scholarly journals Decomposition as Life Politics: Soils, Selva, and Small Farmers under the Gun of the U.S.–Colombia War on Drugs

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Marie Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Forest Ecology ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Small Farmers ◽  
Alternative Development ◽  
Regenerative Capacity ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Development Interventions ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Tropical Forest Ecology ◽  
The U.S

How is life in a criminalized ecology in the Andean-Amazonian foothills of southwestern Colombia? In what way does antinarcotics policy that aims to eradicate la mata que mata (the plant that kills) pursue peace through poison? Relatedly, how do people keep on cultivating a garden, caring for forest, or growing food when at any moment a crop-duster plane may pass overhead, indiscriminately spraying herbicides over entire landscapes? Since 2000, the U.S.–Colombian War on Drugs has relied on the militarized aerial fumigation of coca plants, coupled with alternative development interventions that aim to forcibly eradicate illicit livelihoods. Through ethnographic engagement with small farmers in the frontier department of Putumayo, the gateway to the country’s Amazon and a region that has been the focus of counternarcotic operations, this article explores the different possibilities and foreclosures for life and death that emerge in a tropical forest ecology under military duress. By following farmers, their material practices, and their life philosophies, I trace the ways in which human-soil relations come to potentiate forms of resistance to the violence and criminalization produced by militarized, growth-oriented development. Rather than productivity—one of the central elements of modern capitalist growth—the regenerative capacity of these ecologies relies on organic decay, impermanence, decomposition, and even fragility that complicates modernist bifurcations of living and dying, allowing, I argue, for ecological imaginaries and life processes that do not rely on productivity or growth to strive into existence.

Horror and Death: Rethinking Coco's Border Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 41-49
Author(s):  
Orquidea Morales
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Walt Disney Company ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
Animated Film ◽  
Border Politics ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The U.S

In 2013, the Walt Disney Company submitted an application to trademark “Día de los muertos” (Day of the Dead) as they prepared to launch a holiday themed movie. Almost immediately after this became public Disney faced such strong criticism and backlash they withdrew their petition. By October of 2017 Disney/Pixar released the animated film Coco. Audiences in Mexico and the U.S. praised it's accurate and authentic representation of the celebration of Day of the Dead. In this essay, I argue that despite its generic framing, Coco mobilizes many elements of horror in its account of Miguel's trespassing into the forbidden space of the dead and his transformation into a liminal figure, both dead and alive. Specifically, with its horror so deftly deployed through tropes and images of borders, whether between life and death or the United States and Mexico, Coco falls within a new genre, the border horror film.

Tropical Forest Ecology

Ecology ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 81 (8) ◽  
pp. 2352-2353
Author(s):  
Jess K. Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Forest ◽  
Forest Ecology ◽  
Tropical Forest Ecology

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 136-142
Author(s):  
Adrián Félix
Keyword(s):  
Linear Logic ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Mexican Migrants ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Transnational Citizenship ◽  
The U.S

The final chapter concludes by raising the specter of transnational afterlife and the implications of the book for migration studies. By tracing the thickening of transnational citizenship across the migrant political life cycle, Specters of Belonging adds to our understanding of migrant cross-border affiliations, allegiances and attachments. In doing so, the book challenges the linear logic of neo-assimilationists, who contend that the U.S. continues to integrate migrants as it did during previous eras of mass migration, by pointing to the institutional racism that impedes the process of migrant “incorporation.” Conversely, the book also challenges the irresolute circularity of the transnational perspective, which depicts migrants as ambivalent about their sense of belonging to their country of settlement and of origin. By capturing migrants’ cross-border enunciations, enactments and embodiments of transnational citizenship, Specters of Belonging argues that Mexican migrants are tenaciously transnational, defying the border in life and death.

Energy and nutrients

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-176
Author(s):  
Richard T. Corlett
Keyword(s):  
Primary Production ◽  
Forest Ecology ◽  
Net Primary Production ◽  
Ecosystem Respiration ◽  
Gross Primary Production ◽  
Nitrogen And Phosphorus ◽  
New Information ◽  
Tropical Forest Ecology ◽  
Toxic Concentrations

This chapter deals with the ecology of Tropical East Asia from the perspective of water, energy, and matter flows through ecosystems, particularly forests. Data from the network of eddy flux covariance towers is revealing general patterns in gross primary production, ecosystem respiration, and net ecosystem production, and exchange. There is also new information on the patterns of net primary production and biomass within the region. In contrast, our understanding of the role of soil nutrients in tropical forest ecology still relies mostly on work done in the Neotropics, with just enough data from Asia to suggest that the major patterns may be pantropical. Nitrogen and phosphorus have received most attention regionally, followed by calcium, potassium, and magnesium, and there has been very little study of the role of micronutrients and potentially toxic concentrations of aluminium, manganese, and hydrogen ions. Animal nutrition has also been neglected.

26. Transnational Crime

2018 ◽  
pp. 393-409
Author(s):  
Harold Trinkunas
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Crime ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Transnational Crime ◽  
Initial State ◽  
Government Response ◽  
International Trends ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the threats posed by transnational crime to national security. Globalization and other international trends may have the unintended consequence of fostering the development of transnational crime. Initial state and international responses to transnational crime in the 1980s were driven in large part by the U.S. war on drugs. After providing an overview of relevant definitions and key concepts, particularly with respect to international crime and organized crime, the chapter considers both the reasons for and the nature of the increase in transnational crime since the end of the Cold War. It then looks at debates over the strength and nature of the ‘nexus’ between transnational crime and terrorism. It concludes by analysing how the government response to transnational crime has evolved over time, focusing on increased coordination and securitization between nations.

scholarly journals Size isn't everything: narratives of scale and viability in a Tanzanian irrigation scheme

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Harrison ◽  
Anna Mdee
Keyword(s):  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Small Farmers ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Cooperative Society ◽  
Development Interventions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
African Agriculture

AbstractThis paper explores tensions over scale and viability in irrigated agricultural development in Tanzania. A revival of ambition to transform African agriculture has reawakened debate over what type of agriculture can best deliver increased production and poverty reduction for rural populations. This paper examines these debates through the lens of an ethnographic study of an irrigated rice farm in Tanzania. With a chequered history of state and donor intervention management, Dakawa, Rice Farm in Mvomero District is now collectively farmed by a cooperative society of ‘small farmers’. It is widely hailed as a success, both of irrigation production, and of ‘small farmers’ in delivering this. However, such narratives of smallness and success obscure a more complex reality in which smallness of scale may be more of a discursive tool than a reflection of empirical reality. Although notions of ‘viability’ and ‘success’ in such development interventions are themselves also contested and depend on perspective, there is evidence that there are fundamental problems of both short- and long-term viability.

scholarly journals Hegemony and Humanitarian Norms: The U.S. Legitimation of Toxic Violence

2013 ◽  
pp. 82-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Bonds
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
The U.S

Despite widespread beliefs that the United States has not used chemical weapons since the distant past of World War I, this study suggests a more complicated history by examining U.S. use of herbicides and incapacitating gases in the Vietnam War and its use of herbicides in the "War on Drugs." This article places such use of toxic violence within a context of U.S. hegemony, by which U.S. officials have used contested forms of violence to secure geopolitical goals, but have also been pressured to comply with humanitarian norms or-when there is a gap between norms and state policy-to do legitimating work in order to maintain domestic and international consent. Based on case study analysis of archival and secondary sources, this article identifies three main techniques U.S. officials use to legitimate contested forms of violence. These techniques are defensive categorization, humanitizing discourse, and surrogacy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document