College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Beyond Consultation: Rethinking the Indigenous Right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent in Costa Rica(2024) Breitfeller, Jessica Ashley; Chernela, Janet M.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is an international legal norm meant to ensure Indigenous Peoples’ right to be consulted about projects that affect their lands. Over the past decade, the small Central American country of Costa Rica has strived to develop and implement a series of new, ‘culturally appropriate’ consultation protocols to better uphold the right to FPIC. This dissertation investigates the concept of FPIC as it applies to the Indigenous Bribri in the context of Costa Rica's burgeoning national forestry and climate change strategy known as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program. Drawing on extended, multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, this dissertation addresses the issues of Indigenous agency and autonomy by considering the ways in which the country’s REDD+ consultations and emerging FPIC processes serve to both strengthen and weaken communities’ rights to participation and self-determination. Weaving together a conceptual framework from political ecology, critical development theory, and political and legal anthropology, this study reveals that the country’s current FPIC protocols perpetuate historical state-Indigenous relations while simultaneously creating new opportunities for negotiation, compromise, and resistance. I demonstrate that FPIC consultations are all at once sites of ontological conflict, a legal instrument for the ontological defense of territoriality, and participatory spaces of (re)negotiation and resistance wherein ontological differences are arbitrated in an effort to shape policy and transform age-old power relations. Ultimately, this research deepens our understanding of how Western mechanisms designed to protect human rights and natural resources intersect with Indigenous ways of knowing and being to inform broader debates on Indigenous self-determination and climate justice. In doing so, it asks us to consider how we—as scholars, advocates, and practitioners—may go about collaboratively reimagining and rethinking FPIC in the future.Item Civil Society, Popular Protest, and Democracy in Latin America(2006-10-21) Frajman, Eduardo Ohav; Alford, C. Fred; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation addresses the relationship between mobilized coalitions of movements and organizations emerging from civil society and the promotion of democracy. It offers a critique of major works in political theory that see in civil society the potential to transform democratic politics, primarily through the protection of civil society from the state in order to allow for the development of new identities and forms of sociability. The three main theoretical objections to these works involve their focus on state-civil society relations at the expense of economic factors, the presupposition that consensus is present in civil society, and the assumption that mobilized civil societies are fueled from the grassroots. Four recent cases of civil society mobilizations from Latin America, in Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Bolivia, are presented to illustrate the deficiencies of current theoretical approaches to civil society. The case studies show the importance of material conditions and the framing of specific grievances in the formation of popular movements grounded in civil society.Item PRIVATIZATION IN COSTA RICA: A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS(2005-11-03) Chamberlain, Anthony Brian; Franda, Marcus; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation offers an assessment of the last 25 years of privatization efforts in Costa Rica. The study argues that the example of Central America's most economically developed country illustrates that one-dimensional thinking about privatization of state services is misdirected. That judgment remains true whether the "one dimension" represents indiscriminate acceptance of privatization or its doctrinaire rejection. More specifically, separate case studies of three types of privatization attempted in Costa Rica demonstrate that in some cases privatization indeed represents an effective response to the particular historical circumstances the country faces. In other instances, however, privatization can be inappropriate. This judgment is based on historical investigation, the testimony of recognized authorities, logical analysis of arguments both for and against privatization, and on responses to the program on the parts of key economic sectors. The argument is made in seven chapters. The first defines terms and provides historical perspective on the topic by examining the concept of privatization in general within the context of commercial globalization and of capitalism itself. Chapter II continues in this historical vein, this time reviewing the history of Costa Rica's general political-economy - in order to convey Costa Rica's unique character and context. Chapter III connects Chapters I and II by contextualizing Costa Rican privatization within the international economic crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s. Within that context, the stages of Costa Rica's integration into the process of globalization are delineated. Chapters IV, V and VI then evaluate repeated attempts to privatize many of Costa Rica's nationalized enterprises. The chosen ventures include the Costa Rican Development Corporation (CODESA), the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) (which includes telecommunications), and the Costa Rican Social Security System (CCSS/INS). The chapters in question review the nature of each concern, its genesis, the reasons advanced for its privatization, and the spectrum of opinion evaluating the privatization process and results. A concluding seventh chapter reviews the dissertation's argument, synthesizes the evaluations provided by the case studies, draws conclusions, and makes recommendations for the future of privatization in Costa Rica.