Revitalizing Our Dances: Land and Dignity in Paraguay

Doctoral Dissertation
Cheryl Duckworth
Agnieszka Paczynska
Committee Chair
Daniel Rothbart
Committee Member
Peter Mandaville
Committee Member
Revitalizing Our Dances: Land and Dignity in Paraguay
Publication Date:November 19, 2008
Pages:313
Download: Proquest
Abstract

Throughout Paraguay, indigenous communities are facing increased and unnecessary hardship as their lands are sold to private agriculture business. They are often subject to arrest, intimidation and torture. As a result of losing their lands, they no longer have access to food security, potable water or shelter. Accordingly, they are increasingly organizing resistance to neoliberal policies, specifically land privatization. The stunning fall of Gen. Stroessner opened unprecedented social and political space for such mobilization. The new sociopolitical space enabled indigenous leaders to form critical (if complex) partnerships with NGOs, accessing social and financial resources. Movements nearly always coalesce around an organizing frame. The prominence of dignity in the framing of this movement is clear. This dissertation will support my claim that once Stroessner’s regime had collapsed, previous narratives around dignity could crystallize into active social mobilization around the Dignity Frame.
 

S-CAR.GMU.EDU | Copyright © 2017
Dissertations
Leadership For Peace And Reconciliation In Post-Violent Sub-Saharan African Countries
Understanding the causes of longstanding antagonism in eastern DRC: Why neighbors fail to co-exist.
Trans Lives in Patrolled Spaces: Stories of Precarity, Policing, and Policy in Washington, D.C.
Nurturing Resistance: The Politics of Migration and Gendered Activism in Mexico
Social Identity Balance and Implications for Collective Action