Monique Nuijten

Bio: Monique Nuijten is an academic researcher from Wageningen University and Research Centre. The author has contributed to research in topics: Agrarian society & Slum upgrading. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 26 publications receiving 785 citations.

Power, Community and the State: The Political Anthropology of Organisation in Mexico

Abstract: favoritas de los investigadores es la transformacion de los modosde intervencion estatal en las dos ultimas decadas. El argumentoque estructura la discusion afirma que el estado contemporaneoha perdido su fuerza en la medida en que muchas de las funcio-nes para las que fue creado ya no son satisfechas exclusivamentepor este. A esta lectura, que podriamos calificar de normativa, enla medida en que define el poder estatal en funcion de un modelopreestablecido –ya sea en lo referente a su soberania, su legitimi-dad o su autoridad–, es necesario contraponer otras visiones masdescriptivas. El interes por el estudio del estado ha comenzado apermear a los antropologos que, mas que interesarse por el fun-cionamiento o efectividad del sistema politico, se preguntan porel significado de las interacciones diarias entre la gente y las bu-rocracias estatales. Esta vision, que busca describir mas que pres-cribir, permite replantear conceptos clave de las ciencias socialesy ofrece datos empiricos para replantear el supuesto retiro esta-tal. Tal es el caso del libro de Monique Nuijten,

Between fear and fantasy: Governmentality and the working of power in Mexico

Abstract: The question that guides this article is how to articulate, on the one hand, huge bureaucracies and bewildering governmental techniques, and, on the other, a regime of rule where power is to a large extent based on money, personal relationships and ultimately violence. An in-depth ethnography is presented of land conflicts between a peasant community and private landowners in Mexico. The article shows how, in their fight for agrarian justice, peasants get lost in a labyrinthine bureaucratic world, in which they create their own magic, fantasies and fetishes. Instead of implementing standardized procedures the bureaucracy applies governmental techniques in personalized ways and on an ad hoc basis. In this context, brokers thrive. This points to the need for new ways of conceptualizing the relation between governmentality and state power.

Family Property and the Limits of Intervention: The Article 27 Reforms and the PROCEDE Programme in Mexico

Abstract: In the 1990s the Mexican peasants witnessed the introduction of a new Agrarian Law and the implementation of the land regularization programme, PROCEDE. In this article it is demonstrated that the privatization of previously communally held ejido land did not lead to the promised dynamic land market, nor to an increase in agricultural productivity. On the basis of an. in-depth study of land tenure practices in the ejido La Canoa in Western Mexico, it is shown that the changes of 1992 did not address the main problems of peasant agriculture. The new Agrarian Law legalized practices which, although illegal, had already become quite common in ejidos throughout Mexico. In addition, it is argued that legal security does not necessarily reside in official registration by the state, but can also be based on local recognition of land rights. The main argument of the article is that property consists of complex sets of claims, rights and obligations that cannot be manipulated by forms of state intervention that reduce land tenure predicaments to technical problems.

Power in Practice: A Force Field Approach to Natural Resource Management

Abstract: This article argues that in development studies, power is one of the most important, but at the same time most badly theorized topics. In most of the literature a 'property-notion' of power is used assuming that people or groups have more or less fixed interests and levels of power. In this article a force field approach towards power is proposed that conceives of power as 'relational' and the result of the working of multiple, intertwined institutions. Examples from agrarian com- munities in Mexico and Peru are given to show how overlapping institutions and the resulting force fields determine local power relations. Special attention is paid to the methodological implications of such an approach for studies on natural resource management. Attention is paid to: following the flow of action, paying attention to ideas and reflective talk and the quantification of specific sets of data on natural resources.

The Nervous System

Abstract: Experimental Neurology By Prof Paul Glees Pp xii + 532 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1961) 75s net

Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality

Abstract: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Aihwa Ong. Durham, NIC: Duke University Press, 1999. ix. 322 pp., notes, bibliography, index.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

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This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

Abstract: Susan Goethel Campbell’s exhibition Field Guide explores the nature of art and the conceptual process through a multimedia installation that also reflects upon temporality, art history, ecology and science. Introduced with a time-lapse video of weather patterns captured by web cam over the course of an entire year, atmospheric effects assume the quality of translucent washes that blur distinctions between opacity and transparency, painting and technology. Aerial views of built environments set against expansive cityscapes present essential imagery for large-format digital woodblock prints realized in monochromatic tonals and saturated grids of yellow and blazing orange. Some combine undulating wood grain patterns with pinhole perforations to admit light; others consist of diaphanous walnut stains applied to hand-crafted paper, a self-referential allusion to art’s planarity and permeable membrane. The evanescence of these views is echoed in pristine impressions of filtered dust and shimmering milkweed assemblages contained in Plexiglas light boxes. Known as Asclepias, milkweed is an herbaceous flower named by Carl Linnaeus after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, due to its efficacious medicinal powers. Like the weather, the milkweed’s reflective silver filaments respond to shifting currents of air paired with gently wafted treetops projected in the viewing room. Here pearls of light corresponding to the spheres and pinpricks of the prints on the walls float randomly over the fictitious frame of a cubical vitrine. Orbs appear and disappear amid nocturnal shadows as figments of the imagination, their languid dispersion eliciting not-ofthis-world sensations of suspension, ascent and transcendence. This joined to the mesmerizing stillness of a gallery pierced occasionally by the sound of supersonic aircraft, a reminder of the machine in the garden. Beyond, the history of landscape photography and the Romantic sublime are encoded in works titled “Old Stand” that render minuscule figures of stationary box photographers against the grandeur of ice-capped Rockies. In some of the works the human figure is effaced as a historical memory through exquisitely modulated rubbings whose unbounded spatiality contrasts with the reflexive interiority of the viewing room. Campbell’s incandescent vision of nature asserts the phenomenal power of art to elevate the human spirit in the presence of heart-stirring beauty. It dares to reaffirm the timeless union between the material and immaterial substance of the universe, between human life and the ephemera of the natural world. f i l m