Chapter Outline
Chapter 2: Swampy Backwater and
Historical Political Ecology.
History
A. History of migrations & settlement
Pirates & logwood
Spanish "discovery"
sovereign power & make pirates/settlers illegal
Miskito Shoremen?
threatened economic & political dominance of elites
Garifuna
settle beyond settlement's boundaries & interact with the sea as well as with forestry
Mestizos
White Confederates
demonstrate racialised land policies that favor whites
B. History of land
Logwood Common resource & transition to land claims
Tania Li - private property? Enclosure of "the commons?"
Formal claims to land
Exclusionary Land Policies
Subjectivity: squatters, criminals (when squatting), marginal people, dependent laborers not autonomous indendents
Land Monopolies
Theorizing Land Grabs
C. History of Governance/Relations of Power
Egalitarianism
Self-Governance
Crown Colony
D. Historical Socio-natures
- Unwanted swamp where marginal people could make a living w/logwood
poitical disinerest in swampy waterscape led to pirate-rule & abuses of power
- Mahogany reorders social relations by necessitating slave labour
concentration of wealth and further consolidation of claims to land
Subjectivity: elite, free and enslaved peoples; elites & landless; "whiter" creoles with power vs. "devil-worshipping Garifuna"
- "productive land" is claimed so poor free people settle in margins
Garifuna settle on "unproductive" beaches, away from governance
provides access to sea where autonomous subsistence practices are available
autonomy is challenged by land policies that seek to order and manage an "unruly" population and to strip them of ability to live independently
Marginality: Rob Shields & Anna Tsing
- ownership of land has always meant political power, even when foreign ownership is dominant pattern
i. Imaginative geography uses contrastive relations to make the swamp a place unfit for human habitation; Said & Foucault as well as Derek Gregory
ii. Place-making: Doreen Massey Places are constructed out of the articulations of social relations, including trade, and unequal colonial links, that are internal to the locale but tie them to elsewhere and what makes a place unique is the ways in which the locality is connected outward by global forces (Massey 1995: 183)
Maya were present
Chapter 3. Tropicality and the Shift to a Touristic Paradise
Ch. 4 The Hopkins Waterscape
Garifuna
Tourism
Lifestyle Migrants
Employment
Other Belizeans
Tourists
click to edit
Place
Landscape Theory
Waterscape
Coastal Culture
Littoral places
Water Worlds (Hastrup)
Saltwater Sociality
Neo-colonaialism
Territorialization
Land/Shore
Hopkins
Land Dispossession
Village Land Boundaries
Geographic Imaginary: from unproductive land to touristic paradise
Values of Land
Social Value of Land
cultural values
family
"A piece" for future generations
We are GARIFUNA, FROM THE SEA. They are from Sittee; they're river people
knowledge systems
perceptions of the environment
Economic Value of Land
Local belief that the land will continue to be available to sell for profit
Political Value of Land
Environmental/Social Crises on the Beach: This chapter will analyze the material, socopolitical and discursive elements of an environmental "crisis." The beach will be explored as a deeply politicized place, percieved differently by situated actors, who struggle to secure the shoreline. However, the shifting sand and sea are not static objects over which power can be exerted. Instead they are examined in a dialectical relationship between nature and social power that illustrates the way the biophysical properties and agency of nature's materiality configure the social relations competing over the shoreline.
How environment and problems are framed by different social actors
- CENTRAL EROSION
D Locals
Natural Discourse: It's natural
The beach is a living thing, it comes, it goes
You white people worry too much.
I'm AFRAID!
"My Heart Hurts"
B. Hospitality/Tourism business community
This will ruin tourism!
It's a disaster!
Discourse of BLAME: It MUST be Hopkins Bay
This was a "social" or "political" discourse
C. Tourists
This is not paradise! I'm leaving
Failure to meet preimagined geography
E. Expats/Lifestyle Migrants
Get the government out of here
Don't impose new rules (or taxes) on me
Why don't we actually know to which governing body we should be making complaints/appeals/ reporting infractions?
Hopkins Bay paid off the governemnt
Where was the environmental assessment on the groyne?
A. Hopkins Bay (the accused)
F. Government
The cause was the groyne - take it out
Only part of the groyne has to go (speculation that Hopkins Bay paid off some officials)
- EARLY EROSION
Expats
She's craxy
Bad luck on the property she bought
Trish (Kismet)
YOU NEED TO HELP ME - media appeals
"the ONLY thing I can do is build a seawall"
backlash from Cheryl and concerned villagers about what will happen down the beach
shift from being community-minded, she is now out for herself, having seen little-to-no support from the villagers or village council
concerns about early erosion were spatially and territorially divided, but also socially divided:
"North Side"
social division - not as important; a different part of town; less money & development on north side; only foreign-owned businesses are Hopkins Bay and Driftwood, aside from Kisimet
local population is different from South Side population
The biophysical agency of the environment can be located in the southerly current of water. This directional flow gives those on the north side an advantage over the center and south sides of the village in terms of successfully capturing sediment through anthropomorphic changes or interventions.
Northside beach owners could manipulate the shoreline in their own interests
Village Perceptions of Trish
chaotic atmosphere at Inn with Elvis
rumours of drugs and alcohol abuse. justifying social marginalization and lack of concern for her requests for the community to help
a "northside girl"
"We northside gyals stick together"
How are discourses are employed to position favored solutions?
These affect vested interests
disagreements emerge from the differing perceptions of issue
*The key debate centers on whether irregularities observed in natural processes are attributable to randomized behavior or the limitations of scientists’ ability to observe & measure" BUdds 2012)
Ch. 6 Governing & Dwelling on the Shoreline
Land Scarcity
Mangrove deforestation & creation of land
Dispossession
Garifuna Identity
Co-constitution of people & place
Mangrove Deforestation & Creation of Land
Garbage & Pollution
Image of Paradise
Transnational connections by water: the garbage comes from elsewhere
Sargassum
global connections shape the locality
The Road
Was an environmental assessment completed?
Ch. 5: The cultural politics of beach erosion
Resort Development
Land Leases from Council
Policing the Beach
fruit as a commons
Foreign Ownership as Neocoloniallism
Local responses
Oceana Cleanup Day
Ted's Beach Cleaning Team
Illustrates North/South & Hopkins vs. Migrant divisions
Crime
Reva: Home Invasion
Denise: Robberies
overall sense of security in village
Media represntations of Belize as Paradise for retirement etc.