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James B . Greenberg

The University of Arizona, School of Anthropology, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, Faculty Member

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James B. Greenberg came to University of Arizona in 1982, and is a Emeritus Professor of Anthropology in the School of Anthropology. His areas of expertise lie in economic anthropology, political ecology, law, and development, anthropology of violence, urban anthropology, migration, Mexico and the borderlands. He received his education at the University of Michigan, BA in English 1969, MA in Anthropology in 1971, and Ph. D. in Anthropology in 1978. Prior to coming to the University of Arizona, Dr. Greenberg taught at the University of Denver, Mankato State University, Arizona State University, and Indiana University. He has received grants from the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation among others. He is the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Political Ecology (1994-present) and the founder and past president of the Political Ecology Society, which holds its annual meetings with the Society for Applied Anthropology (1994-2019). He is presently a professor emeritus in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He is the author of numerous articles, chapters, and books.His research broadly examines the impact of global capital on the development and well-being of both human populations and the ecosystems that sustain them. Specifically, his research looks both at the effects of larger processes on the historical development of capital, and at local variants of capital that development has spawned. In pursuing these interests, he had focused on credit: how it is culturally embedded and used as economic instrument, social relationship, and technology of power. At the level of local processes, his research examines the incorporation of local populations and local ecologies into wider systems, and how their inclusion changes the dynamics of the systems.In 1974, while doing fieldwork in Oaxaca he met his wife, Eva Zavaleta Rios, a native of Juquila, Oaxaca. They have two children, and three grandchildren. Dr. Greenberg is also a classical and flamenco guitarist, and with his wife has run a guitar business, zavaletas-guitarras.com, that specializes in guitars made in Spain since 1997.

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Books by James B . Greenberg

CREDIT AND DEVELOPMENT: LESSONS FROM ANTHROPOLOGY & ECONOMIC HISTORY

Terrestrial Transformations: A Political Ecology Approach to Society and Nature

Lexington Books, 2020

Humanity’s future may rest on how we deal with climate change, environmental problems, and their ... more Humanity’s future may rest on how we deal with climate change, environmental problems, and their impacts on society. Terrestrial Transformations: A Political Ecology Approach to Society and Nature recognizes that such problems have social, political, and cultural contexts, and that politics, money, and power have physical impacts on nature and society that cannot be ignored. This book brings together a set of chapters that provide an overview of the political ecology approach, illustrating its theoretical underpinnings, central concepts, methods, and major interests. The authors examine the political contexts of a broad range of environmental and social problems, drawing attention to the political and economic forces driving environmental and ecological problems, how societies are transformed as they attempt to cope and adapt to a changing nature, and who pays the price. (A preview is available at Amazon Books)

The Roots of Western Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital in the Ancient World.

Lexington Books, 2017

In The Roots of Western Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital in the Ancient World, Thomas K... more In The Roots of Western Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital in the Ancient World, Thomas K. Park and James B. Greenberg offer an insightful anthropological analysis of credit. They explore the intricate interplay between financial activities and the social, cultural, and economic agencies involved, showcasing how specific parties with unique motivations achieve their goals. Their extensive research delves into the complex relationship between finance and hidden interests in ancient societies such as Mesopotamia, classical Greece and Rome, ancient Egypt, early Judeo-Christian traditions, and the Islamic world. By doing so, they bring to light the connections between financial institutions, social ethics, and the broader society.

The book is a remarkable read that offers fresh perspectives on topics such as how Mesopotamia incentivized production through financial arrangements, the origins of Egyptian surpluses, and the role of language in usury. The authors also delve into metrological influences on finance and the continued relevance of social capital and honor. Through this analysis, Park and Greenberg demonstrate how ancient economies were driven by particular cultural logics that continue to shape our financial techniques, ethical considerations, and concerns with justice today. Overall, this book offers a fascinating glimpse into a rich multicultural history that has shaped modern society in more ways than we realize.

(Preview available at Amazon Books)

Hidden Interests in Credit and Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital across the Last Millennium.

Lexington Books: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498545785/Hidden-Interests-in-Credit-and-Finance-Power-Ethics-and-Social-Capital-across-the-Last-Millennium, 2017

Greenberg and Park's book offers a fascinating and thought-provoking take on the economic history... more Greenberg and Park's book offers a fascinating and thought-provoking take on the economic history of the past millennium. By examining the development of credit and finance through an anthropological lens, the authors shed new light on the power dynamics that have shaped our financial systems. Through their exploration of the multicultural origins of credit, from banking to the rise of predatory lending, Greenberg and Park challenge readers to rethink their understanding of financial history. The book also places social capital and ethical considerations at the forefront, highlighting the role of these factors in shaping economic outcomes. This engaging and insightful read is a must for anyone interested in anthropology, history, economics, religion, or sociology. Whether you're a scholar or simply a curious reader, Greenberg and Park's book is sure to broaden your understanding of the complex forces at work in our global economy.

A free preview is available on Amazon Books.

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Interests-Credit-Finance-Millennium-ebook/dp/B0768NJFFV/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2S4BRDOBXE15X&keywords=James+B+Greenberg&qid=1678210582&sprefix=james+b+greenberg,aps,145&sr=8-2&asin=B0768NJFFV&revisionId=e969a0f4&format=2&depth=1

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico,

University of Colorado Press, 2012

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico details the impact of neoliberal practice on the... more Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico details the impact of neoliberal practice on the production and exchange of basic resources in working-class communities in Mexico. Using anthropological investigations and a market-driven approach, contributors explain how uneven policies have undermined constitutional protections and working-class interests since the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Detailed ethnographic fieldwork shows how foreign investment, privatization, deregulation, and elimination of welfare benefits have devastated national industries and natural resources and threatened agriculture, driving the campesinos and working class deeper into poverty. Focusing on specific commodity chains and the changes to production and marketing under neoliberalism, the contributors highlight the detrimental impacts of policies by telling the stories of those most affected by these changes. They detail the complex interplay of local and global forces, from the politically mediated systems of demand found at the local level to the increasingly powerful municipal and state governments and the global trade and banking institutions. Sharing a common theoretical perspective and method throughout the chapters, Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico is a multi-sited ethnography that makes a significant contribution to studies of neoliberal ideology in practice.

Reimaging Political Ecology

Duke University Press, 2006

Reimagining Political Ecology is a state-of-the-art collection of ethnographies grounded in polit... more Reimagining Political Ecology is a state-of-the-art collection of ethnographies grounded in political ecology. When political ecology first emerged as a distinct field in the early 1970s, it was rooted in the neo-Marxism of world system theory. This collection showcases second-generation political ecology, which retains the Marxist interest in capitalism as a global structure but which is also heavily influenced by poststructuralism, feminism, practice theory, and cultural studies. As these essays illustrate, contemporary political ecology moves beyond binary thinking, focusing instead on the interchanges between nature and culture, the symbolic and the material, and the local and the global. Aletta Biersack’s introduction takes stock of where political ecology has been, assesses the field’s strengths, and sets forth a bold research agenda for the future. Two essays offer wide-ranging critiques of modernist ecology, with its artificial dichotomy between nature and culture, faith in the scientific management of nature, and related tendency to dismiss local knowledge. The remaining eight essays are case studies of particular constructions and appropriations of nature and the complex politics that come into play regionally, nationally, and internationally when nature is brought within the human sphere. Written by some of the leading thinkers in environmental anthropology, these rich ethnographies are based in locales around the world: in Belize, Papua New Guinea, the Gulf of California, Iceland, Finland, the Peruvian Amazon, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Collectively, they demonstrate that political ecology speaks to concerns shared by geographers, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and anthropologists alike. And they model the kind of work that this volume identifies as the future of political ecology: place-based “ethnographies of nature” keenly attuned to the conjunctural effects of globalization.

Contributors. Eeva Berglund, Aletta Biersack, J. Peter Brosius, Michael R. Dove, James B. Greenberg, Søren Hvalkof, J. Stephen Lansing, Gísli Pálsson, Joel Robbins, Vernon L. Scarborough, John W. Schoenfelder, Richard Wilk

Guia a los Documentos para la Historia Mixe en El Archivo del Juzgado de Villa Alta, El Archivo General de la Nacion, y El Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca.

CIESAS Instituto Oaxaqueno de las Culturas, 1993

Esta Guía proporciona una breve sinopsis de los documentos en poder del Archivo de la Corte de Vi... more

Blood Ties: Life and Violence in Rural Mexico

University of Arizona Press, 1989

Some regions of rural Mexico have witnessed in recent years a dramatic increase in the incidence ... more Some regions of rural Mexico have witnessed in recent years a dramatic increase in the incidence of violence. Homicide rates have soared over the past half century and in the distriict of Juquila run from sixteen to twenty times that national average. A personal account of this violence emerges in the story of Don Fortino who lived into his eighties. A merchant familiar with many people in the region, Don Fortino weaves a compelling account of regional politics and violence into the events of his own life. Having lived through the Revolution of 1910, the Cristero Rebellion, and subsequent political and economic developments, Don Fortino demonstrates how the stage was set for violence when coffee became a cash crop in the middle of the 20th century. His story constitutes the first half of this book. In the analytical chapters which follow, the anthropologist James Greenberg explores the various aspects of conflict that Don Fortino described or that Greenberg observed first hand. While some forms of violence are shown to have pre-Columbian roots, Greenbrerg demostrates that the blood feuds that wrack the countryside today originated after World War II when coffee growers began to expropriate communal lands. Greenberg goes on to compare Don Fortino’s explanations of violence with those provided by social scientists who have studied rural Mexico, to consider the strategies people use to avoid or deal with violence, and to address the patterns of conflict and the process of dispute expansion or resolution.

Religion y Economia de los Chatinos

Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1987

Este estudio antropológico de Santiago Yaitepec, un pueblo chatino en Oaxaca, documenta la natura... more Este estudio antropológico de Santiago Yaitepec, un pueblo chatino en Oaxaca, documenta la naturaleza compleja de la religión y el ritual chatino, examina las dimensiones económicas de su sistema de fiestas y considera los factores que están socavando la solidaridad comunitaria. Este libro también explora las consecuencias de la explotación del café y la llegada del capitalismo a este pueblo, un aumento en la violencia personal y una clara tendencia hacia una creciente estratificación económica. (Traducción al español de La Espada de Santiago, 1981).

Santiago's Sword: Chatino Peasant Religion and Economics

University of California Press, 1981

This book examines the syncretic Chatino religion in Santiago Yaitepec, Oaxaca which conserves pr... more This book examines the syncretic Chatino religion in Santiago Yaitepec, Oaxaca which conserves pre-Hispanic rituals and cosmologies, and addresses the central debates Mesoamerican ethnology over the function of seemingly wasteful expenditures of saint’s fiestas. This book examines the role that the fiesta systems play in helping the community to maintain some degree of political and economic autonomy from those dominant in the wider society. It argues that under as the Mexican state and capitalist forces have penetrated the hinterlands, fiesta systems and community solidarity have come under increasing pressure. In recent years coffee has become a cash crop, and this book documents, this has not only changed these systems, but has given rise to growing wealth differentiation and endemic violence.

Book chapters by James B . Greenberg

Neoliberal Reforms and the Political Ecology of fishing in the Upper Gulf of California Dimensiones humanas AIMAC Pronatura

Las Dimensiones Humanas en el Estudio y Conservacion del Golfo de California, 2003

Between 1989 and 1990, the shrimp catch in the upper Gulf of California dropped drastically, near... more Between 1989 and 1990, the shrimp catch in the upper Gulf of California dropped drastically, nearly 60 percent from previous levels, and yields for the next three years remained low. By 1992-1993, commercial shrimpers and shrimp cooperatives were deeply in debt to banks and marketers and had defaulted on their loans. Many shrimpers had their boats seized or were forced to sell them to meet their financial obligations. Conservationists at the time blamed fishermen for the ecological problems in the upper Gulf, contending that problems there represented a “tragedy of the commons.” They alleged that fishermen, even in the face of declining stocks, instead of exercising restraint, continued fishing; and, as Hardin’s (1968) model of the commons would predict, the crash was the result of each fisherman trying to maximize his own individual benefit lest, in a zero sum game, such gains went to another.

Evidence suggests, however, that the economic and ecological problems in the upper Gulf were not this simple. Rather, I shall argue that the problems of the upper Gulf cannot be understood at a local level but are rooted in wider processes that stem from the way the upper Gulf’s fishery, and Mexico for that matter, are integrated into larger political and economic orders. Such problems are often the outcome of political and economic machinations that take place far from the ecologies they affect, but are commonly driven by logics that are alien to the environment- such as the need to pay off foreign debts.

by Simon Batterbury and James B . Greenberg

Greenberg J.B., T.K. Park, SPJ Batterbury, C. Walsh, E. Liebow. Conclusions. In T.K. Park and J.B. Greenberg (eds.). 2020. Terrestrial transformations: a political ecology approach to society and nature. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 251-262, 2020

This conclusion summarizes some of the key contributions of political ecology to understanding co... more

Neoliberal policies and the reshaping of the US-Mexico border

by Luminita-Anda Mandache and James B . Greenberg

The Neoliberal Transformation of Mexico

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico, 2012

Neoliberalism, as a form of market fundamentalism, is both seductive and one of those dangerous e... more Neoliberalism, as a form of market fundamentalism, is both seductive and one of those dangerous economic ideologies that seems impervious to the lessons of history. On its seductive side, neoliberalism embraces many of the core values that are at the heart of US society: freedom, democracy, individualism, and entrepreneurship. It is how these goals are pursued that is the stuff of politics, with great differences between liberal and conservative visions of both markets and the role of the state. Despite its name, neoliberalism is a right- wing economic philosophy that emphasizes laissez-faire free markets, free trade, and private property and at the same time is deeply distrustful of government intervention and regulation. With hindsight, it is now abundantly clear that lais- sez-faire capital left to its own devices (although perhaps vices is more accurate) Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico encourages risk and rewards greed, and the price of failures has all too often been paid by the innocent. No one doubts that neoliberal deregulation is responsible for the recent debacles in the mortgage and securities markets, which, as they quickly went global, destroyed more economic assets than any natural disaster. But neither neoliberalism nor its catastrophic consequences are new.

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico. Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico, edited by Thomas Weaver, et al., University Press of Colorado, 2012., 2012

There are natural disasters, and then there is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is an economic philos... more There are natural disasters, and then there is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that holds that free markets provide the most efficient solution to economic and social problems and that governments should not interfere with them. This book takes an anthropological approach to Mexico’s experience with neoliberalism by examining its effects on the production and distribution of some basic commodities. Mexico offers an object lesson in the consequences these policies may have if applied at home or when they come home to roost. The neoliberal transformation of Mexico has been profound. The Mexican state has been forced to open its markets, abandon its social programs, and privatize most state-run industries and ejido lands. While the big picture of neoliberalism in Mexico is well documented, its more profound effects are not. Neoliberalism has transformed the Mexican econ- omy by altering the mobility and composition of local and international forms of capital. This has transfigured the ways and processes through which people and commodities are mobilized while also changing the biophysical properties of ecosystems. Neoliberalism has changed the way capital works in Mexico at every level. It has reshaped governance and the role the state plays in the market. It has accelerated processes of urbanization and class transformation. It has fundamentally changed ownership of resources and affected the way commodities are produced and marketed. Our purpose in this book is not to retell the grand narrative of “neoliberal- ism in Mexico” but instead to paint a more human portrait of these processes from the perspective of smallholders and producers, many of whom are from rural and indigenous communities. We tell this more human story by focus- ing on particular commodities and asking how their production and marketing have changed under neoliberalism. We believe this focus on commodities and commodity chains offers a unique perspective and valuable new insights into the impacts of neoliberalism. By ground- ing our analyses in specific commodities and places, we are able to look at the impact of neoliberalism on the activities of real people. This approach allows us to examine the complex interactions among local, politically mediated systems of demand, the devolution of national power to state or municipal levels, and global trade and banking institutions.

Neoliberal Capital and the Mobility Approach in Anthropology

Neoliberalism. In Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico., 2012

ABSTRACT A pdf of this item is available by request from [email protected] . This offers a fundam... more ABSTRACT A pdf of this item is available by request from [email protected] . This offers a fundamental theory of neoliberalism, centered on the interaction of abstracted (&quot;discretized&quot;) capital and place-based processes encompassed by the concept of mobility. lay out an argument about how anthropologists might study the relationships between places within the world system, highlighting the ceaseless movement of people, commodities, and biophysical components among them—orchestrated by peculiarly rootless forms of capital. This puts neoliberalism in its place as just the latest phase of capitalist orchestration of space and power, reworking previous formations. We emphasize mobility as constitutive of places, in both stabilizing as well as transformative ways; some flow repeat, building up places; others erode them; but discretized capital increasingly orchestrates the entire panoply of flows. Houses, land, factories, and infrastructure are less mobile than stocks, bonds, and futures; therefore, neoliberal policies have a different effect on the mobility of capital and flows of goods and people. Credit in this form creates disembodied, abstract financial vehicles that permit, for example, the transfer of titles, even when land itself cannot move. The authors contend that the basic thrust of neoliberal programs is to allow capital to move freely in and out of local markets and to pry loose assets from their place to redirect flows of capital, labor, and commodities into internal and external markets.

The impact of neoliberal policies on rural coffee producers in Oaxaca, Mexico

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico., 2012

The Political Ecology of Fisheries in the Upper Gulf of California

Reimagining Political Ecology, 2006

... 1994: 5-10; Hannerz 1989; Kearney 1995: 548-50). ... During the presidency of Porfirio D1az (... more

Conclusion: Structural adjustment, structural violence

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico, 2012

In book: Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico. (pp.315-342.)Edition: 2012Chapter: Con... more

Carlos Velez-Ibanez and James B. Greenberg. 2005. Formation and Transformation of Funds of Knowledge IN Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households and Classrooms. Norma Gonzalez, ed. Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Pp. 47-70

CREDIT AND DEVELOPMENT: LESSONS FROM ANTHROPOLOGY & ECONOMIC HISTORY

Terrestrial Transformations: A Political Ecology Approach to Society and Nature

Lexington Books, 2020

Humanity’s future may rest on how we deal with climate change, environmental problems, and their ... more Humanity’s future may rest on how we deal with climate change, environmental problems, and their impacts on society. Terrestrial Transformations: A Political Ecology Approach to Society and Nature recognizes that such problems have social, political, and cultural contexts, and that politics, money, and power have physical impacts on nature and society that cannot be ignored. This book brings together a set of chapters that provide an overview of the political ecology approach, illustrating its theoretical underpinnings, central concepts, methods, and major interests. The authors examine the political contexts of a broad range of environmental and social problems, drawing attention to the political and economic forces driving environmental and ecological problems, how societies are transformed as they attempt to cope and adapt to a changing nature, and who pays the price. (A preview is available at Amazon Books)

The Roots of Western Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital in the Ancient World.

Lexington Books, 2017

In The Roots of Western Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital in the Ancient World, Thomas K... more In The Roots of Western Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital in the Ancient World, Thomas K. Park and James B. Greenberg offer an insightful anthropological analysis of credit. They explore the intricate interplay between financial activities and the social, cultural, and economic agencies involved, showcasing how specific parties with unique motivations achieve their goals. Their extensive research delves into the complex relationship between finance and hidden interests in ancient societies such as Mesopotamia, classical Greece and Rome, ancient Egypt, early Judeo-Christian traditions, and the Islamic world. By doing so, they bring to light the connections between financial institutions, social ethics, and the broader society.

The book is a remarkable read that offers fresh perspectives on topics such as how Mesopotamia incentivized production through financial arrangements, the origins of Egyptian surpluses, and the role of language in usury. The authors also delve into metrological influences on finance and the continued relevance of social capital and honor. Through this analysis, Park and Greenberg demonstrate how ancient economies were driven by particular cultural logics that continue to shape our financial techniques, ethical considerations, and concerns with justice today. Overall, this book offers a fascinating glimpse into a rich multicultural history that has shaped modern society in more ways than we realize.

(Preview available at Amazon Books)

Hidden Interests in Credit and Finance: Power, Ethics, and Social Capital across the Last Millennium.

Lexington Books: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498545785/Hidden-Interests-in-Credit-and-Finance-Power-Ethics-and-Social-Capital-across-the-Last-Millennium, 2017

Greenberg and Park's book offers a fascinating and thought-provoking take on the economic history... more Greenberg and Park's book offers a fascinating and thought-provoking take on the economic history of the past millennium. By examining the development of credit and finance through an anthropological lens, the authors shed new light on the power dynamics that have shaped our financial systems. Through their exploration of the multicultural origins of credit, from banking to the rise of predatory lending, Greenberg and Park challenge readers to rethink their understanding of financial history. The book also places social capital and ethical considerations at the forefront, highlighting the role of these factors in shaping economic outcomes. This engaging and insightful read is a must for anyone interested in anthropology, history, economics, religion, or sociology. Whether you're a scholar or simply a curious reader, Greenberg and Park's book is sure to broaden your understanding of the complex forces at work in our global economy.

A free preview is available on Amazon Books.

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Interests-Credit-Finance-Millennium-ebook/dp/B0768NJFFV/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2S4BRDOBXE15X&keywords=James+B+Greenberg&qid=1678210582&sprefix=james+b+greenberg,aps,145&sr=8-2&asin=B0768NJFFV&revisionId=e969a0f4&format=2&depth=1

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico,

University of Colorado Press, 2012

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico details the impact of neoliberal practice on the... more Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico details the impact of neoliberal practice on the production and exchange of basic resources in working-class communities in Mexico. Using anthropological investigations and a market-driven approach, contributors explain how uneven policies have undermined constitutional protections and working-class interests since the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Detailed ethnographic fieldwork shows how foreign investment, privatization, deregulation, and elimination of welfare benefits have devastated national industries and natural resources and threatened agriculture, driving the campesinos and working class deeper into poverty. Focusing on specific commodity chains and the changes to production and marketing under neoliberalism, the contributors highlight the detrimental impacts of policies by telling the stories of those most affected by these changes. They detail the complex interplay of local and global forces, from the politically mediated systems of demand found at the local level to the increasingly powerful municipal and state governments and the global trade and banking institutions. Sharing a common theoretical perspective and method throughout the chapters, Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico is a multi-sited ethnography that makes a significant contribution to studies of neoliberal ideology in practice.

Reimaging Political Ecology

Duke University Press, 2006

Reimagining Political Ecology is a state-of-the-art collection of ethnographies grounded in polit... more Reimagining Political Ecology is a state-of-the-art collection of ethnographies grounded in political ecology. When political ecology first emerged as a distinct field in the early 1970s, it was rooted in the neo-Marxism of world system theory. This collection showcases second-generation political ecology, which retains the Marxist interest in capitalism as a global structure but which is also heavily influenced by poststructuralism, feminism, practice theory, and cultural studies. As these essays illustrate, contemporary political ecology moves beyond binary thinking, focusing instead on the interchanges between nature and culture, the symbolic and the material, and the local and the global. Aletta Biersack’s introduction takes stock of where political ecology has been, assesses the field’s strengths, and sets forth a bold research agenda for the future. Two essays offer wide-ranging critiques of modernist ecology, with its artificial dichotomy between nature and culture, faith in the scientific management of nature, and related tendency to dismiss local knowledge. The remaining eight essays are case studies of particular constructions and appropriations of nature and the complex politics that come into play regionally, nationally, and internationally when nature is brought within the human sphere. Written by some of the leading thinkers in environmental anthropology, these rich ethnographies are based in locales around the world: in Belize, Papua New Guinea, the Gulf of California, Iceland, Finland, the Peruvian Amazon, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Collectively, they demonstrate that political ecology speaks to concerns shared by geographers, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and anthropologists alike. And they model the kind of work that this volume identifies as the future of political ecology: place-based “ethnographies of nature” keenly attuned to the conjunctural effects of globalization.

Contributors. Eeva Berglund, Aletta Biersack, J. Peter Brosius, Michael R. Dove, James B. Greenberg, Søren Hvalkof, J. Stephen Lansing, Gísli Pálsson, Joel Robbins, Vernon L. Scarborough, John W. Schoenfelder, Richard Wilk

Guia a los Documentos para la Historia Mixe en El Archivo del Juzgado de Villa Alta, El Archivo General de la Nacion, y El Archivo General del Estado de Oaxaca.

CIESAS Instituto Oaxaqueno de las Culturas, 1993

Esta Guía proporciona una breve sinopsis de los documentos en poder del Archivo de la Corte de Vi... more

Blood Ties: Life and Violence in Rural Mexico

University of Arizona Press, 1989

Some regions of rural Mexico have witnessed in recent years a dramatic increase in the incidence ... more Some regions of rural Mexico have witnessed in recent years a dramatic increase in the incidence of violence. Homicide rates have soared over the past half century and in the distriict of Juquila run from sixteen to twenty times that national average. A personal account of this violence emerges in the story of Don Fortino who lived into his eighties. A merchant familiar with many people in the region, Don Fortino weaves a compelling account of regional politics and violence into the events of his own life. Having lived through the Revolution of 1910, the Cristero Rebellion, and subsequent political and economic developments, Don Fortino demonstrates how the stage was set for violence when coffee became a cash crop in the middle of the 20th century. His story constitutes the first half of this book. In the analytical chapters which follow, the anthropologist James Greenberg explores the various aspects of conflict that Don Fortino described or that Greenberg observed first hand. While some forms of violence are shown to have pre-Columbian roots, Greenbrerg demostrates that the blood feuds that wrack the countryside today originated after World War II when coffee growers began to expropriate communal lands. Greenberg goes on to compare Don Fortino’s explanations of violence with those provided by social scientists who have studied rural Mexico, to consider the strategies people use to avoid or deal with violence, and to address the patterns of conflict and the process of dispute expansion or resolution.

Religion y Economia de los Chatinos

Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1987

Este estudio antropológico de Santiago Yaitepec, un pueblo chatino en Oaxaca, documenta la natura... more Este estudio antropológico de Santiago Yaitepec, un pueblo chatino en Oaxaca, documenta la naturaleza compleja de la religión y el ritual chatino, examina las dimensiones económicas de su sistema de fiestas y considera los factores que están socavando la solidaridad comunitaria. Este libro también explora las consecuencias de la explotación del café y la llegada del capitalismo a este pueblo, un aumento en la violencia personal y una clara tendencia hacia una creciente estratificación económica. (Traducción al español de La Espada de Santiago, 1981).

Santiago's Sword: Chatino Peasant Religion and Economics

University of California Press, 1981

This book examines the syncretic Chatino religion in Santiago Yaitepec, Oaxaca which conserves pr... more This book examines the syncretic Chatino religion in Santiago Yaitepec, Oaxaca which conserves pre-Hispanic rituals and cosmologies, and addresses the central debates Mesoamerican ethnology over the function of seemingly wasteful expenditures of saint’s fiestas. This book examines the role that the fiesta systems play in helping the community to maintain some degree of political and economic autonomy from those dominant in the wider society. It argues that under as the Mexican state and capitalist forces have penetrated the hinterlands, fiesta systems and community solidarity have come under increasing pressure. In recent years coffee has become a cash crop, and this book documents, this has not only changed these systems, but has given rise to growing wealth differentiation and endemic violence.

Neoliberal Reforms and the Political Ecology of fishing in the Upper Gulf of California Dimensiones humanas AIMAC Pronatura

Las Dimensiones Humanas en el Estudio y Conservacion del Golfo de California, 2003

Between 1989 and 1990, the shrimp catch in the upper Gulf of California dropped drastically, near... more Between 1989 and 1990, the shrimp catch in the upper Gulf of California dropped drastically, nearly 60 percent from previous levels, and yields for the next three years remained low. By 1992-1993, commercial shrimpers and shrimp cooperatives were deeply in debt to banks and marketers and had defaulted on their loans. Many shrimpers had their boats seized or were forced to sell them to meet their financial obligations. Conservationists at the time blamed fishermen for the ecological problems in the upper Gulf, contending that problems there represented a “tragedy of the commons.” They alleged that fishermen, even in the face of declining stocks, instead of exercising restraint, continued fishing; and, as Hardin’s (1968) model of the commons would predict, the crash was the result of each fisherman trying to maximize his own individual benefit lest, in a zero sum game, such gains went to another.

Evidence suggests, however, that the economic and ecological problems in the upper Gulf were not this simple. Rather, I shall argue that the problems of the upper Gulf cannot be understood at a local level but are rooted in wider processes that stem from the way the upper Gulf’s fishery, and Mexico for that matter, are integrated into larger political and economic orders. Such problems are often the outcome of political and economic machinations that take place far from the ecologies they affect, but are commonly driven by logics that are alien to the environment- such as the need to pay off foreign debts.

by Simon Batterbury and James B . Greenberg

Greenberg J.B., T.K. Park, SPJ Batterbury, C. Walsh, E. Liebow. Conclusions. In T.K. Park and J.B. Greenberg (eds.). 2020. Terrestrial transformations: a political ecology approach to society and nature. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 251-262, 2020

This conclusion summarizes some of the key contributions of political ecology to understanding co... more

Neoliberal policies and the reshaping of the US-Mexico border

by Luminita-Anda Mandache and James B . Greenberg

The Neoliberal Transformation of Mexico

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico, 2012

Neoliberalism, as a form of market fundamentalism, is both seductive and one of those dangerous e... more Neoliberalism, as a form of market fundamentalism, is both seductive and one of those dangerous economic ideologies that seems impervious to the lessons of history. On its seductive side, neoliberalism embraces many of the core values that are at the heart of US society: freedom, democracy, individualism, and entrepreneurship. It is how these goals are pursued that is the stuff of politics, with great differences between liberal and conservative visions of both markets and the role of the state. Despite its name, neoliberalism is a right- wing economic philosophy that emphasizes laissez-faire free markets, free trade, and private property and at the same time is deeply distrustful of government intervention and regulation. With hindsight, it is now abundantly clear that lais- sez-faire capital left to its own devices (although perhaps vices is more accurate) Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico encourages risk and rewards greed, and the price of failures has all too often been paid by the innocent. No one doubts that neoliberal deregulation is responsible for the recent debacles in the mortgage and securities markets, which, as they quickly went global, destroyed more economic assets than any natural disaster. But neither neoliberalism nor its catastrophic consequences are new.

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico. Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico, edited by Thomas Weaver, et al., University Press of Colorado, 2012., 2012

There are natural disasters, and then there is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is an economic philos... more There are natural disasters, and then there is neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that holds that free markets provide the most efficient solution to economic and social problems and that governments should not interfere with them. This book takes an anthropological approach to Mexico’s experience with neoliberalism by examining its effects on the production and distribution of some basic commodities. Mexico offers an object lesson in the consequences these policies may have if applied at home or when they come home to roost. The neoliberal transformation of Mexico has been profound. The Mexican state has been forced to open its markets, abandon its social programs, and privatize most state-run industries and ejido lands. While the big picture of neoliberalism in Mexico is well documented, its more profound effects are not. Neoliberalism has transformed the Mexican econ- omy by altering the mobility and composition of local and international forms of capital. This has transfigured the ways and processes through which people and commodities are mobilized while also changing the biophysical properties of ecosystems. Neoliberalism has changed the way capital works in Mexico at every level. It has reshaped governance and the role the state plays in the market. It has accelerated processes of urbanization and class transformation. It has fundamentally changed ownership of resources and affected the way commodities are produced and marketed. Our purpose in this book is not to retell the grand narrative of “neoliberal- ism in Mexico” but instead to paint a more human portrait of these processes from the perspective of smallholders and producers, many of whom are from rural and indigenous communities. We tell this more human story by focus- ing on particular commodities and asking how their production and marketing have changed under neoliberalism. We believe this focus on commodities and commodity chains offers a unique perspective and valuable new insights into the impacts of neoliberalism. By ground- ing our analyses in specific commodities and places, we are able to look at the impact of neoliberalism on the activities of real people. This approach allows us to examine the complex interactions among local, politically mediated systems of demand, the devolution of national power to state or municipal levels, and global trade and banking institutions.

Neoliberal Capital and the Mobility Approach in Anthropology

Neoliberalism. In Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico., 2012

ABSTRACT A pdf of this item is available by request from [email protected] . This offers a fundam... more ABSTRACT A pdf of this item is available by request from [email protected] . This offers a fundamental theory of neoliberalism, centered on the interaction of abstracted (&quot;discretized&quot;) capital and place-based processes encompassed by the concept of mobility. lay out an argument about how anthropologists might study the relationships between places within the world system, highlighting the ceaseless movement of people, commodities, and biophysical components among them—orchestrated by peculiarly rootless forms of capital. This puts neoliberalism in its place as just the latest phase of capitalist orchestration of space and power, reworking previous formations. We emphasize mobility as constitutive of places, in both stabilizing as well as transformative ways; some flow repeat, building up places; others erode them; but discretized capital increasingly orchestrates the entire panoply of flows. Houses, land, factories, and infrastructure are less mobile than stocks, bonds, and futures; therefore, neoliberal policies have a different effect on the mobility of capital and flows of goods and people. Credit in this form creates disembodied, abstract financial vehicles that permit, for example, the transfer of titles, even when land itself cannot move. The authors contend that the basic thrust of neoliberal programs is to allow capital to move freely in and out of local markets and to pry loose assets from their place to redirect flows of capital, labor, and commodities into internal and external markets.

The impact of neoliberal policies on rural coffee producers in Oaxaca, Mexico

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico., 2012

The Political Ecology of Fisheries in the Upper Gulf of California

Reimagining Political Ecology, 2006

... 1994: 5-10; Hannerz 1989; Kearney 1995: 548-50). ... During the presidency of Porfirio D1az (... more

Conclusion: Structural adjustment, structural violence

Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico, 2012

In book: Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico. (pp.315-342.)Edition: 2012Chapter: Con... more

Carlos Velez-Ibanez and James B. Greenberg. 2005. Formation and Transformation of Funds of Knowledge IN Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households and Classrooms. Norma Gonzalez, ed. Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Pp. 47-70

Metta Brogden and James B. Greenberg. 2004. The Flight for the West: A Political Ecology of Land Use Conflicts in Arizona. IN Political Ecology Across Spaces, Scales and Social Groups, Susan Paulson and Lisa Gizon, eds. Rutgers University Press

Money and Violence in Chatino Communities of Oaxaca, Mexico

Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 1988

iAccepted wisdom in development practice is that if one increases income, one betters the standar... more iAccepted wisdom in development practice is that if one increases income, one betters the standard of living. This paper explores the counter case posed by the introduction of coffee as a cash crop on communal lands within Chatino communities. It documents how coffee has led to transformations of land tenure which have distorted the distribution of land and has led to attendant increases in homicide rates, and infant and child mortality. The Premise of Development One of the fundamental assumptions of development work is this: the more one increases personal income, the better off people are. The corollary of this assumption is that the way to raise personal income is to push people to grow those crops which promise the greatest return. Using the Chatino venture into coffee production as an example, I shall argue that while from a national point of view coffee production has been a great success, generating needed capital for foreign exchange, its effect on the local populace has been devastating. I shall argue that among the Chatino that despite figures which indicate that the return on investment for coffee runs from 5 to 10 times higher per hectare than for corn (Hernandez-Diaz 1987:99-115), cash cropping has led a series of problems, distortions, and dependencies which have concentrated these benefits in a few hands, and have worsened rather than improved the standard of living of the vast majority of the population. The Chatino are an ethnic enclave of some 30,000 speakers in the Sierra Madre del Sur of Oaxaca. They inhabit an area that runs north from the Pacific coast inland 50 km to the Rio Atoyac (lat 16' 25" N), and from the Rio Verde (long 98f 12" W) east 70 km to Puerto Escondito. Of their some 25 villages, the bulk are concentrated in the district of Juquila, with Zenzontepec, the exception, found in the district of Sola de Vega. The area is mountainous. Numerous rivers and streams have carved narrow

James B. Greenberg. 2001 The Chatino. Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. David Carrasco et al. editors, New York: Oxford University Press

Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. , 2001

Identification. The Chatino are an indigenous group of the state of Oaxaca (/places/latin-america... more Identification. The Chatino are an indigenous group of the state of Oaxaca (/places/latin-america-and-caribbean/mexican-politicalgeography/oaxaca), Mexico. The term "Chatino" is a Spanish rendering of the word cha'tno, which glosses literally as "words work." The Chatino use this word to refer both to their language and themselves. As a group, they distinguish themselves from neighboring Zapotec who speak cha'mstye, "crazy words," and from the bordering Mixtec who speak cha'puta, "whore's words." Location. There are some fifty Chatino communities along the Pacific coast of Oaxaca from 16°00ʹ to 16°36ʹ N and from 97°30ʹ to 97°34ʹ W. The majority of these communities are in eight municipios in the district of Juquila-San Juan (/places/latin-america-andcaribbean/south-american-political-geography/san-juan) Lachao, San Juan (/places/latin-america-and-caribbean/south-americanpolitical-geography/san-juan) Quiahije,

Chatino de la Zona Alta, 1997

https://arqueologiamexicana.mx/sites/default/files/banco_imagenes/chatino_de_la_zona_alta.pdf

James B. Greenberg 1995. Capital, Ritual, and the Boundaries of Closed Corporate Communities. In Articulating Hidden Histories., eds. Rayna Rapp and Jane Schneider. University of California Press., pp. 67-81

Funds of Knowledge: Historical Constitution, Social Distribution, and Transmission.

Restructuring to Promote Learning in American Schools: Selected Readings," Vol II. William T. Pink, Donna S. Ogle, and Beau F. Jones, Eds. Elmhurst: North Central Regional Education Educational Lab., Elmhurst, IL., 1990

James B. Greenberg's (1990) article describes the way the Community Literacy Project at the Unive... more James B. Greenberg's (1990) article describes the way the Community Literacy Project at the University of Arizona has approached bridging the home-school distance for Mexican-American families. The project has contrasted the kinds of knowledge needed in a agrarian society (from which most Mexican families have come) with that which is needed in industrial-shaped American schools, and in doing so the sources of problems become clear. Outside of the industrial world, Greenberg argues few cultures have problems in educating their children to become useful members of society. While such societies may be organizationally less complex, the complex bodies of knowledge which must be mastered--ritual, ecological, social--are no less complex than our own. So, what is it about the way in which we have organized education in our schools that sets children up to fail? Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most children did not attend school. With the spread of compulsory education by the early 1900s, the increasing costs of education became almost a universal concern. School reformers began to apply Taylorism to schooling, and tried to design schools to more closely approximate factories in their day-to-day operations. In their quest for efficiency, schools have turned to economies of scale, and like factories have evolved similar organizational principles which contrast markedly from those used in homes: centralization, hierarchical organization, regimentation, and rigid codes of discipline.

Greenberg uses the concept of "knowledge funds" developed by the community literacy projects to offer a critique of the industrial model of education, based on Taylorism, which, instead of fostering development, often leads to underdevelopment in children. He argues that schools' organizational structure, resembling assembly lines, contrasts starkly with the learning dynamics within households. He highlights the importance of contextual learning experiences and criticizes the devaluation in formal education of the funds of knowledge found in homes. He suggests that we need to rethink the hierarchical and competitive models of education, and create more heterogeneous groups in classrooms, akin to family units, where older children take on teaching roles for younger ones, fostering cooperation between children and adults in learning tasks.

Greenberg concludes that because schools seldom make use of the knowledge parents have acquired, the funds of knowledge within households are often devalued. What is more tragic is that because little recognition or status is given to the kinds of knowledge that children acquire in their home lives, children also devalue much of what they know. Specific suggestions for restructuring schooling so that the cultural strengths of a more household-oriented school can be utilized are made in the article.

Luis Moll and James B. Greenberg 1990 Creating Zones of Possibilities: Combining Social Contexts for Instruction. With Moll, Luis C. In Vygotsky and Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology. ed. Luis C. Moll. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3...

Schooling processes among US Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans: a comparative, distributive, and case study approach

ED347022 - Schooling Processes among US Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans: A Comparative, Distr... more ED347022 - Schooling Processes among US Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans: A Comparative, Distributive, and Case Study Approach.

This paper suggests that "Hispanic" populations are a
diverse category. An undifferentiated comparison of the groups only
creates a comparative "ecological" fallacy, which contributes to the
creation of stereotypes rather than understanding. Each population
must be placed within its appropriate historical, regional, and
ecological niche in order to decipher the paradoxes and
contradictions of relations between education, occupation, income,
and schooling performance and completion. Mexicans are predominantly
an employed, working class population concentrated in the Southwest
United States. They attend schools that are largely devoid of either
cultural understanding or cognizance of the family-based "funds of
knowledge" that could be utilized for instruction. Schooling
practices may contribute to the fracturing of literacy capacities
among parents, and such fracturing contributes to parents' inability
to transmit literate knowledge beyond their own generation. For
Puerto Ricans, the regional context of the urban inner city has
created boundaries of poverty, unemployment, poor labor occupations,
and at-risk single-parent households. Such contexts, in part, limit
educational success and performance, and undervalue educational
attainment for occupational success. On the other hand, Cubans,
because of their middle class origins and strong political support in
the United States, were quickly accepted and integrated into U.S.
society. In a short time they gained educational, economic, and
political ascendancy in Miami, especially, and elsewhere. (KS)

Este documento sugiere que las poblaciones "hispanas" son una categoría diversa. Una comparación no diferenciada de los grupos solo crea una "falacia ecológica" comparativa, lo que contribuye a la creación de estereotipos en lugar de comprensión. Cada población debe ubicarse dentro de su nicho histórico, regional y ecológico apropiado para descifrar las paradojas y contradicciones de las relaciones entre educación, ocupación, ingresos, desempeño escolar y completitud. Los mexicanos son predominantemente una población empleada, trabajadora y concentrada en el suroeste de Estados Unidos. Asisten a escuelas que carecen en gran medida de comprensión cultural o conocimiento de los "fondos de conocimiento" familiares que podrían utilizarse para la instrucción. Las prácticas educativas pueden contribuir a la fractura de las capacidades de alfabetización entre los padres, y dicha fractura contribuye a la incapacidad de los padres para transmitir conocimientos literarios más allá de su propia generación. Para los puertorriqueños, el contexto regional de la ciudad interior urbana ha creado límites de pobreza, desempleo, ocupaciones laborales precarias y hogares monoparentales en riesgo. Tales contextos limitan en parte el éxito y el desempeño educativo, y subvaloran el logro educativo para el éxito ocupacional. Por otro lado, los cubanos, debido a sus orígenes de clase media y fuerte apoyo político en Estados Unidos, fueron rápidamente aceptados e integrados en la sociedad estadounidense. En poco tiempo lograron ascender educativa, económica y políticamente en Miami, especialmente, y en otros lugares. (KS)

Creating zones of possibilities: Combining social contexts for instruction

Instructional implications and applications of sociohistorical psychology

Of great value, in both scientific and practical respects, would be the pedagogicalpsychological ... more Of great value, in both scientific and practical respects, would be the pedagogicalpsychological investigation of the reciprocal relation between learning activity and the productive labor that pupils undertake together with adults. This problem has received precious little attention by developmental and pedagogical psychology in the Soviet Union, although the development of learning activity is closely tied precisely to productive activity. V. V. Davydov (1988, p. 34) One of the most interesting and important contributions of Vygotskian psychology is the proposal that human thinking must be understood in its concrete social and historical circumstances. As Luria (1982) explained it, to understand thinking one must go beyond the human organism. One must search for the origins of “conscious activity,” not in the “recesses of the human brain or in the depths of the spirit, but in the external conditions of life.” “Above all,” Luria continued, “this means that one must seek these origins in the external processes of social life, in the social and historical forms of human existence” (p. 25). He later reiterated as follows: The basic difference between our approach and that of traditional psychology will be that we are not seeking the origins of human consciousness in the depths of the “soul” or in the independently acting mechanisms of the brain. … Rather, we are operating in an entirely different sphere – in humans' actual relationship with reality, in their social history, which is closely tied to labor and language. (1982, p. 27)

Good Vibrations, Strings Attached: The Political Ecology of the Guitar

Sociology and Anthropology, 2016

This article examines the guitar trade (i.e.making, collecting and dealing) to examine the politi... more This article examines the guitar trade (i.e.making, collecting and dealing) to examine the politicalecology of the guitar from forests to construction: delving both into its environmental impacts and attempts to protectendangered species, it focuses on the impact of two pieces oflegislation have on guitar making, the international guitartrade, and guitar ownership: the Convention on InternationalTrade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora(CITES); and the Lacey Act Amendments of 2008. In sodoing, it examines the underlying problems (deforestation,endangered species, illicit trade in wood, and unfair tradeadvantages) that these pieces of legislation were meant toaddress; and the politicization of these efforts that has the USCongress deadlocked. This account also analyzes the practical difficulties that legal compliance presents, andfinally examines what alternatives may exist

Microfinance, Law, and Development: A Case Study in Mali.

Arizona journal of international and comparative law, 2013

Since the early 1980s, microfinance has become one of the basic tools used in efforts to reduce p... more Since the early 1980s, microfinance has become one of the basic tools used in efforts to reduce poverty. The theory is simple. Lending small amounts to the poor to fund small enterprises can stimulate economic development and alleviate poverty. However, theory is one thing, practice another. To lend to the poor, one must overcome a series of economic, logistical, organizational, and legal obstacles. Because the poorest of the poor are often dispersed in remote areas, efforts to reach them frequently face The last mile problem invariably involves making organizational choices about how services are to be delivered. We can discern two diverging approaches that organizations have taken to this problem. One is to follow the path of centralization, and thereby seek the economies of scale necessary to reach the poor. The other is a decentralized approach that helps local communities form self-help groups. However, microfinance is based on some very questionable assumptions: 1) that the poor lack access and want affordable credit; 2) the poor are natural entrepreneurs; and 3) that even small loans can make a difference. This article using ethnographic data explores these issues.

Research on Urbanization in the Developing World: New Directions

Journal of Political Ecology

NSF funded a three year project (#9817743) from 1999 to 2003 (one year no cost extension) to deve... more NSF funded a three year project (#9817743) from 1999 to 2003 (one year no cost extension) to develop a way, using remote sensing, to create an accurate sampling framework to study large urban centers in the developing world. The project used satellite imagery from the early 1980s through 1999 to create a classification system for urban habitation in six cities (Marrakech -Morocco, Dakar -Senegal, Bamako -Mali, Niamey -Niger, Dodoma -Tanzania, and Gaborone -Botswana). The use of multiple images makes it possible to create urban classes such as squatter settlement present in 1982, low income housing present in 1992 but not in 1982, or villas appearing after 1992. Multiple urban classes based on date of appearance and quality of housing plus the ability, using the latest image, to sample from all residential areas and to know how much housing fits into each class makes it possible to design a sampling framework to study an important number of urban issues. The original project was primarily a methodological project designed to see if using this technology we would indeed find strong correlations between quality and date of appearance of housing and a variety of socio-economic variables and environmental concerns.

James B. Greenberg 2004 Medio Mileno de Credito entre los Mixes de Oaxaca. Cuardernos del Sur. México, Num 10, pp. 31-50

Cuadernos del Sur: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 2004

This article traces the articulation of the Mixes of Oaxaca with the expanding capitalist world e... more

3 The Fight for the West: A Political Ecology of Land-Use Conflicts in Arizona

Human Organization, 2003

The commoditization of natural resources in a global economic system and the territorialization... more The commoditization of natural resources in a global economic system and the territorialization practices of nation-states present formidable challenges to the sustainable use of natural resources. Likewise, certain environmental problems such as growth management and residential sprawl have proved intractable to our existing political processes. This case study of grazing and growth conflicts in Arizona demonstrates that intractable environmental problems may actually be emergent properties of complex systems, requiring new political approaches that foster collaboration and knowledge sharing between disputing stakeholders. One such collaboration in Arizona revealed that attempts to remove grazing from Arizona landscapes could actually be to the detriment of biodiversity, contrary to the expectations of grazing critics.

Park, T. K., Greenberg, J. B., Nell, E. J., Marsh, S, Mjahed, Research on Urbanization in the Developing World: New Directions. Journal of Political Ecology, 2003 Vol. 10:69-94

Journal of Political Ecology, 2003

This paper discusses the use of satellite imagery from the early 1980s through 1999 to create a ... more This paper discusses the use of satellite imagery from the early 1980s through 1999 to create a classification system for urban habitation in six cities (Marrakech -
Morocco, Dakar - Senegal, Bamako - Mali, Niamey - Niger, Dodoma - Tanzania, and Gaborone -Botswana). The use of multiple images makes it possible to create urban classes such as squatter settlement present in 1982, low income housing present in 1992 but not in 1982, or villas appearing after 1992. Multiple urban classes based on date of appearance and quality of housing plus the ability, using the latest image, to sample from all residential areas and to know how much housing fits into each class makes it possible to design a sampling framework to study an important number of urban issues.

El capital, los rituales y las fronteras de la comunidad corporativa cerrada

Desacatos, 2002

Journal of Political Ecology Vol.7 2000 43 Lluvia Enojada-Tyoo Kuasi': The Political Ecology of Forest Extraction in the Sierra Chatina

The Sierra Chatina (see Figure 1) is inhabited by some of the poorest indigenous communities in M... more The Sierra Chatina (see Figure 1) is inhabited by some of the poorest indigenous communities in Mexico, yet possesses pine and oak forests that are among the most valuable timberlands in Mexico (A. González R. and N. Rodríguez 1995:85; S. Nahmad et al. 1993). Over the last 25 years, rural development has led to large-scale environmental changes in the Sierra Chatina. The most visible has been the loss of 40 percent of the area's natural vegetation (D. Liverman and M. Patterson n.d.). Deforestation has not only accelerated climatic changes in the region, but has exacerbated the devastating effects of flooding as Hurricanes Pauline and Rick proved only too tragically in the fall of 1997. This paper briefly outlines the major activities contributing to deforestation and examines the role played by neoliberal restructuring in these processes. Although commercial logging has been the primary factor in deforestation in the Sierra Chatina, a host of secondary processes have contribute...

James B. Greenberg. The Tragedy of Commoditization: Political Ecology of the Colorado River Delta's Destruction. Research in Economic Anthropology, Barry L. Isaac, Ed. Vol 19, 1998: 133-153

Research in economic anthropology

1997 Caciques, Patronage, Factionalism, and Variations among Local Forms of Capitalism. In Citizens of the Pyramid: Essays on Mexican Political Culture, Wil G. Pansters (ed.) Thela Publishers, Amsterdam. pp. 337-362

A Political Ecology of Structural-Adjustment Policies: The Case of the Dominican Republic

Culture <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Agriculture, 1997

James B. Greenberg. 1997 A Political Ecology Assessment of Structural Adjustment Policies: The Case of the Dominican Republic. Culture and Agriculture Vol. 19, No. 3: 85-93

Culture & Agriculture

This paper looks at the political ecology of Structural Adjustment Policies in the Dominican Repu... more

Political Ecology

Journal of Political Ecology, 1994

When business is bad, as the Chinese proverb goes, paint the store. The social sciences unendingl... more When business is bad, as the Chinese proverb goes, paint the store. The social sciences unendingly seem to be repainting the store with new fads, yet business remains bad. Some would argue that it is time to tear down the store (I.Wallerstein 1991). Others see this as precisely the problem. We are forever slaying old paradigms. Instead of standing on the shoulders of our predecessors, we take an ax to their knees. As each new approach goes after its precursors with an ax, the social sciences have come to resemble, as Eric Wolf (1990:588) so poignantly phrased it, “a project in intellectual deforestation. ” The problem, of course, is that while knowledge is socially produced, to launch professional careers, it must be individually appropriated. This fuels the constant demand for the “new and improved, ” that either adds new bells and whistles to old products or smashes and reassembles them. As old paradigms are cast aside or recycled, so much “new knowledge” has been produced that un...

An Ethnography of Law and Violence in Rural Mexico.

Arizona journal of international and comparative law, 1988

The Chatino communities in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico have an extraordinary proportion of homici... more The Chatino communities in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico have an extraordinary proportion of homicides. Professor Greenberg, an anthropologist, has studied Chatino communities since 1973 to try to find the cause of this violence endemic to the region. Among the causes of this violence are the political and legal position of the indigenous communities in Mexico, which leave these semi-autonomous communities in a situation in which they cannot make adequate use of the state and federal legal system, or find legal redress that the introduction of coffee cultivation since the 1950s has played in breaking of traditional forms of land tenure. Professor Greenberg used ethnographic data, which he personally collected, as the basis of his observations and as a method for describing the complicated and unforgiving social relations in which these communities find themselves trapped.

Money and Violence in Chatino Communities of Oaxaca. Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development,

Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 1988

TiAccepted wisdom in development practice is that if one increases income, one betters the standa... more TiAccepted wisdom in development practice is that if one increases income, one betters the standard of living. This paper explores the counter case posed by the introduction of coffee as a cash crop communal lands within Chatino communities. It documents how coffee has led to transformations of land tenure which have distorted the distribution of land and has led to attendant increases in homicide rates, and infant and child mortality.

James B. Greenberg, 1981. Social Change and Fiesta Systems in Mexican Indian Communities, Latin America Digest, Vol. 15, No. 2. Spring, 1-5

Latin America Digest, 1981

This paper examines the four competing theories offered as explanations for the massive expenditu... more This paper examines the four competing theories offered as explanations for the massive expenditures in closed corporate peasant communiities by mayordomos that sponsor fiestasor various saints. Wolf's leveling hypotheses that such expenditures impede the use of capital within the communiity in the way it is used in the wider capitalist world. Cancian argued that such expenditures are ineffective as leveling mechanisms, but operate to enhance the prestige of these men, and justify the differences of wealth. Harris has argued that the fiesta system is essentially a colonial instrument designed to pump wealth out of these communities and into the market. Dow by contrast has argued that the fiestas are part redistributive system. I demonstrate here how the balance among various theories may better understood by examining the ratio between the number of mayordomos and eligible men to fill them, and the ratio of food from their own production redistributed verses the items that must be purchased. Also considered are how the mix of cash crops, wage labor, and subsistence farming affects the level expenditure and participation of households.

Lluvia Enojada-Tyoo Kuasi': The Political Ecology of Forest Extraction in the Sierra Chatina, Oaxaca, Mexico

Journal of Political Ecology

This paper outlines the major factors contributing to deforestation in the Sierra Chatina of Oaxa... more This paper outlines the major factors contributing to deforestation in the Sierra Chatina of Oaxaca, Mexico and examines the role played by neo-liberal restructuring in these processes. The last 25 years of rural development in the Sierra Chatino has been accompanied by increasingly large-scale environmental changes. The most obvious outcome has been the loss of 40 percent of the areas natural vegetation. Deforestation has accelerated and exacerbated ﬂooding and climate changes in the region as witnessed by the effects of El Niño driven storms such as Hurricane Pauline. This paper will focus on these processes of deforestation in the region. In this paper, we argue that the Mexican government’s neo-liberal policies have encouraged the commoditization of the Sierra Chatina forests at the expense of long-term ecological sustainability. Since 1992, Mexico has moved toward privatization of forests by removing the legal roadblocks to leasing of ejido and communal lands. Moreover, as neo...

Hurricane Paulina: The Political Construction of a Disaster Among the Chatino of Oaxaca

ABSTRACT

The Political Ecology of Climate Change in an Age of Denial 1

Society for Applied Anthropology, 2020

While there is little scientific doubt that climate change is real, there are still many unknowns... more While there is little scientific doubt that climate change is real, there are still many unknowns. Climate change models are best understood as tools for exploring risk, so it is important to understand what risks they can model, and those they can't. This paper looks at risks--real and imagined--and explores how we should try to think through risk, vulnerability, coping, adaptation, mitigation, and precautionary principles as they affect the politics of mitigation.

Evolution of Language

Michigan Papers in Anthropology, 1971

Speculations about the evolution of language depend quite directly on their theory of language. T... more Speculations about the evolution of language depend quite directly on their theory of language. This article reviews the lines of evidence on which such speculations are based in the light of relatively recent advances in the fields of archaeology and linguistics. A critique of Hockett and Asher’s phenomic approach to animal calls in offered. This approach requires that "calls" be viewed as indivisible units, and so lumps features such as intensity, duration, and number of repetitions into a single analytical unit, While this view may be justifiable in terms of phonemic analysis - which defines sounds by their type (stop, fricative, vowel, etc.) and their point of articulation (alveolar, dental, labial, etc.), to characterize "call" system in terms of phonemes, it is argued is misleading and simply inadequate for the analysis of animal systems of communication. Studies made on higher monkeys and other primates, using sound spectrograms and feature analysis show there is some degree of independent reassortment of such features, which is "one of the basic of human languages. The implication this has for the evolution of languages is that the number of "calls" possible is directly related to the number that can vary independently. This implies some kind of incipient grammar. Following Chomsky it is argued that human languages share an innate "subsystem of rules that provides a skeletal structure for the acquisition of language. The significant differences that make human 'languages” are "productive", "open" systems are: 1) The number of features that can vary independently in a signal; 2) The complexity and number of rules contained in the grammar; 3) The degree to which these rules are innate. Human languages appear to have hundreds of arbitrary "learned" rules. A critique of arguments based on vocal anatomy, cranial capacity, and endocranial casts is made. From a linguistic point of view, because the sign-symbol model makes language an all or nothing proposition, it is argued that these endeavors are futile. Since this type of evidence can tell us nothing directly about "language", inference from evidence of behavior would seem to be the only road open. The best direct evidence it is proposed lies a careful analysis of tools. Holloway has proposed that each tool's specific program of construction can be analyzed in linguistic terms. Holloway sees each motor event, as being something like a phoneme, and proposes that the process of making a stone tool is ordered by a set of rules. Because though time the tool kits associated with various early hominids not increases in size but process for making them becomes more complex, the suggestion is made that by comparing in grammatical terms, the rules that generate the particular paths in the trajectory of tool construction might be used as a proxy for the development of grammar.Until such an analysis is carried out, we can make only tentative guesses as to the nature of the transitional forms. It is my hope that such an analysis will be done and that this would enable us to make more precise suggestions about these stages at each level of development.

Closed Corporate Communities / De facto Reservations: A Study of Internal Colonialism in Highland Chiapas, Mexico.

University of Michigan, Department of Anthropology, 1972

The article explores the effects of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 on the Indian communities of t... more The article explores the effects of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 on the Indian communities of the Chiapas highlands, focusing on the civil-religious hierarchy called the cargo system. The cargo system is a type of local organization consisting of four levels of ranked offices, each requiring specified duties and expenditures, that serve to integrate Indian communities by regulating internal socio-economic differentiation. The paper discusses two conflicting interpretations of the latent functions of the cargo system. One view sees it as a leveling mechanism that maintains social cohesion, while the other views it as a stratification system that legitimizes real disparities. The article argues that the bias in the literature on civil-religious hierarchies has resulted in undue emphasis upon the community as the major unit of analysis, while the importance of external economic and political forces in shaping their institutions tends to be minimized. It suggests that an understanding of the distribution of cargos among social groups and the ways in which it may change is essential to an understanding of the role civil-religious hierarchies play in maintaining social cohesion. Finally, the article critiques Frank's metropolis-satellite model, arguing that it does not provide insight into the dialectic between the metropolis and satellite that breaks open the closed corporate community.

Credit and the Emergence of Syncretic Modes of Production: 500 Years of Interactions Between the Mixe of Oaxaca, Mexico and the World Economy

Over the past two decades, anthropologists have become increasingly aware of the larger processes... more Over the past two decades, anthropologists have become increasingly aware of the larger processes that transcend and transform local populations, yet how to meaningfully place local social formations within larger political-economic frameworks without losing sight of their cultural distinctiveness or unique histories remains problematic. Wolf (1982) and Roseberry (1989) present a promising approach to this problem. They argue capitalism reproduces itself not only through its own internal ability to monopolize the means of production, buy labor power, and put it to work, but also by entering into working arrangements with other modes (Wolf 1982:78-79). In the historical process of combining with other modes of production, capitalism introduces new social forms, appropriates or transforms others, and yet -- although subordinate to the capitalist economy-- these resulting syncretic modes not only retain some indigenous ingredients, but creatively rework the forms imposed upon them to meet their own needs. Moreover, because both the dominant mode of production and local modes contain their own contradictions, when one is imposed on the other, the unintended consequences may produce a system that has its own special dynamics (Roseberry 1989:90). What this implies is that we need to understand local social formations not just in terms of how they mobilize and deploy social labor, but also as multidimensional sites with complex ties to wider systems in which different internal and external social groups contend for control over temporal and spatial distribution of resources and labor by strategically implementing technologies of power (Biddick 1990:3-4).
Historically, a number of technologies of power-- shipping, trade, credit, bureaucracies, armies --- have been used to weld larger systems together. Credit has at least three attributes that make it a particularly good vehicle with which to explore how the internal logic of local social formations, without losing sight of their cultural distinctiveness, is linked to the dynamics of wider political-economies. First, as Firth notes, because credit is a promise to repay the loan of goods or services in the future (1964:29), it not only creates enduring social bonds, but as the lender generally sets the terms of repayment, it is readily used as tool to control people and resources, and even to capture regional economies (Biddick 1990:8). Second, because credit often is a quintessential commodity that is bought and sold, it tends to leave more social tracings in the historical record than do cash transactions. Finally, credit is more than an asymmetrical form of exchange, a set of social relations, or a commodity-- its many forms are cultural products that are embedded in the specific social and jural mores of each society, each in its own unique way. As such, money and credit are part of the language of trade, "which every society speaks after its fashion, and every individual is obliged to learn" (Braudel 1985,I:477). In this present work, I shall use credit as a lens to examine how the Mixe of Oaxaca were historically incorporated into the world economy, how this process transformed and continues to modify their local mode of production, and finally how Mixe have interpreted and responded culturally to these changes.

An abbreviated version of this paper was published in Spanish: Greenberg, James B. (2004) Medio Mileno de Credito entre los Mixes de Oaxaca. Cuadernos del Sur. México, Num 10, pp. 31-50.

Book Review Where the Dove Calls: The Political Ecology of a Peasant Corporate Community in Northwestern Mexico by Thomas E. Sheridan

Amer J Sociol, 1989

Reply to DeCicco's Review of Santiago's Sword

American Anthropologist, 1984

Harmony Ideology: Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village . Laura Nader

American Anthropologist, 1992

Escalating disputes: Social participation and change in the oaxacan highlands, by Phillip C. Parnell. Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1988, 175 pp

Aggressive Behavior, 1989

Mary, Michael, and Lucifer: Folk Catholicism in Central Mexico . John M. Ingham

American Anthropologist, 1987

ing many in Orissa, reveal that the people of earlier times had a healthy outlook on sexual union... more ing many in Orissa, reveal that the people of earlier times had a healthy outlook on sexual union: the deities, the ascetics, the naturals, unnaturals, supernaturals, animals, and various combinations thereof, are publicly depicted engaged in copulation. The devaddsiss are a part of that tradition. A question remains: were the males who are represented in these sculptures believed to be spilling their seed? Marglin (p. 214) mentions literary references in which Shiva in his lovemaking with Parvati

Greenberg Women in Border Industries

Women and the Arizona Economy, 1986

A program established in 1965 between the US and Mexico allowed companies to set up twin-plant op... more A program established in 1965 between the US and Mexico allowed companies to set up twin-plant operations along the Mexican border, attracting mainly electronics and garment manufacturers. Many of these companies specifically recruited female workers who were willing to work for low wages, including young single women, older women with grown children, and single parents. Despite this, many of these companies fail due to market fluctuations and other issues. One example is Annie Oakley, a garment-manufacturing plant that uses quotas to manage production and pays workers piece rates, leading to frequent accidents.

Operational Evaluation of Saving for Change in Mali

Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, 2013

This report is an operational evaluation of the Saving for Change (SfC) program in Mali being imp... more This report is an operational evaluation of the Saving for Change (SfC) program in Mali being implemented by Oxfam America, Freedom from Hunger, Plan Mali and the Stromme Foundation with local partners. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded this evaluation, which was prepared by the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA), University of Arizona.
This report focuses on the current functioning of Oxfam’s existing Saving for Change programs in Mali, specifically to provide the context on the mechanisms of group establishment, replication, and functioning. The study addresses four key areas of SfC operations in local contexts in Mali: (a) the SfC administrative structure, (b) functioning of savings, savings and lending groups (S&L), (c) household livelihood systems, and (d) perceptions of the impact of credit on livelihood systems. This study investigates the ways in which community members modify or vary the SfC model to meet local conditions and needs. It also seeks to characterize how SfCs have operated within the context of other local credit arrangements, including state programs, informal moneylenders, informal tontines (traditional rotating credit associations) and other NGO- funded microfinance projects.

Operational Evaluation of Saving for Change in Mali Saving for Change group in

Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, 2008

This report focuses on the current functioning of Oxfam’s existing Saving for Change programs in ... more This report focuses on the current functioning of Oxfam’s existing Saving for Change programs in Mali, specifically to provide the context on the mechanisms of group establishment, replication, and functioning. The study addresses four key areas of SfC operations in local contexts in Mali: (a) the SfC administrative structure, (b) functioning of savings, savings and lending groups (S&L), (c) household livelihood systems, and (d) perceptions of the impact of credit on livelihood systems. This study investigates the ways in which community members modify or vary the SfC model to meet local conditions and needs. It also seeks to characterize how SfCs have operated within the context of other local credit arrangements, including state programs, informal moneylenders, informal tontines (traditional rotating credit associations) and other NGO-funded microfinance projects.

FINAL QUALITATIVE IMPACT EVALUATION OF 'SAVING FOR CHANGE' COMMUNITY MICROFINANCE PROGRAM IN MALI Prepared by

Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, 2012

This report presents the results of the final phase of a longitudinal, qualitative study conducte... more This report presents the results of the final phase of a longitudinal, qualitative study conducted by the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) at the University of Arizona over a four-year period from 2008-2012 of the Savings for Change (SfC) program in Mali. The purpose of the larger study is to assess the operation and village level impacts of the SfC community microfinance program in Mali, West Africa. Since 2005, the program has been sponsored by Oxfam America, Freedom from Hunger and the Stromme Foundation in Mali. It has spread rapidly in the interim and currently benefits 424,290 women in Mali in a total of 18,785 savings groups. The BARA study is one component in a large-scale, mixed method study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates FoundaVon. The quantitative component of the study, which comprises a randomized control trial (RCT) involving 600 total treatment and control villages in Mali, has been led in parallel by Innovations at Poverty Action (IPA); results of both studies will be combined into a subsequent joint report in 2013. This study had two main objectives; the first was to conduct additional qualitative research in five villages of eight that were visited by BARA in 2009 in the RCT expansion zone to determine the impacts and evolution of SfC program over the three-year period of the impact study. Information was collected at the village, household, and individual levels and covered a broad range of topics: including health, education, livelihood systems, coping strategies and resilience, investment and asset management, availability and access to resources, and social networks. The second objective was to conduct complementary qualitative research on a select number of households in 10 villages that have participated in IPA’s high frequency surveys to obtain additional contextual information on individual strategies for using particular financial tools and information on how households are using loans. In addition, this study also focused on gaining a better understanding of the value that households attribute to the SfC program in contrast to a range of other available financial tools, including tonines and other sources of savings and credit that exist at the village level in the communities studied.

Tuberculosis in Oaxaca: Problems of prevalence, treatment, and implications for prevention and control

PIMSA Report, 2012

This ethnographic study looks at tuberculosis in Oaxaca, Mexico, a state with a high percentage o... more This ethnographic study looks at tuberculosis in Oaxaca, Mexico, a state with a high percentage of indigenous population. In July 2010, the authors carried out a rapid assessment of tuberculosis in the District of Juquila, Oaxaca. The aim of this assessment was to 1) examine the official data on the incidence of tuberculosis in the State of Oaxaca; 2) describe the standard practices for medical treatment of tuberculosis in Oaxaca; 3) by focusing on the district of Juquila—a particularly poor region with a large indigenous populations—examine how its social and cultural context bear upon issues of prevention and control. As part of this rapid assessment in the city of Oaxaca, we interviewed anthropologists from the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) and health officials of the Servicios de Salud de Oaxaca (SSO) working in the Departamento de Prevención y Control de Enfermedades Transmisibles. We then spent 10 days performing ethnographic interviews with doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others selling medicine, herbalists, traditional healers, and curanderos, village authorities, tuberculosis patients in Santa Catarina Juquila, and in neighboring Chatino villages of Santiago Yaitepec and San Miguel Panixtlahuaca. In all, we interviewed more than 150 people.

PIMSA DRAFT FINAL JAN28 2011

PIMSA Health Initiative of the Americas, 2010

Undocumented workers and their families often slip through the cracks of underfunded public healt... more Undocumented workers and their families often slip through the cracks of underfunded public health programs that are ill prepared to find TB patients who do not want to be found for fear of deportation. This binational study examines tuberculosis among migrant workers on the US—Mexico border in Arizona and Sonora. We review the social, cultural, epidemiological, economic, and political factors that underlie diagnosis and treatment that contribute to high rates of this disease. The goal of this pilot study is to develop binational collaboration and contribute to the reduction of the burden of tuberculosis in this population by recommending policies that address TB screening, treatment and education in indigenous Mexican migrant communities in Sonora and Arizona. This multi-disciplinary research between academic institutions in both these Border States brings together the fields of public health, epidemiology, and medical anthropology to address this important problem.

Operational Evaluation of Saving for Change in Mali

Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, 2008

This report is an operational evaluation of the Saving for Change (SfC) program in Mali being imp... more This report is an operational evaluation of the Saving for Change (SfC) program in Mali being implemented by Oxfam America, Freedom from Hunger, Plan Mali and the Stromme Foundation with local partners. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded this evaluation, which was prepared by the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA), University of Arizona.
This report focuses on the current functioning of Oxfam’s existing Saving for Change programs in Mali, specifically to provide the context on the mechanisms of group establishment, replication, and functioning. The study addresses four key areas of SfC operations in local contexts in Mali: (a) the SfC administrative structure, (b) functioning of savings, savings and lending groups (S&L), (c) household livelihood systems, and (d) perceptions of the impact of credit on livelihood systems. This study investigates the ways in which community members modify or vary the SfC model to meet local conditions and needs. It also seeks to characterize how SfCs have operated within the context of other local credit arrangements, including state programs, informal moneylenders, informal tontines (traditional rotating credit associations) and other NGO- funded microfinance projects.

Dangerous Groups and Perilous Ideas: Notes toward an anthropological understanding of terrorism

International Conference: Political Ecologies of Conflict, Capitalism and Contestation. Wageningen University, 2016

We are currently living in an era where armed conflicts involving non-state actors are increasing... more We are currently living in an era where armed conflicts involving non-state actors are increasing. These actors, whether labeled as freedom fighters, ethnic militias, or terrorists, raise significant questions about their origins and motivations. While the literature tends to narrowly focus on acts of terrorism, I argue that we must take a broader approach that understands it as part of families of concepts, including power and legitimacy, crime and punishment, injustice and resistance. To gain a comprehensive understanding, we need to distinguish between state and non-state forms of terrorism and examine it as part of a broader range of interconnected phenomena. These include war, blood feuds, gangs, organized crime, messianic and revitalized movements, secret societies, cults, ritual, and religion, I hope this paper will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of terrorism. This approach has its roots in Malinowski (1941) who adovacated using a holistic approach that examined 1 societies as integrated wholes rather than isolated parts, and using a comparative approach to identify patterns, social structures, and cultural norms that were common across different societies. Greenberg 2016

CREDIT AND DEVELOPMENT: LESSONS FROM ANTHROPOLOGY & ECONOMIC HISTORY

Society for Applied Anthropology / Political Ecology Society, 2016

Credit continues to be one of the basic tools in development. This paper address the oversimple a... more Credit continues to be one of the basic tools in development. This paper address the oversimple and narrow treatment of credit in economics which has tended to focus on a few technical dimensions of credit such as interest rates and risk, leaving aside its many other social, political, and cultural dimensions. It is just these omitted dimensions that we as anthropologist fnd fascinating. Unfortunately, credit has not received the attention it deserves by anthropologist. This paper explores some of the lessons that may be learned from studies in economic history and anthropology about the hidden cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions that are often hidden in credit arrangements.

World Bank, Structural Adjustment, and the Political Ecology of Mexico. Political Ecology Meetings, Merida, Mexico, March 24-27, 2010

Political Ecology Society , 2010

This paper examines the political ecology of the neoliberal transformation of Mexico by using the... more This paper examines the political ecology of the neoliberal transformation of Mexico by using the history of World Bank and structural adjustment loans to Mexico and analyzes their scope and implications for environmental and ecological issues. This paper explores the concept of neoliberalism, its origins, and how it has been applied in Mexico. Neoliberal policies of privatization entail massive transfers of assets that increase inequality. Although conditions were far from good before, employment, working conditions, distribution of income, and living conditions have become markedly worse for the masses under neoliberalism. The brutal implementation of neoliberal policies has led to deepening poverty and ruined rural livelihoods. Neoliberal policies of privatization entail massive transfers of assets that increase inequality. Large social sectors have been sacrificed in the name of economic efficiency.

Lessons Learned: Perceptions of Tuberculosis in Juquila District of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Society for Applied Anthropology , 2011

Mycobacterium tuberculosis infects two billion people, disproportionately affecting communities w... more Mycobacterium tuberculosis infects two billion people, disproportionately
affecting communities with fewest resources. To achieve the World Health
Organization’s Millennium Development Goal of halving tuberculosis
prevalence and mortality by 2015, culturally appropriate efforts in regions
of high disease burden are needed. We explore community perceptions of
tuberculosis in three indigenous communities of Oaxaca’s Juquila District. We find the region has little knowledge about tuberculosis, prevalence rates may be higher than reported, and the biomedical concept of tuberculosis is difficult to adequately translate into Chatino. Further study is required to determine how best to promote community awareness about tuberculosis in Juquila District.

Neoliberal Governance and the Political Ecology of the Guitar Political Ecology Society / Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings Portland, OR, March 19-23, 2019

Society for Applied Anthropology, 2019

The paper examines neoliberal governance of the international trade in guitars and their woods by... more The paper examines neoliberal governance of the international trade in guitars and their woods by focusing two conservations acts: The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and the U.S. Lacey Act that outlaws trafficking in illegally taken wildlife or plants. Under neoliberalism, I argue, governance has been infused with new business ideas and practices emphasizing efficiency and accountability which despite their appearance of rationality, are infused with hidden political interests. I argue Acts help large corporations dominate trade in these commodities, and species protection does not address threat that commoditization of woods in global markets pose to forests.

Mercantile Credit as Seen through the Atlantic Slave Trade

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION2001 ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, 2001

The Political Ecology of the Slave Trade: Credit and Ordering Time and Space in the World System.... more The Political Ecology of the Slave Trade: Credit and Ordering Time and Space in the World System. Unequal exchange, fundamental to the capitalist world system, depends upon technologies of power that both order social relations and access to natural resources across space and time, and hides the unbalanced nature of such relationships. Credit constitutes one such technology of power through which unequal exchange relations are established by fetishization and manipulation of time. This paper focuses on the role played by credit in the slave trade and examines the unequal exchange systems that characterized mercantile trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Unlike capitalist systems, mercantile profits do not depend on the control of labor or the means of production, but on the ability to buy cheap and sell dear. Historically, this ability rests not just on the movement of goods and people across space, or on the naked exercise of power—although tribute and monopoly are often part of the equation—but on the manipulation of time. Credit was not only a central feature of the financing of almost all aspects of the slave trade, helping to create and maintain the equal exchange relations necessary to profits, but was also an important tool in the capture and subordination of other economies to western interests. Finally, it will be argued that credit, beyond its role in the slave trade, helped establish a political ecology of unbalanced exchange in which natural resources continue to be appropriated by stronger economies from weaker ones.

The Impact of Neoliberal Policies on Rural Producers in Oaxaca, Mexico

Society for Applied Anthropology, 2003

The Impact of Neoliberal Credit Policies on Rural Producers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Structural adjustm... more The Impact of Neoliberal Credit Policies on Rural Producers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Structural adjustment measures inspired by neoliberal policies have not only included devaluations, privatization, market reforms, lowering of
tariffs, elimination of subsidies, but also major changes to banking
and credit. This paper examines the impact that changes to banking
and credit systems have had on the political economy, of forestry and
coffee production in the State of Oaxaca.

Wall Street to Main Street: The Anthropology of the Credit Crisis

Society for Applied Anthropology, 2012

The Anthropology of the Credit Crisis. The credit crisis that began in the subprime mortgage mark... more The Anthropology of the Credit Crisis. The credit crisis that began in the subprime mortgage market in 2007 has unfolded like a bad Vampire movie draining the life-blood of millions of innocent victims who have lost their homes, and have seen their pensions, stocks, securities and other investments lose value. Mad and hurt, many have looked for villains in all of this to blame. Blaming individuals, although satisfying some deep-seated need to hold someone accountable, is not particularly satisfying as an explanation. This paper looks at a variety of explanations of this crisis, and argues that in many ways it is the story of a perfect storm to which multiple systemic problems contributed: complex architecture of financial markets, regulatory failure, imperfect information, strategies of risk management, and globalization to name but a few.

The Rise of Modern Consumer Credit

Society for Applied Anthropology, 2013

The dilemma of capitalism is that if consumption does not keep apace of production, unsold commod... more The dilemma of capitalism is that if consumption does not keep apace of production, unsold commodities glut the market, causing crises of accumulation. This dynamic has constantly pushed capitalists to seek new markets. Affordability, however, has always been part of the problem. Full cash payment limits the size of the market for a product. And without some from of credit, there are too few consumers at the top of the pyramid to sustain many enterprises. But, and here's the rub, even where there are face-to-face relations lending to consumers is fraught with problems. Collection may be a nightmare. The problem simply put was how to create transactions that would make commodities affordable without engaging in face-to-face relations with consumers. This required new institutions, new laws, and new forms of transactions.

Medieval Credit in the Iberian Peninsula Iberia: The Road not Taken

Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings / Political Ecology Society, 2015

The Road Not Taken: Medieval Credit in the Iberian Peninsula. During the Middle Ages Iberia was m... more The Road Not Taken: Medieval Credit in the Iberian Peninsula. During the Middle Ages Iberia was made and remade by struggles between Muslims and Christians that ultimately changed Iberia’s place within international patterns of trade. This paper takes a political ecology approach to explore why this occurred, and why the development of capitalism seems to have taken a very different path from that being followed in Islamic Iberia, one not heavily influenced by Islamic methods of trade, finance and credit, or its sophisticated system of commercial law, despite the fact that by under Islamic rule, Christians, Muslims, and Jews often did business together, and by the 10th century had developed a thriving international trade with the middle east and beyond that had made Cordoba the most populace and prosperous city in Western Europe.

Neoliberal Governance and the Political Ecology of the Guitar Political Ecology Society / Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings Portland, OR, March 19-23, 2019

Political Ecology (PESO) meetings at Sfaa, 2019

GREENBERG, James (PESO) Neoliberal Governance and the Political Ecology of the Guitar. The paper ... more GREENBERG, James (PESO) Neoliberal Governance and the Political Ecology of the Guitar. The paper examines neoliberal governance of the international trade in guitars and their woods by focusing two conservations acts: The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and the U.S. Lacey Act that outlaws trafficking in illegally taken wildlife or plants. Under neoliberalism, I argue, governance has been infused with new business ideas and practices emphasizing efficiency and accountability which despite their appearance of rationality, are infused with hidden political interests. I argue that= the Lacey Act help large corporations dominate trade in these commodities, and CITES species protection does not address threat that commoditization of woods in global markets pose to forests.

The Political Ecology of Climate Change in an Age of Denial 1

Society for Applied Anthropology, 2020

What the Sciences are Telling Us. Several worrying trends have caused scientists to raise the ala... more What the Sciences are Telling Us. Several worrying trends have caused scientists to raise the alarm about climate change. A converging stream of scientific research documents a wide range of worrying effects: destabilization of polar ice sheets, rapidly retreating glaciers, rising sea levels, increasing frequency and intensity of severe whether events, changes to physical and biological systems, and rising extinction rates among others. While the physical impacts of climate change are already apparent, this paper examines the question of how we think about the social impacts and risks of climate change.

Beyond Mauss: Towards an Anthropology of Gifts and Credit

Keynote Address: Chaire Singleton Symposium , 2017

After a summary of Mauss's Gift, I propose an alternative analysis of credit. The gift is built f... more After a summary of Mauss's Gift, I propose an alternative analysis of credit. The gift is built from simple elements: a donor, a beneficiary and a gift, which implies a simple transfer of a gift between the donor and the recipient. Credit is built on the trinity of the lender, the borrower and the debt. While the exchange of the gift involves reciprocity, because credit transactions begin at the request of the beneficiary, this gives lender an asymmetry of power over the borrower. I then assert that once the debts are transformed into means of payment, through discretization processes, ﬁnancial forms of credit become more abstract and symbolic, and imbued with strong dimensions of class power.

Tzvi HaCohen Greenberg, Lyakhovichi, Belarus, 1818-1900. An Historical-ethnographic Portrait

Tzvi HaCohen Greenberg (1818-1900) was the grandfather of my great-grandfather Max Mendel Greenbe... more Tzvi HaCohen Greenberg (1818-1900) was the grandfather of my great-grandfather Max Mendel Greenberg (1877-1968).1 What we know of Tzvi HaCohen Greenberg are scant facts. That we even know his name is only due to my taking an interest in genealogy while in college, and interviewing Max in 1968. My purpose in writing this biographical sketch of Tzvi HaCohen Greenberg is not merely present his life, but to pay homage to my 19th century Jewish ancestors whose values, decisions, and experiences helped to shape the Greenberg family. I am taking an ethnographic-historical approach to this. This is to say combining what we know of about his life, with what we know about Lyakhovichi, Jewish culture, and the political events in Russia of his time. Although we do not know many details of his personal life, there is a website devoted to documenting the Jewish community of Lyakhovichi which contains a wealth of material about the lives of people he would have known, allowing us to describe the town in great detail. We even know the families who lived in each house, who their neighbors were, what they did for a living, and for some we know of incidents that reveal their character. We also know who the rabbis that Tzvi would have known were, and for some about their teachings and actions. Because Tzvi was an Orthodox Jew, we know not only what he believed, but as Jewish life is organized by calendrical cycle of daily prayers, the weekly Sabbath, and sets of holidays, as well as rituals for life events— birth, coming of age, marriage, and death—we know how he would have observed these events. To breath some life into his story, I have chosen to present it in the first person as a pseudo autobiography. We know enough about historical events and the shape of lives in Lyakhovichi to imagine many scenes of his life, and the decisions he must have faced. In reconstructing these scenes, rather than invent them out of whole cloth, wherever possible I have taken historical materials from the lives of his friends and neighbors-- and repurposed them to approximate his experiences. In the end, I suspect that my assemblage of materials in this biography are as much a mediation on my own character and values, and probably says more about me than it does about him in this regard. Still, I hope my imagined reconstruction of Tzvi, the man and his children, and grandchildren are not too far off the mark, but if they are, that they are not offensively so.

Notes Toward an Anthropological Understanding of Credit

Unpublished Introduction. , 2002

This paper was originally intended to be an introduction to a book on the Anthropology of credit,... more This paper was originally intended to be an introduction to a book on the Anthropology of credit, but was not suitable for the book that evolved. It does, none the less, provide a valuable overview of how to think about credit from an anthropological view point. It's purpose was not to devise a typology of forms of credit, nor even to completely analyze a single type, but given the great variety of forms, arrangements, and institutions that credit takes the world over to begin modestly to sketch out some of the significant dimensions along which credit arrangements vary. In so doing, we hope to lay the ground work for understanding how specific forms of credit operate within a particular political, social, cultural, and historical contexts; and to explore how particular features of credit arrangements may solve not just context specific problems, but also the intrinsic problem of holding people to promises in what is always an uncertain future.

Greenberg, James (2019) "Virtuosos Waters" Commentaries on book by Casey Walsh.

UC Santa Barbara talk, 2019

Casey Walsh's book,"Virtuous Waters, Mineral Springs, Bathing and Infrastructure in Mexico" (Univ... more Casey Walsh's book,"Virtuous Waters, Mineral Springs, Bathing and Infrastructure in Mexico" (University of California Press, 2018) focuses on the everyday practices and uses of water for bathing, washing, and drinking in Mexico. It explores how these took shape from just prior to European contact to the present. Drawing on ideas from political ecology, Walsh takes a broad historical and anthropological perspective to examine the cultural perceptions of water and the value given it. Using this approach he examine the transformations of Mexico's water cultures and their everyday practices including bathing, washing, and consumption of mineral waters across five centuries to examine both the materialist dimensions of water within a matrix of human-environmental interactions, social organization, and power relations as well as to explore the cultural and symbolic dimensions, values, and categories which give rise to these material practices and also produce socio-environmental inequalites as well as ecological impacts.