity black centered epistemological and ontological understandings of black subjectivity have been created. To appreciate black Americans' unique understandings of the world that I argue they construct, I advance the notion of "vibe" as a methodological tool to conceptualize the way specific aesthetic and cultural sensibilities are used to construct understandings of blackness, gendered identity, and local belonging.
- Pan Africanist Praxis Ina BelizeLee, Devon Lovelle (Virginia Tech, 2019-12-13)Pan Africanism is strategy that emerges through a history of surviving oppression, methodology to understand thought and action, and theory that tests findings against sociopolitical context. History, methodology and theory are used to develop the historical trajectory that responds to invasion, slavery, colonization and neocolonialism in Belize. As such, three manuscripts are offered to outline the historical narrative of Belizean Pan Africanism, autoethnographic insights for the study of Pan Africanism, and the sociopolitical context that contemporary Pan Africanism in Belize rises out of. Kurt Young defines Pan-Africanism as: "a fusing of affirmations of African identity with libratory efforts at the level of the masses (2009:7). The study and practice of Pan Africanism should therefore aligned in objectives and strategy to interrupt oppressive conditions that impact communities within the African Diaspora. This project, therefore, operationalizes scholar-activism in history, method and theory to outline strategic action and collective subversion as Pan Africanist Praxis in Belize.
- Politicizing Water: Rescaling Resistance to Extractive Development in GuatemalaCopeland, Nicholas M. (Elsevier, 2023-02-22)Many Indigenous and peasant movements denounce the expansion of extractive development as a threat to their lives, livelihoods, and territories that reinforces legacies of colonization and armed conflict. Grassroots resistances to extractive projects converge on concerns over water access and contamination. This essay draws on politically-engaged ethnographic research with Indigenous territorial defense organizations in Guatemala and political ecological perspectives on water politics to examine how the strategic politicization of water affects the scalar potential of Indigenous and peasant environmental movements. I describe how Indigenous and peasant communities, political organizations, and NGOs use water as a transfer point to demonstrate the harms of extractivist projects; pursue legal strategies; form local, regional, and national networks; and to articulate resistances across a range of industries, environmental paradigms, and geographic and ethnic divides, strengthening alliances for alternative ways of being on the land.
- The Politics of Conspiracy Theory and Control: Cybernetic Governmentality and the Scripted PoliticalBeckenhauer, Samuel Brian (Virginia Tech, 2024-05-13)This study analyzes the politics of contemporary conspiracy theory discourses in the United States. Departing from the predominant methodological individualism that characterizes many contemporary analyses of conspiracy theory, which take the individual subject as the unit to be explained and governed, this study situates the production and proliferation of conspiracy theory discourses in the context of cybernetics and related transformations in politics that have tended to reduce democratic representativeness and increase forms of economic and political inequality. Cybernetics, which is often defined as the science of command and control, offers a series of concepts that facilitate an understanding of how freedom and control have become aligned in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries in the United States. I utilize Michel Foucault's governmentality approach to formulate a cybernetic governmentality methodology, which analyzes the governance of subjectivity in and through cybernetic systems of communication. Cybernetics, which seeks to invite the individual subject to realize itself through 'choice' and by way of its imbrication into machinic systems, conceptualizes the subject as a consumer and processor of information. I put forth the notion of the scripted political to analyze a key tension within contemporary U.S. politics, as politics is becoming increasingly uncertain yet also often appears to be strongly controlled by political and economic elites. Conspiracy theory, as a speculative genre of thinking, aims to steer events towards certain political ends. Conspiratorial speculation has become a popular means to connect and reflect on a felt obsolescence or superfluity on the part of the individual subject. To substantiate these arguments, I specifically analyze the discourses of QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy theories. These discourses express political fantasies that often privilege the idea of a liberal autonomous individual subject. The politics of contemporary conspiracy theory in the United States thus concerns the fact that these conspiratorial discourses seek to perform a form of liberal subjectivity. However, this performance of individual liberal subjectivity is always caught in cybernetic systems of communication, which seek to produce value, harvest data, and maximize the attention of their 'users', thus undermining the potential for any meaningful form of liberal subjectivity.
- Populist Just TransitionsAbraham, Judson Charles (Virginia Tech, 2020-01-31)This dissertation argues that the just transition policy framework may not vivify labor internationalism or erode support for right-wing populists if just transitions are not part of left-wing populist projects. Labor internationalism, which involves labor unions cooperating across borders to pursue common goals, is increasingly important as unions strive to work with their foreign counterparts to influence the international community's urgent efforts to address climate change. Right-wing populism is a growing threat to organized labor and climate protection efforts. Some labor activists hope that advocacy for the just transition policy framework, a set of guidelines for compensating workers in polluting industries who are laid-off as a result of environmental protections, will unite labor organizations from around the world and improve their approaches to international solidarity. Progressives hope that just transition policies will discourage voters from supporting right-wing populist candidates, who are often climate skeptics, out of fear of the job losses that accompany environmentalist reforms. However, I question the assumption that just transition policies, in and of themselves, can serve as solutions to the challenges posed by right-wing populism or overcome divisions within the global labor movement. It is possible for economic nationalism at the expense of global solidarity to continue and for right-wing populists to maintain support in decarbonizing areas where policy makers have indemnified laid-off fossil fuel workers. Integrating just transition policies into left-wing populist politics could potentially make just transitions more useful for countering the far-right and promoting labor internationalism. This dissertation looks to the political theorist Antonio Gramsci's thoughts regarding the "national popular," which Gramsci's readers often associate with left-wing populism. The national popular entails intellectuals from different fields (such as the academy, journalism, and manufacturing) coming together to modernize patriotism and strip it of chauvinistic nationalism. I point out that the original proposals for just transitions prioritized providing free higher education for the workers laid-off from polluting industries. The just transition framework's stress on higher education has populistic implications. Educators, particularly members of teachers' unions, may practice populism throughout the implementation of a just transition for laid-off coal workers by encouraging the displaced workers to cooperate with knowledge workers to rethink nationalism. If workers displaced from polluting industries rethink nationalism in university settings while maintaining their connections to the labor movement, then these workers may in turn reject far-right politicians and discourage organized labor from supporting trade nationalism.
- Public Opinion, Press Coverage and the Pempho Banda Case: Contesting Sex Work Criminalization in Malawi's Developing Tourism SectorKachipande, Sitingawawo Diana (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-09)When police arrested nineteen women in Dedza, Malawi hospitality locations in 2016, it was under the guise of the living on the earnings of prostitution laws. The women appealed and won their case, with the ruling judge noting that Malawian women are free to patronize any hospitality facilities or bars without fear of being arrested. The case, The Republic v. Pempho Banda and 18 Others, sparked a national debate over the social and legal status of sex workers in the southern African country. It also brought to light that efforts to stimulate tourism had inadvertently boosted the country's sex work industry. To move away from a reliance on agriculture and bolster socio-economic growth and its foreign exchange earnings, the country is positioning itself to gain a greater market share of visitors. However, as in many tourist destinations, the promise of sex attracts tourists, and sex is increasingly becoming a central offering of Malawi's tourism industry. Yet, Malawian sex workers continue to occupy a social status in which they are marginalized or mistreated by the general public and criminal justice system. This provides apt conditions for continued and increased human rights abuse against sex workers. This research explores the events, legal environment, media coverage, and public opinion surrounding this case and its relation to the tourism industry. The data is from interviews with actors in the criminal justice system, documents and an analysis of online media about the Pempho Banda et al. case. My dissertation highlights the complexities and contradictions surrounding sex work in Malawi. In doing so, I hope to intervene in the national debate surrounding sex workers so as to facilitate public opinions and policies that are more sex worker friendly and protective of their human rights.
- REDD+ and Costa Rica, another form of colonialism and commodification of natural resources? An indigenous perspectiveOlberding, Elizabeth Claire (Virginia Tech, 2018-07-11)The primary objective of the international initiative, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), is to conserve carbon by protecting forests and/or planting trees. The World Bank's Forest Partnership Carbon Facility (FPCF) introduced the REDD+ program to Costa Rica in 2008 and consultation with key stakeholders has been ongoing since. The major participants involved in the program include small landowners, representatives of the timber industry, and indigenous nations. Notwithstanding some native groups' opposition to and misunderstanding of the REDD+ program, the Costa Rican government signed an agreement with the World Bank (WB) in 2013 guaranteeing the sale of up to $63 million in carbon credits through the REDD+ program (World Bank, 2013). The government of Costa Rica has plans to continue implementing the initiative, despite the intense opposition of a number of Bribris, an indigenous group located in Talamanca in the eastern portion of the country near the border with Panama. The Bribri are also the largest native population in Costa Rica. This inquiry samples indigenous peoples' perspectives, specifically the Bribris from Talamanca and the Ngäbes from Abrojos Montezuma, concerning key elements of the REDD+ program to understand more fully why they perceive the program the way they do. The principal findings of this study concerning those views include the following: the government has violated indigenous people's rights throughout the REDD+ implementation process, many interview respondents remarked that they lacked information about REDD+, feared privatization of their land, and were opposed to the initiative's commodification of natural resources. These results illuminate key policy and implementation concerns that could inform government and World Bank policy, while also providing study participants an opportunity to exercise individual agency concerning the topic. This research contributes to the growing body of literature about REDD+ by providing the first-hand perceptions of members of Costa Rican indigenous communities of the initiative and their stated reasons for those views.
- Syndemic Health Impacts and Environmental Risk Perceptions Associated with Mining Among the Ch'orti' of Eastern GuatemalaAlbritton, Meghan Jo (Virginia Tech, 2023-05-24)In low-income, rural, and indigenous communities, metal mining is associated with numerous negative social, political, economic, human, and environmental health impacts. A number of studies from around the world have looked at specific aspects of human and environmental health related to various contaminants from mining and the landscape alterations associated with the processes, along with the growing community resistance and opposition to mining operations. The individual impacts of each of these components are understood, but a deeper understanding of the syndemic effects of a mine operating in a community, particularly in an indigenous community, was needed, especially as the industry is expected to grow around the world. Using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, we utilized a combination of participatory mapping, interviews, and community mapping workshops to examine the underlying patterns and perceptions of environmental risk and healthy and unhealthy spaces in the Ch'orti' communities of Olopa, Guatemala that have been impacted by the Cantera Los Manantiales antimony mine. Results suggest that, since mining operations began, residents have experienced an increase in violence and community divisions surrounding the mine, a higher incidence of a variety of diseases, and an extensive loss of crops and domesticated animals. Furthermore, participants were concerned about both water and air contamination, all of which they attributed to the mine. The results of the study will be useful for local activist leaders and allied NGOs to effectively assess and improve health in indigenous communities impacted by the Cantera Los Manantiales mine in Olopa. The approach, particularly the use of participatory mapping methods, could be implemented in future studies attempting to understand syndemics and other environmental health risks and outcomes.
- Tourist Harlem: Sidewalks, Cyberspace, and the In/Visibility of RaceJamerson, William Trevor (Virginia Tech, 2019-07-10)This research articulates a relationship between the physical community of Harlem, New York and the digital community comprising TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel related social media website. The purpose of this research is to identify forces of racial commodification in the tourism industry and analyze the role of digital technologies in this process. This research is important because tourism and digital technologies are active sites of racial formation and inequality, and TripAdvisor helps mediate the way they interact. This research employs a mixed-method qualitative approach to articulating the Harlem-TripAdvisor relationship: discourse analysis of online reviews of a prominent cultural tourism company in Harlem, ethnography of that company's tour experiences, and techniques designed to bridge methodological gaps between these two. I find that the Harlem-TripAdvisor relationship produces a three-layered discursive structure, with each successive layer less visible relative to each other. The first—and most visible layer—contains a discourse based in newly emerging conventions of online travel writing. The second layer contains a discourse reflecting touristic valuations of racial difference in capitalistic markets. The third—and least visible layer—contains a discourse reflecting histories and current patterns of racial oppression and inequality. Each of these layers are necessary to create a definition of race emphasizing its supposed benefits to economic growth at the same time it remains a hierarchical and exploitative social construction.