Unsettled Rights: Afro-descendant recognition and ex-situ titling in Colombia
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Standard
Unsettled Rights : Afro-descendant recognition and ex-situ titling in Colombia. / Hougaard, Inge Merete.
I: Political Geography, Bind 96, 102606, 2022.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Unsettled Rights
T2 - Afro-descendant recognition and ex-situ titling in Colombia
AU - Hougaard, Inge Merete
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Ethnic recognition and collective titling have since the second half of the 20th century been promoted as ways of compensating for historical injustices and countering the destructive effects of capitalist development. While holding promise of autonomy, territorial rights, and resource control, they have also been seen as political technologies governing, spatially tying identities to place, and incorporating new areas into capital market relations. This paper draws on and contributes to these debates by exploring how the Colombian legislation for Afro-descendants ethnic recognition and collective titling is understood, employed and ‘reworked’ from below as well as from above. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and document analysis, the paper follows the case of an Afro-descendant sand-extracting community in the Cauca Valley Region, Colombia. Threatened by a competing mining claim, the villagers seek to gain ethnic recognition among other things to secure rights and control mining resources. In the process, the villagers are offered a land plot away from where they live and work to title as their collective territory; a mechanism that I term ‘ex-situ titling’. As the villagers have no prior relation to the land, nor intend to resettle there, I argue that the ex-situ land titling only serves as a procedural step in the process of ethnic recognition, which, nevertheless, contributes to the uncertainty and incertitude around the villagers' ethnic rights and resource control.
AB - Ethnic recognition and collective titling have since the second half of the 20th century been promoted as ways of compensating for historical injustices and countering the destructive effects of capitalist development. While holding promise of autonomy, territorial rights, and resource control, they have also been seen as political technologies governing, spatially tying identities to place, and incorporating new areas into capital market relations. This paper draws on and contributes to these debates by exploring how the Colombian legislation for Afro-descendants ethnic recognition and collective titling is understood, employed and ‘reworked’ from below as well as from above. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and document analysis, the paper follows the case of an Afro-descendant sand-extracting community in the Cauca Valley Region, Colombia. Threatened by a competing mining claim, the villagers seek to gain ethnic recognition among other things to secure rights and control mining resources. In the process, the villagers are offered a land plot away from where they live and work to title as their collective territory; a mechanism that I term ‘ex-situ titling’. As the villagers have no prior relation to the land, nor intend to resettle there, I argue that the ex-situ land titling only serves as a procedural step in the process of ethnic recognition, which, nevertheless, contributes to the uncertainty and incertitude around the villagers' ethnic rights and resource control.
KW - Afro-descendants
KW - Collective territories
KW - Collective titling
KW - Colombia
KW - Ethnic recognition
KW - Ethnic territories
KW - Ex-situ titling
KW - Land rights
KW - Politics of recognition
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - Ethnic recognition
KW - Collective territories
KW - Ex-situ titling
KW - Afro-descendants
KW - Colombia
KW - Politics of recognition
KW - Collective titling
KW - Ethnic territories
KW - Land rights
U2 - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102606
DO - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102606
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85124386584
VL - 96
JO - Political Geography
JF - Political Geography
SN - 0962-6298
M1 - 102606
ER -
ID: 299034841