Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement: Rethinking Thuggery: Landed Elites and Geographies of Agrarian Violence in Chiapas, Mexico

以前，当小规模生产者试图从发展中国家的大规模土地所有者手中夺取土地控制权时，土地精英通常以暴力手段将“擅自占用者”驱逐出有争议的地块。例如，在墨西哥的恰帕斯州，暴力反应是20世纪70年代和80年代农民起义的特征。在1994年萨帕塔起义期间，农民夺取了该州约10%的私人农业土地，而大多数受影响的土地所有者反而将有争议的财产卖给了州政府，而州政府又将其提供给农民，这段历史使这一切变得更加令人惊讶。财产权受到直接挑战的土地所有者使用暴力的这种戏剧性转变为本博士论文研究项目提供了一个背景。通过对大土地所有者的访谈、对经济生产的广泛调查、叙事分析和暴力事件的绘制，博士生将研究土地所有者经济权力的兴衰、他们对土地入侵者使用暴力的政治支持的变化，以及土地所有者对暴力的复杂理解。这个项目将在不同的尺度上提供新的理解。它将为当代墨西哥社会变化的动态提供新的见解，特别强调以前很少受到关注的墨西哥南部群体。它还将提供一个新的框架，使长期以来关于财产关系、土地过渡和暴力之间关系的辩论概念化。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。

During previous times when small-scale producers attempted to seize control of land from large-scale landowners in developing nations, the landed elite generally responded by using violence to evict the "squatters" from the disputed parcels. In the Chiapas state of Mexico, for example, violent reactions characterized peasant insurgencies in the 1970s and 1980s. This history made it all the more surprising when, in the wake of peasant seizure control of about ten percent of the privately held agricultural land in the state during the 1994 Zapatista uprising, most affected landowners instead sold the disputed property to the state government, which in turn made it available to the peasants. This dramatic shift in the use of violence by landowners whose property rights are directly challenged provides a context for this doctoral dissertation research project. Through interviews with large landowners, an extensive survey of economic production, narrative analysis, and mapping of violent incidents, the doctoral student will examine the rise and fall of the landowners' economic power, changing political support for their use of violence against land invaders, and the landowners' complex understandings of violence. This project will contribute new understandings at a variety of scales. It will provide new insights into the dynamics of social change in contemporary Mexico, placing special emphasis on southern Mexican groups that previously have received little attention. It also will provide a new framework for conceptualizing long-standing debates regarding the connections between property relations, agrarian transitions, and violence. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.