Producing social nature in the Mexican countryside

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 12, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 321-344

  Klooster, Daniel J ^a  

^a FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL INFLUENCE; GOODS EXCHANGE; RURAL SOCIETY;

MEXICO [NORTH AMERICA]; NORTH AMERICA; WESTERN HEMISPHERE; WORLD;

EID: 21544457478     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1191/1474474005eu334oa     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. I choose to write 'translocal' instead of 'transnational' to avoid evoking the image of the increasingly large body of people who hold more than one passport. The term is also open to broader interpretations of rural people who patch together livelihoods through activities that take place in many different locales in the same country, including periods of work in urban areas or areas of commercial agriculture distant from their rural villages.
2. See, e.g. A. J. Bebbington and S. P. J. Batterbury, Transnational livelihoods and landscapes: political ecologies of globalization', Ecumene 8 (2001), pp. 369-80. Several other articles in that issue also develop the theme of transnational livelihoods.
3. See also A. J. Bebbington, 'Reencountering development: livelihood transitions and place transformations in the Andes', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90 (2000), pp. 495-520.
4. V.M. Juan Martinez, 'Migrantes y combate a la pobreza', Noticias (Oaxaca City daily newspaper), (2 Aug. 2003), no. 9549;
5. L. Fink, The Maya of Morganton: work and community in the nuevo new south (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
6. The 'gentrified landscapes' citation is from B. Jokisch, 'Migration and agricultural change: the case of smallholder agriculture in highland Ecuador', Human ecology 30 (2002), p. 525.
7. See C. Katz, 'Vagabond capitalism and the necessity of social reproduction', Antipode' 33 (2001), pp. 709-28.
8. This paper revisits my previous research on social and forest change in a small rural area of Mexico, work originally inspired by political-ecological theories of land use change, common property theory and local knowledge in development. In answer to a call for papers revisiting Margaret FitzSimmons' challenge to better integrate nature into geographical analysis for an AAG conference, I applied the idea of a 'social production of nature' to this work. Together with on-going conversations with David Barkin, that approach pushed me to perceive more clearly the ways in which rural Mexicans take advantage of craft production and cyclical emigration to ensure their own physical and cultural reproduction despite the declining viability of agriculture. Here I will argue that their labour in nature - and thus their role in changing vegetation - reflects an active process of cultural production. At the same time, their labour in the Mexican countryside facilitates life in cities far away. FitzSimmons' challenge is in M. FitzSimmons, 'Guest editorial', Environment and planning D: society and space 7 (1989), pp. 1-3;
9. M. FitzSimmons, 'The matter of nature', Antipode 21 (1989), pp. 106-20.
10. World Bank President J. Wolfensohn, cited in 'World Bank chief scolds rich nations', New York Times (23 Sept. 2003).
11. See also World Bank, 'Cutting agricultural subsidies', (20 Nov. 2003), available at:http://web.worldbank.org/)WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/Ocontent MDK:20076497~menuPK:34459~pagePK:64003015~piPK:64003012~theSitePK: 4607,00.html
12. In the US, the electoral strategies of George W. Bush's team increased US farm subsidies by $40 billion in 2002, and electoral politics precluded discussion of those farm subsidies in the WTO talks in Cancun, according to E. Becker 'Coming US vote figures in walkout at trade talks', New York Times (16 Sept. 2003), available at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res= F00816FF3C5E0C758DDDA00894DB404482.
13. See J. Vidal and D. Munk, 'Farmer who got a hearing by paying the ultimate price', Guardian (12 Sept. 2003), available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/wto/article/0,2763,1040297,00.html.
14. J. Brooke. 'Farming is Korean's life and he ends it in despair', New York Times (16 Sept. 2003), available at:http://query.nytimes.com/ gst/abstract.html?res=F60711F93D5E0C758DDDA00894DB404482.
15. Pew Hispanic Center, Remittance senders and receivers: tracking the transnational channels (Washington, DC, Pew Hispanic Center, 2003), pp. 1-19, available at: http://www.pewhispanic.org/index.jsp.
16. D. Barkin, 'The reconstruction of a modern Mexican peasantry', Journal of peasant studies 30 (2002), pp. 73-90;
17. D. Barkin, Distorted development: Mexico in the world economy (Boulder, Co, Westview Press, 1990);
18. D. Myhre, 'The Achilles' heel of the reforms: the rural finance system', in W. Cornelius and D. Myhre, eds, The transformation of rural Mexico: reforming the Ejido sector (San Diego, Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego, 1998), pp. 39-65.
19. For useful data tables of Mexican maize prices since 1970, see Barkin, 'Reconstruction'.
20. Not only does US maize production enjoy superior economics of scale and technology, it is also heavily subsidized. The US maize sector is the largest single recipient of US government payments, and the effective subsidy of maize exports to Mexico is on the order of $105 to $145 million annually.
21. See Oxfam, Dumping without borders: how US agricultural policies are destroying the liveliboods of Mexican corn farmers (Boston, Oxfam, 2003), available at: http://www.oxfam.org/eng/policy_pape_corn_dumping.htm
22. See Barkin, 'Reconstruction'.
23. Cited in ibid., pp. 81 and 88. In 2002 the Mexican Secretary of Agriculture was quoted saying the challenge to grain producers is either to become 'efficient' according to 'international standards,' or to do something else: El financiero (21 Nov. 2002).
24. A. de Janvry and E. Sadoulet, 'Income strategies among rural households in Mexico: the role of off-farm activities', World development 29 (2001), pp. 467-80.
25. Barkin, 'Reconstruction', p. 89.
26. The Mexican census of 2000 shows 39% of Mexicans live in towns of less than 15000 inhabitants and 25.4% live in settlements smaller than 2500. See Barkin, 'Reconstruction', p. 89.
27. For an argument that the presumption of deforestation is a misreading of the Mexican landscape, see D. Mooster, 'Beyond deforestation: the social context of forest change in two indigenous communities in highland Mexico', Yearbook, Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers (Journal of Latin American Geography) 26 (2000), pp. 47-59.
28. For a comparison of professional silviculture and local forest use practices, see D. Klooster, 'Towards adaptive community forest management: integrating local forest knowledge with scientific forestry', Economic geography 78 (2002), pp. 42-70. For a discussion of how the political economy of agriculture in North America might be affecting fields and forests in long-settled regions of highland Mexico,
29. see D. Klooster, 'Regional forest transitions in highland Mexico? The importance of local institutions in a globalized countryside', Professional geographer 55 (2003), pp. 227-237.
30. D. Brand, Quiroga: a mexican municipio (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution, 1951). I use pseudonyms throughout.
31. I use pseudonyms throughout.
32. Brand, Quiroga.
33. For a discussion of pottery production in Santa Fé, see R.C. West, Cultural geography of the modern tarascan area (Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution, 1947);
34. A. Gortaire Iturralde, Santa Fé: presencia de an pueblo hospital (Mexico City, Universidad Iberoamericana, 1971);
35. J. Navia and S. Ochoa, Las pequeñas empresas artesanales en la región Purépecha: el caso de las alffarís (unpublished MS, Patzcuaro, Grupo Interdisciplinario de Tecnología Rural Apropiada AC, 1998);
36. J. Durston, Organización social de1 los mercados campesinos en el centro de Michoacán (Mexico City, Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1992);
37. O. Masera, J. Navia, G. Ruiz, J.C. Cedeno, S. Ochóa, J.L. Fabián, D. Bautista, and I. Alejandre, Documento comunitario: uso de la leña en Santa Fé de la Laguna, Michoacán (unpublished MS, Patzcuaro, México, Grupo Interdisciplinario de Tecnología Rural Apropiada AC, 1997).
38. Klooster, 'Beyond deforestation'.
39. For population and livelihood data, see ibid. San Jerónimo is so famous as a source of emigration that the Economist featured it in a survey of the Mexican economic and social situation: 'Survey Mexico: home and away', Economist (28 Oct. 2000), p. 8.
40. In the Mexican context, indigenous and non-indigenous rural peoples share many cultural traits. See G. Bonfil Batalla, Mexico profundo: una civilización negada (Mexico City, Grijalbo, 1987). For example, even though just 20% of people in the Lake Patzcuaro basin speak Purepecha, some observers consider 60% or more of the inhabitants of this region to be fundamentally indigenous.
41. See V. M. Toledo, 'Patzcuaro's lesson: nature, production, and culture in an indigenous region of Mexico', in M. Oldfield and J. B. Alcorn, eds, Biodiversity: culture, conservation, and ecodevelopment, (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1991), pp. 147-71.
42. Interview with Rudelia.
43. Klooster, 'Beyond Deforestation'.
44. J. Martínez Luna, ¿Es la comunidad nuestra identidad?', in A. Warman and A. Argueta, eds, Movimientos indígenas contemporáneos en México(Mexico City, Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Humanidades, UNAM, 1993), 161. My translation. In Oaxaca, faena is called tequio.
45. Klooster, 'Beyond deforestation'.
46. For critics, the production of nature approach over emphasizes production at the expense of other processes which also socialize nature, and in which productive processes are always embedded. They also point out that the approach is one-sided, showing much greater interest in how capitalism produces nature and much less in how produced nature affects capitalism. Much of the recent writing in the 'production of nature' thesis deals with events at the core of global capitalism, including the growth of cities, the commodification of seeds and genetic engineering.
47. See N. Castree, 'Marxism, capitalism, and the production of nature', in N. Castree and B. Braun, eds, Social nature: theory, practice, and politics (Malden, MA, Blackwell, 2001), pp. 189-207. For proponents, the thesis relieves the analyst from continually portraying the human domination of nature. It opens up the history of nature to retrospective examination and future political agency.
48. See N. Smith, 'Nature at the millennium: production and re-enchantment', in B. Braun and N. Castree, eds, Remaking reality (New York, Routledge, 1998), pp. 271-85.
49. K. Marx, Capital
50. cited in N. Smith and P. O'Keefe, 'Geography, Marx and the concept of nature', Antipode 12 (1989), pp. 30-9.
51. Smith, 'Production and re-enchantment'.
52. C. Geertz, The interpretation of cultures (New York, Basic Books, 1973), p 10.
53. Ibid., p. 5.
54. A. Appadurai, Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 184.
55. Ibid., pp. 180-81. Although Appadurai expresses the idea of producing locality quite nicely here, he makes too little of the material basis of cultural production and too much of the global flows of cultural symbols in his argument, and he underplays the role of relations of power in his depictions of globalization.
56. Geertz, Interpretation, p. 49.
57. I b i d.
58. Ibid., p. 52.
59. M. Douglas, How institutions think (Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1986), p. 128.
60. Appadurai, Modernity.
61. D. Mitchell, 'There's no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of culture in geography', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20 (1995), pp. 102-16.
62. A semiotic definition of culture, with an emphasis on its continual production through action, and hence its fragility and malleability, permits us to understand the relationship between culture and identity without slipping into a 'culture makes them do it' version of racism. It helps us maintain a critical stance, as Mitchell demands that we do, by avoiding explanations that rely on 'culture' in the same way critical geographers avoid obfuscations based on an ideology of 'nature'. Just as a critical geography denies that social structures occur because they are natural, it must also deny that social structures occur because they are cultural.
63. S. W. Mintz, Sweetness and power (New York, Viking Penguin, 1985), p. 185.
64. Ibid., p. 13.
65. Klooster, 'Beyond deforestation'.
66. Masera et al., Documento comunitario; Navia and Ochoa, Empresas artesanales; Klooster, 'Beyond deforestation'.
67. O. R. Masera, B. D. Saatkamp and D. M. Kammen, 'From linear fuel switching to multiple cooking strategies: a critique and alternative to the energy ladder model', World development 28 (2000), pp. 2083-2103.
68. Forest inventories were conducted as part of a programme to improve community forest management in 1998. The same forester employed similar methods in both communities. See Klooster, 'Beyond deforestation'; 'Adaptive management'.
69. Klooster D.'Adaptive management'
70. Social relations of production at the regional, national and international scales are also immanent in the Santa Fé/San Jerénimo landscape. These include the power of state agencies and agricultural multinationals that have made policy choices condemning food production in regions like this one. They also include Mexican forest laws and forest management science which sanction either forest preservation or industrial logging, but not community fuel-wood management. See Klooster, 'Adaptive management'. The forest landscape also reflects the characteristics of social organization between Santa Fé and the neighbouring village of Quiroga. Historically, woodcutters from the neighbouring town of Quiroga cut in the forest of Santa Fé to supply carpentry workshops. Their intense cutting of large pines, fir and madrone continued through the 1970s, until Elpidio Dominguez Castro led his fellow Santa Fé villagers in a campaign to expel them and re-establish local control over their lands and forest. Twenty years later, however, Santa Fé's forest still reflects this history of wood theft. (San Jerónimo escaped this history, mainly because of its greater distance from Quiroga.) For the history of struggle between Santa Fé and Quiroga, see Gortai Iturralde, 'Santa Fe'. E. Zárate Hernández, Los señores de la Utopía (Zamora, Michoacán, El Colegio de Michoacán/CIESAS, 1993);
71. N. Dimas Huacúz, Forma y composición de la tenencia de la tierra en Santa Fé de la Laguna (Mexico City, Secretaría de Educación Pública and Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1982).
72. Klooster, 'Adaptive management'.
73. For a discussion of succession and disturbance in Mexican pine-oak forests, see L. C. Snook and P. C. Negreros, 'Effects of Mexico's selective cutting system on pine regeneration and growth in a mixed pine-oak (Pinus-Quercus) forest', in Current topics in forest research: emphasis on contributions by women scientists. Proceedings of a national symposium (Gainesville, FL, US Forest Service, 1986);
74. B. T. Styles, 'Genus Pinus: A Mexican Purview', in T. P. Ramamoorthy, R. Bye, A. Lot and J. Fa, eds, Biological diversity of Mexico: origins and distribution (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 397-420
75. Klooster. 'Adaptive management'.
76. Katz, 'Vagabond capitalism', p. 711.
77. Ibid., p. 710.
78. An extremely strong version of this argument is difficult to sustain. People do not remain in rural areas only because they value the cultures they produce there. In many places, the permanent crisis of agriculture is mirrored by an urban crisis of limited opportunities and difficult living conditions. Furthermore, the case study illustrating the argument is from Mexico, which has a substantial domestic economy, a long border with the United States and a history of emigration to the US. In addition, the case study villages contain indigenous, Purepecha-speaking people, and such people are arguably more likely to protect their differences from other peoples by maintaining their communities and territories. On the other hand, indigenous peoples constitute substantial components of the rural populations of several Latin American countries with strong patterns of emigration to the US and other wealthy countries. Furthermore, even non-indigenous Latin American rural cultures often contain a mixture of indigenous and other cultural traits, so the example developed here probably has wide applications. Additional observations in Latin America and elsewhere in the developing world are needed to reveal the extent and importance of cultural conservation in the persistence of rural populations with greater precision.