'Mapping neoliberalism: integrating ethnography and GIS to revisit the agrarian question'
Abstract:
This paper reports on research exploring how land-use decisions shift the socio-ecological landscape in a rural, largely indigenous municipality in the Mexican state of Yucatan. The main method employed was landscape mapping, which is an integration of classic ethnography, participatory GPS data collection and visual documentation of land-use processes. This mixed method mapping project illuminated the relationship between neoliberal policy shifts in Mexico and the region's ecology, as well as the social context in which these ecological changes take place.
Many assumptions are made about the driving factors of land use. This research found that these assumptions are based on flawed logic. One common assumption is that the ejidos with higher rates of parcelization would have a highly fragmented land cover pattern and that ejidos that maintained more common-use land would be more likely to contain larger contiguous forested areas.
After studying satellite images from 2000-2011 and analyzing data collected for this project, we found that the opposite seems to be true. In the present drive for biodiversity conservation throughout the Mesoamerican Forest, the tension between ecosystem health and human welfare is constant. The culpability for ecological degradation falls to agrarian communities that are framed as poor stewards of their environment without consideration of the limited alternatives available to them.
Based on these findings, I argue that conceiving of the social and ecological landscape as components of the same system we can better identify strategies that contribute to both biodiversity conservation and a sustainable livelihood for human inhabitants of this ecosystem.