The inauspicious monster inside the sacred fortress : colonial multiculturalism and indigenous politics in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

dc.contributor.advisorSpeed, Shannon, 1964-
dc.contributor.committeeMemberHale, Charles R
dc.contributor.committeeMemberGordon, Edmund T
dc.contributor.committeeMemberSturm, Circe
dc.contributor.committeeMemberPadilla-Rubiano, Guillermo
dc.creatorWard, Ricardo Tane
dc.date.accessioned2017-04-18T15:19:47Z
dc.date.available2017-04-18T15:19:47Z
dc.date.issued2014-05
dc.date.submittedMay 2014
dc.date.updated2017-04-18T15:19:47Z
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation is about development and multiculturalism in Colombia. My ethnographic work focuses on the Iku, an indigenous pueblo in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains in Northern Colombia (SNSM), as they work to resist development projects and wrestle with political changes brought on by multiculturalism. The Iku have traditionally resisted the state, capitalism and development. The multicultural paradigm for addressing development in indigenous territory in Colombia has been adapted from international frameworks for “special indigenous rights”. Colombia has served as a model multicultural nation, because of its progressive constitution and its practice of implementing Free, Prior and Informed Consultations about development projects for indigenous people. These changes have had profound effects on the governance of indigenous peoples, and have garnered internal cultural responses from the Iku. The reaction to development and multicultural politics has been dissonant from the state at an ontological level – that is at the basic level of understanding reality. Multiculturalism is tied to liberal state governance and industrial capitalist economies, rooted ontologically in colonial-modernity. The Iku have a relational ontology tied to their culture-territory. This dissertation does not elaborate a discursive Iku critique of capitalism or mystify readers with a re-telling of their cultural mythology. Instead, I explore ontological politics as both colonizing, in the form of extractive industries’ disregard for the natural world, and resistant, in the Iku practices of reproducing their culture-territory. This dissertation explores this political space with an eye towards building decolonial politics that respond to the challenges faced by the Iku and the multicultural state.
dc.description.departmentAnthropology
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifierdoi:10.15781/T28K7525F
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2152/46498
dc.language.isoen
dc.subjectIndigenous
dc.subjectResistance
dc.subjectColombia
dc.subjectDevelopment projects
dc.subjectMulticulturalism
dc.subjectIku
dc.subjectSierra Nevada de Santa Marta
dc.subjectSpecial indigenous rights
dc.subjectIndustrial capitalism
dc.subjectColonial-modernity
dc.subjectCulture-territory
dc.subjectDecolonial politics
dc.titleThe inauspicious monster inside the sacred fortress : colonial multiculturalism and indigenous politics in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
dc.typeThesis
dc.type.materialtext
thesis.degree.departmentAnthropology
thesis.degree.disciplineAnthropology
thesis.degree.grantorThe University of Texas at Austin
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy

Access full-text files

Original bundle

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
WARD-DISSERTATION-2014.pdf
Size:
1.67 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format

License bundle

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
LICENSE.txt
Size:
1.84 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description: