After the Handshake: Themes from the Workshop
Commentary and “Wrap Up.”
Jennifer Bickham Mendez
1) Particularities and specificities of the “region.” How “area”—place and
history still matter. CONTINUITY
a. Shared history of 1980s Reagan’s interventionist foreign policy
b. Particular dynamics of “democratization’ rooted in shared history of
US intervention and colonialism
c. Also history of solidarity movement with US and European Left
d. In context of neoliberal globalization and post-conflict polyarchies
elevated expectations and desires (consumerism) resulting
disenchantment, thwarted desires, new imaginaries and also
disappointments (in free trade, post-war democracy, etc)
e. Central America is HERE!! Need to think about region in a different
kind of way.
2) Mobility and movement and impact on intersections with new social
formations and reconfigured power relations: Encounters!!!
a. People
i. Migration, return migration, transnational communities—how
does experiences of marginalization through migration shape
emerging and changing social formations?
1. Much of what we eat and wear has been touched by
Mexican/Central American hands
ii. Tourism: eco, political, campesino, sex, cruise ships
iii. Gangs
iv. Retirees
v. Anthropologists and sociologists
b. Mobile and shifting niche markets (tourism and fair trade)
c. Commodities and capital (value of commodities—cultural and
material)
i. Drugs
ii. Remittances
d. Discourses
i. Human rights
ii. “marero” discourse, terrorism
iii. “green” Sustain Development paradigm
e. Knowledge: How do we share our scholarship and disseminate and
exchange with C. American scholars?
3) Democratization—what does it mean in Central America? National and
community-level dynamics, but also regional.
--Social membership, participation, forms of citizenship and belonging
(shadow of the state), changing forms of exclusion
a. Disaggregation of rights and citizenship
i. New categories of the rightless—shadow citizens
1. Undocumented or “illegals”
2. Mareros and youth
3. Criminal deportees
b. Secrecy and new forms of accountability
c. Local communities taking on security in the face of crime—local
structures of power—parallels local communities taking on authority
to contend with “immigration problem.”
d. Human rights, race and ethnicity—exclusionary practices
i. “Brecha” between law/legality and practices/enforcement
1. CAFTA and GM corn
ii. Juridical categories and recognition vs. lived realities and
subjectivities
1. Census categories and racial categories—forms of
recognition and forms of discrimination
2. Neoliberal multiculturalism
4) “Neoliberalism” and alternatives to the hegemonic neoliberal paradigm
a. Cultural framework (culture/ideology/hegemony) that shapes daily
life and also strategies, engagements, and responses to neoliberalism:
How do these key words resonate in different ways in specific
contexts? Continuities that transcend place and communities as well
as local political resonance and meanings—democracy, sustainable
development, accountability, fair trade, free trade, etc.
i. penetration of consumerism and new desires
ii. Neocolonial power relations through which the tastes, desires,
standards, and principles from the North become normative—
audits, accreditation, needs-assessment, project funding,
labeling (anti-sweat and environmental or green), niche market,
sex tourism
1. Also, marketing must occur which implies knowledge of
tastes of North. State sometimes takes on this role of
marketing these initiatives—questions of niche markets
2. Market-based alternatives: cultural framework of
neoliberalism shapes these alternatives but also the varied
ways in which local people strategize and engage with
these alternatives in order to meet survival needs and
struggle for agency.
3. Creates “stateless” arena of enforcement and action
a. Eco-tourism
b. Codes of conduct and international monitoring
c. Fair trade
d. Sustainable development
4. NGOization of social justice movements
iii. CAFTA and other FTAs and people’s engagement with them
and their effects
1. The ways in which accumulation and dispossession occur
on the ground in local communities but also at the
geopolitical, regional and national level
5) Power and resistance or organized oppositional initiatives
a. How do we define movement? Coalition? Network?
b. Collective identities or subjectivities as basis for mobilization
i. As whom? Indigenous, small holders, vendors, professionals
and beneficiaries of welfare state, peasants?
ii. Target? Influence? Where are the points of influence and how
should influence be exercised? Transnational social movements
as effective?
1. Boomerang effect—when will it work?
c. How do we measure and think about social change and
transformation? Standards of success?
i. Incremental social change measured at different levels
1. Is networking enough? At level of UN meetings also
transnational network activity
ii. In terms of solutions and alternatives—OPTIONS not blanket,
one-size-fits all solutions—value of ethnography.
iii. Historical memory as a basis for mobilization
iv. Whose version of “success” do we accept? Not face value of
key informants in networks.
1. Representation of the “base.” Who is the “we” and who
are the “they?”
2. Claims to authenticity or two guys with a lap-top?
6) Methodological/Analytical issues
a. Value of ethnography—situated in the “Local” but with attention to
institutional spaces such as the UN, transnational processes and flows,
economic processes,
b. Problem of scale and levels of analysis
i. Cases studies but situated within broader political and
economic forces—importance of everyday life and experiences
and variability across communities, nation-states, etc.
ii. Studying up—vertical slice of power.
iii. Where do we position our analytical gaze in order to capture
and explain changing social formations and relations of power
in this context?
c. Public anthropology/sociology—politically engaged scholarship
i. Value of ethnography and small-scale studies to support and to
influence in solidarity with local communities and
emancipatory politics
ii. Alliances with struggles on the ground.
iii. Linkages w/ Central America that is HERE.
d. Area studies? Central America is here.
i. How do we frame our work—Are we Central Americanists?
ii. How do we categorize and locate ourselves as scholars and our
work in this changing context?
iii. Make Central America visible again in context of Iraq War,
911, make visible the continuities
1. Dick Cheney
2. CAFTA
3. US foreign policies and neoliberalism as stimulating
migration
a. Remittances approaching half of GDP
iv. Information flow and information politics—advent of internet
1. Collaboration w/ Central American scholars
2. Dialogue and posing questions from US different from
Central American scholars—bring back knowledge to
Central America