Doctoral Dissertation Research: Translating Indigenous Rights: A Multi-Level Study of Prior Consultation Law

近年来，事先协商政策在许多部门和地点大量出现，但可以追溯到国际土著权利法，这种政策规定，在活动开始之前，必须与受拟议法律或项目影响的土著社区进行协商。这项研究探讨了国际土著权利法律如何从国际法律的领域战略性地转变或“翻译”到不同的地方政治背景。这一方法超越了从法律的解释、执行障碍或不遵守的角度来考虑政策，而是审查由于特定行为者的战略而经历的持续变革过程。更深入地了解是什么使政策有效（以及“有效”对不同人群意味着什么）在一个经常指望国际法律的领域来解决气候变化、贫困和生物多样性丧失等棘手问题的时代是谨慎的，但这依赖于国家和次国家在不同社会和生态背景下的实施。在人类学和法律的土著权利研究的基础上，这项研究将“政策翻译”框架应用于土著权利法，为审查这一法律体系带来了新的理论和方法。政策分析，档案研究和人种学方法将被用来追踪如何秘鲁的事先协商法在一年的实地工作中，《公约》（以及作为其依据的国际法）已被翻译成书面形式，并在实践中从国际、国家和国家以下各级得到了体现，在利马和秘鲁安第斯山脉的四个实地地点之间划分，在采矿部门进行了事先协商。通过与参与这项法律并受其影响的各种行为者进行访谈，分析媒体、金融和法律的数据档案记录，以了解法律的制定和实施的更广泛背景，并进行绘图工作，以空间化该法律在安第斯山脉四个地点的成果，研究人员将研究各种参与者（土著群体、企业、非政府组织和政府机构）根据其利益塑造政策含义、实践和结果的战略和空间。最终，这项研究将阐明不同的行为者如何利用他们对法律的机构的权力，这一问题与其他法律的背景具有广泛的相关性。在世界各地不同的政治和生态背景下，事先咨询政策的扩散以及国际法的日益重要性使得这项研究及时而引人注目。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

Prior consultation policies,which mandate that indigenous communities affected by a proposed law or project are consulted before the activity begins, have proliferated in recent years across many sectors and locations but can be traced back to international indigenous rights law. This research examines how international indigenous rights laws get strategically transformed or “translated” from the international legal sphere to differing local political contexts. This approach goes beyond considering policy in terms of legal interpretations, implementation barriers, or compliance failures, to examine the continuous processes of transformation it undergoes as a result of the strategies of particular actors. A deeper understanding of what makes policy effective (and what “effective" means to different groups of people) is prudent in an era when the international legal sphere is frequently looked to for solving intractable problems like climate change, poverty, and biodiversity loss, but which relies on national and sub- national implementation into diverse social and ecological contexts.Building on anthropological and legal studies of indigenous rights, this research applies a “policy translation” framework to indigenous rights law, bringing a new theoretical and methodological approach to examine this body of law. Policy analyses, archival research, and ethnographic methods will be used to trace how Peru’s prior consultation law (and the international law from which it was derived) has been translated in writing and in practice, from the international, to the national, to the subnational levels during one year of fieldwork, split between Lima and four field sites in the Peruvian Andes where prior consultation has been implemented in the mining sector. By conducting interviews with a wide array of actors involved in and impacted by this law, analyzing archival records of media, financial, and legal data to elicit the wider context surrounding the creation and implementation of the law, and conducting mapping exercises to spatialize the outcomes of the law in each of the four sites in the Andes, the researchers will examine the strategies and spaces used by various actors (indigenous groups, businesses, NGOs, and government agencies) to shape policy meaning, practice, and outcomes according to their interests. Ultimately, this research will shed light on the ways that different actors leverage their power over the legal apparatus, an issue that has broad relevance to other legal contexts. The proliferation of prior consultation policies in diverse political and ecological contexts across the world and the growing relevance of international laws makes this research timely and compelling.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.