Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants: Relocating Indigenous Identity: Transnational Advocacy, Knowledge and Video in Oaxaca, Mexico

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In southern Mexico, indigenous organizations struggle for autonomy by working with transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with environmental problems, resource use, human rights, and socioeconomic inequalities. New information and communication technologies (NICTs) are essential to these networks of advocacy. Greater access to NICTs provides indigenous organizations withthe means for self-representation, and thus changes the production of indigenous knowledge and identity. This dissertation project studies one such network in Oaxaca, Mexico with an examination of a grassroots support organization, Ojo de Agua Comunicacion, that endeavors to put new information and communication technology,especially video equipment, at the disposal of indigenous communities. This research asks what are the organizational practices of video-mediated indigenous knowledge production? Who is accessing video technology and how is this access mediated by networks of advocacy? How is this video technology used to produce indigenous self-representations and challenge dominant constructions of cultural identity?There are two specific research tasks supported by this grant: 1. an organizational ethnography of Ojo de Agua Comunicacion aimed at understanding its acquisition and use of NICTs in the process of assisting indigenous self-representation; and 2. an interpretive analysis of video-mediated self-representations of indigenous knowledge that this organization enables. For the first task, the everyday strategies of action of Ojo de Agua are studiedthrough participant-observation and in-depth interviews. The second task draws upon geographic methods of analyzing the spaces of representation in terms of cultural politics and the production of knowledge to provide an interpretive analysis of indigenous videos made possible with the assistance of Ojo de Agua. This dissertation research is important for three reasons. First, there is an explosion of transnational NGO activity and this study provides ethnographic insight into the practices of advocacy. Second, the use of NICTs drastically alters the ways that indigenous knowledge is produced and this investigation reveals the impact of these changes in Oaxaca, Mexico. Although this is a case study by virtue of method and research questions, these relocations in authorial agency are happening all over Latin America and throughout the global south, and it is crucial to understand how technoscience contributes to them. Focusing on video-mediated indigenous knowledge, this project will demonstrate how technoscience empowers authoritative self-representations of indigenous identity.