Governing Maya Communities and Lands in Belize: Indigenous Rights, Markets, and Sovereignties

Author:   Laurie Kroshus Medina
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
ISBN:  

9781978837744


Pages:   216
Publication Date:   17 May 2024
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Governing Maya Communities and Lands in Belize: Indigenous Rights, Markets, and Sovereignties


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Overview

Confronting a debt crisis, the Belizean government has strategized to maximize revenues from lands designated as state property, privatizing lands for cash crop production and granting concessions for timber and oil extraction. Meanwhile, conservation NGOs have lobbied to establish protected areas on these lands to address a global biodiversity crisis. They promoted ecotourism as a market-based mechanism to fund both conservation and debt repayment; ecotourism also became a mechanism for governing lands and people—even state actors themselves—through the market. Mopan and Q’eqchi’ Maya communities, dispossessed of lands and livelihoods through these efforts, pursued claims for Indigenous rights to their traditional lands through Inter-American and Belizean judicial systems. This book examines the interplay of conflicting forms of governance that emerged as these strategies intersected: state performances of sovereignty over lands and people, neoliberal rule through the market, and Indigenous rights-claiming, which challenged both market logics and practices of sovereignty.

Full Product Details

Author:   Laurie Kroshus Medina
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.286kg
ISBN:  

9781978837744


ISBN 10:   1978837747
Pages:   216
Publication Date:   17 May 2024
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Reviews

"""In this careful and lucid account of the struggle for Indigenous land rights in Belize, Medina not only gets the details right, but also steps back to give the local issues a broader legal, political, economic and anthropological context. It is essential reading for all those concerned with the conflicts between states, economic development and Indigenous peoples.""— Richard R. Wilk, coauthor of Seafood: Ocean to the Plate ""Governing Maya Communities and Lands in Belize provides original insights into how Mayan peoples in Belize achieved groundbreaking legal victories recognizing their rights to land and territories. Through careful ethnographic analysis of multilevel judicialization, it shows how sociolegal mobilization can strengthen Indigenous peoples' systems of law and governance, sustaining alternatives to the extractivist logics of neoliberal markets.""— Rachel Sieder, coeditor of Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America “Medina thoughtfully analyzes the claims of Maya people in southern Belize to their customary systems of land tenure and local government, based on their culture and history. These claims have conflicted with state claims of sovereignty, capitalist conceptions of private property, and the changing demands of a neoliberal economy. Her study makes an important contribution to understanding disputes about the communal rights of Indigenous people everywhere.”— O. Nigel Bolland, Charles A. Dana professor of Sociology and Caribbean Studies, Emeritus, Colgate University"


"""In this careful and lucid account of the struggle for Indigenous land rights in Belize, Medina not only gets the details right, but also steps back to give the local issues a broader legal, political, economic and anthropological context. It is essential reading for all those concerned with the conflicts between states, economic development and Indigenous peoples."" -- Richard R. Wilk * coauthor of Seafood: Ocean to the Plate * “Medina thoughtfully analyzes the claims of Maya people in southern Belize to their customary systems of land tenure and local government, based on their culture and history. These claims have conflicted with state claims of sovereignty, capitalist conceptions of private property, and the changing demands of a neoliberal economy. Her study makes an important contribution to understanding disputes about the communal rights of Indigenous people everywhere.” -- O. Nigel Bolland * Charles A. Dana professor of Sociology and Caribbean Studies, Emeritus, Colgate University * ""Governing Maya Communities and Lands in Belize provides original insights into how Mayan peoples in Belize achieved groundbreaking legal victories recognizing their rights to land and territories. Through careful ethnographic analysis of multilevel judicialization, it shows how sociolegal mobilization can strengthen Indigenous peoples' systems of law and governance, sustaining alternatives to the extractivist logics of neoliberal markets."" -- Rachel Sieder * coeditor of Routledge Handbook of Law and Society in Latin America *"


Author Information

LAURIE KROSHUS MEDINA is director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and associate professor of anthropology at Michigan State University in East Lansing. She is the author of Negotiating Economic Development: Identity Formation and Collective Action in Belize.  

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