This dissertation analyses resistance to a regional development programme, which centred on the construction of a dam at Cerro de Oro, Ojitlan, Oaxaca, Mexico and the resettlement of the affected Chinantec population into an area of Uxpanapa, Veracruz. The resistance of the people of Ojitlan took various forms over a seven year period (1972-9), including political action, a syncretic millenarian movement, a reassertion of traditional forms of community fiestas and passive resistance to resettlement. Ojitlan has been affected by national economic and political changes since before the Spanish Conquest. Large plantations established in the tropical lowland areas in the 19th century ceded place to small "ejido" communities, set up under land reform in the 1930s. Control of land and the economic relationships of production are seen as factors affecting the patterns of resistance in Ojitlan. The dissertation reviews the anthropological literature on resistance and on ethnicity. The series of forms of resistance studied can be seen as multiple cultural articulations - attempts to "bridge the gap" between the established Ojitec life and the "modern" systems of work and life introduced by the development project of the Papaloapan River Commission. The Ojitec struggle with modernity involved dealing not just with the question of resettlement in the collective ejidos of Uxpanapa, but also with the reforms promoted in the Oaxacan Catholic Church. The traditional ritual of indigenous Catholicism offered a sphere of legitimate agency and autonomy for the Ojitec in the face of new models of agency and power. The dissertation suggests the usefulness of the concept of resistance, tempered with an analysis of accompanying processes of accommodation to change. Evidence from the 1990s indicates that ethnic identity continues to be important in political resistance to the state in Uxpanapa, a sign of the resilience of forms of Ojitec culture.

Ecological change very often parallels social change. The concept of the social-ecological system (SES) provides a holistic means of accounting for the dualistic nature of human-environmental interactions by acknowledging that social, political and economic factors influence and are in turn influenced by the processes of ecological change. These transformations can be contextualized within nested adaptive cycles of change that respond to pre-existing conditions and which provide new opportunities for system actors. The adaptive cycle also grants that processes of social and ecological change may be permanent, irreversible and result in new configurations not previously imaginable. The ability for an SES to respond to these processes of change depends upon its resilience which defines the range of reversible change within a stable state. Resilience is determined by a system's vulnerability, by the pre-existing or available capital.Within this dissertation, I assert that resilience is an important factor to consider in studying arid land political ecology. Resilience can be influenced by both institutional and environmental factors. I assert here that institutional factors alone cannot explain the pace of change in a particular political ecology. While institutions constitute the dominant signals with regards to economic decision making, environmental signals may be ultimately more significant. I utilize a detailed case study focused upon a watershed and ejido in northwestern Mexico. This case study demonstrates the influence of strong political and economic signals that influence local economics. Nature bats last and can exert powerful forces over institutional choices. Using this case study, I demonstrate how a dramatic shift in climatic as well as hydrologic regimes leads ultimately to a general degradation of agropastoral ecological resources and their replacement with new, stable but less desirable states. Land-use has subsequently changed. The latter set of ecological changes has become a sort of death of a thousand cuts that has reduced the community's ability to tap local natural capital and thereby generate economic capital. This study is intends to contribute to our knowledge of political ecology by evaluating the concepts of ecological resilience, multiple stable states, and adaptive cycles to the study of these social-ecological systems.

À partir d’une enquête ethnographique réalisée dans la région caféière du Soconusco, au sud du Chiapas, cette thèse contribue à la compréhension des mutations profondes des mondes ruraux mexicains et en particulier celles qui ont touché l’ejido. Elle documente les trajectoires économiques, politiques et familiales d’hommes et de femmes d’une génération charnière, née dans les années 1950, ayant vécu deux moments historiques distincts : une première socialisation structurée autour de la production agricole de la parcelle et de l’ejido, qui ont imposé un certain nombre d’obligations et contribué à construire des identités de genre spécifiques ; puis, à partir de la décennie 90, dans une nouvelle étape de son cycle familial, cette même génération fait face à des processus de désagrarisation et d’individualisation des marchés du travail et des interventions étatiques. Au sein du village, les familles rencontrées agrègent désormais des trajectoires laborieuses plus diverses, plus tertiaires et moins agraires, mais aussi précaires et incertaines, fortement différenciées selon les individus, ainsi que le support familial dont ils sont issus et dont ils disposent. Il s’agira de comprendre comment, dans ce nouveau contexte, certains parviennent à « rester au village » à travers l’analyse des territoires familiaux perpétuant l’ancrage local. Cette thèse donne à lire les expériences vécues de la sédentarité et leur mise en récit par une génération dont les premiers cadres de socialisation sont aujourd’hui profondément remis en question. Les hommes et les femmes rencontrés reconfigurent alors leurs affiliations symboliques, leurs appartenances familiales et villageoises. / From an ethnographic investigation in a coffee region of Soconusco, in southern Chiapas, this thesis contributes to understand the profound changes of Mexican rural world and especially those that affected the ejido. It documents the economic, political and family trajectories of men and women of a transitional generation, born around 1950, who lived two distinct historical moments: a first socialization structured around the agrarian production and the ejido, which imposed obligations and built specific gender identities; then, from the 90s, in a new step of her family life course, this generation faces deagrarianization and individualization process of the labor market and state intervention. In the village, the families had then professional trajectories more diverse, more tertiary and less agrarian, but also precarious and strongly differentiated according to the individuals and their family support. It involves understanding how, in this new context, some manage to “stay in the village” with the analysis of the family territories perpetuating this local anchorage. This thesis gets to read the experiences of the sedentary people and the narratives of a generation whose first socialization frames are today profoundly questioned. Men and women interviewed rebuild their symbolic affiliations, their family and village links.

This report chronicles a conflict over a Canadian-owned silver and gold mine in San José del Progreso, Oaxaca, as told by the author’s first-hand experience, eyewitness interviews, and research. Beginning with the Mexican Federal Government’s concession of ejidal land for use by the mining company, without the consent or consultation of the surrounding population, elaboration of the Trinidad mine in San José del Progreso has resulted in division in the community and intense activism, sometimes resulting in violent conflict. / text

There is a critical need for more studies to identify socio-ecological drivers that affect conservation and management of fire adapted ecosystems, yet studies that identify such variables and explore their interaction in specific systems are not only scarce but limited to only a few systems. Although information on the socio-ecological effects of prescribed fire application exists, there is no integrative framework that simultaneously considers the interplay between social and ecological factors affecting the use of prescribed fires. Fire suppression, together with other human and natural disturbances in grassland systems that are adapted to episodic fire, are the major factors that have contributed to the recruitment of woody species into grasslands worldwide. Even though the ecology of restoring these fire prone systems back to a grassland state is becoming clearer, the major hurdle to reintroducing historic fire at a landscape scale is its social acceptability. To address these deficiencies, I studied the socio-ecological factors influencing the use of prescribed fire in Texas, USA and Chihuahua, Mexico using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine how social and ecological factors affect ecosystem conservation and management of semi-arid grassland systems. For the Texas case study I used quantitative survey data analyzed using logistic regression models and structural equation models. For the Mexico case study I used qualitative interviews gathered using a snowball network sampling approach and coded them based on the analytic themes of land cover change, institutional failure, market drivers, and population dynamics. Results from the Texas case study suggest that risk taking orientation and especially, perceived support from others when implementing prescribed burns, play important roles in determining attitudes towards the use of high-intensity prescribed fires, which are sometimes needed to restore ecosystems. Results from the Texas case study also highlight how membership in Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) influence land manager decisions regarding the use of prescribed fire by reducing concerns over lack of skills, knowledge and resources. Results emphasize the potential for PBAs to reduce risk concerns regarding the application of prescribed fire and are relevant to management of brush encroached areas. Through PBAs, effective landscape-scale solutions to the brush encroachment problem can be achieved in Texas. Results from the Mexico case study show how fire stopped effectively being a driving factor on this system decades ago. Socio-political and ecological changes at the national, and international level produced changes in land use disrupting historical fire patterns and contributing to the ecological deterioration of the area. Droughts combined with poor management practices have depleted the fuel needed to carry a fire. Landowners also face safety and legal concerns but in most cases, even if a landowner decided to implement a prescribed burn, an ecological threshold has been crossed and current fine fuel loads (grass) are insufficient to carry a fire that is sufficiently intense to reduce brush cover and restore grassland and savanna ecosystems. Based on my findings I can conclude that ecologically sound adaptive management and social capital are fundamental components of the livelihoods of landowners and land managers in both case studies. Work and investment that is focused on strengthening this social capital will have the most profound effects in maintaining the integrity of grassland systems at a landscape scale.