Announcements
New Book Published: "Resiliency in Hostile Environments"
Author: Dr. William L. Alexander, Assistant Professor in Anthropology
Publisher: Lehigh University Press
Date of Publication: April 2008
Resiliency in Hostile Environments: A Comunidad Agrícola in Chile’s Norte Chico by cultural anthropologist William L. Alexander is the first published ethnography of “comunero culture” in an agricultural community in the Coquimbo region of Chile. In this unforgiving environment of limited resources and cyclical drought, the comunidades agrícolas have developed unique systems comprised of indivisible communal land, inherited land use rights, local-level consensus building, co-operative relations of production and resource conservation, and diverse economic activities closely linked to changing environmental conditions. Based on fieldwork spanning several years, the book brings to light a determined struggle to protect land and livelihood through vivid details of daily life in a peasant community, forms of mutual assistance, and relations with state and development agencies. One particular family’s story is told to illustrate the extraordinary resiliency of these communities in response to the sometimes harsh natural, socio-political, and economic development environments in which they are situated. Focusing on the strength of cultural expression as well as environmental adaptation, the book powerfully challenges many conventional preconceived notions about supposedly marginalized people living in marginal lands.
The book will engage many different readers on many different levels. For those drawn to ethnography, Dr. Alexander’s study offers a richly descriptive account of cultural life across years of plenty and years of scarcity, including itinerant seasons of pastoral migration during periods of drought. His analysis of the impact of large-scale economic development – particularly copper mining in the region – on both the natural environment and on comunero culture and consciousness will be of interest to ecological anthropologists and environmental historians, especially those in the lively subfield of political ecology. Applied anthropologists and development specialists will find relevant examples in his critique of policies and programs informed by the neoliberal discourse of modernization and standardization that limit the traditionally flexible livelihood options of community members. A case of identity politics and contested ethnicity in the development milieu is given innovative treatment. The book places these issues within the political economy of Chile’s “transition to democracy”, an era of critical importance to students and scholars of emerging democracies in post-dictatorship Latin American societies. While comunero democracy has been revitalized since the return to civilian rule, the failure of some rural assistance programs is often attributed to the government's continued use of the dictatorship's model of economic development which sometimes conflicts with local ideals and practices. At a broader level, the book strives to re-energize peasant studies and articulation of modes of production theory in its argument for the persistence of these agricultural communities. Yet Dr. Alexander tells a humanistic story throughout, giving voice to these inspirational people and reflecting upon his personal relationships and experiences in Chile’s “Little North.”
