Invitación a conversar en torno a la obra de Monique Nuijten en la Conferencia de la IUAES (Mérida 2021). Registro de ponencias abierto hasta el 30 de junio de 2021. Para registro, entrar aquí al PANEL 88
IUAES Congress, Merida 2021
Panel 88
Panel Title: Organising practices and
force fields in the œuvre of Monique Nuijten
Abstract: Politics, development, statehood, corruption
and institutions –these are the topics that Monique Nuijten (Netherlands,
1961-2021) pursued as a well-known specialist in political anthropology and
sociology in Latin America and Europe. In her fieldwork among different
populations in Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Spain, she was interested in
what she insightfully called organising practices and force fields.
This outstanding methodological and conceptual perspective transformed social
research by offering us alternative ways to understand politics and state
formation at the grassroots level. Her publications inspired many students and
colleagues working around the globe.
Long Abstract (sic): Monique Nuijten (Netherlands, 1961-2021) is a
well-known contemporary social scientist, who left us an enduring legacy in
several research fields in anthropology and sociology. Politics, development,
statehood, corruption, law, institutions, organization, violence and power –these
are part of the topics that she pursued in her research in Latin America and
Europe. She performed fieldwork among different populations in Mexico, Ecuador,
Peru, Brazil, and Spain. Since her first experiences (in Mexico, in the 90s)
she was interested in what she insightfully called organising practices
and force fields. She formulated her perspective as a critique against
the dominant theoretical schema that focused on State as a centralized and
all-mighty institutionalized force, as well as against the structural idea of “broker”,
embedded in debates on regional power, mediators and political connections. Her
perspective also questions the idea of homogeneity in collective actors and
action, placing key questions on dominant ideas on social movement, resistance,
and subalternity. She also called for a more careful consideration of the
social impact of law, institutionalized procedures, official statements and
historical narratives. All those elements are important in organization and
interaction, and in scientific approaches, but in uneven forms, and sometimes
as rhetoric or conspiracy theories displayed in interaction. Organizing
practices and force fields, thus, consist on analytical notions that focus on the
complex and multiform fluxes of action, a methodological strategy that connects
research to unfinished processes of negotiation, performance, discursivity, and
manipulation of fetishized objects and ideas. In a wider view, her ideas
represent an alternative understanding against contemporary mainstream perspectives
on social power (particularly poststructuralist views on power in a scale that
cancel any consideration of actor/subject), and on social action (that ignore
any wider and long lasting patterns in interaction). This outstanding
methodological and conceptual perspective transformed social research by
offering us alternative ways to understand politics and state formation at the
grassroots level, as well as development, law, bureaucracy, spatial order, informality.
We can know now her analytical approach in her studies on land disputes in
Mexico and Peru, the spatial regime in favelas in Brazil, the political
activism of the (PAH – Platform of Mortgage Victims) in Spain, the utopian
aspirations among practitioners of break-dance in Ecuador, or in informality
and coproduction of urban space around the globe. Her publications* have inspired
many students and colleagues working around the globe. This academic panel will
gather scholars pursuing anthropological explorations on grassroots politics in
our contemporary societies. It constitutes a contribution to the ongoing review
of her work, as in the recent publication Engaged Encounters, Thinking about
Forces, Fields and Friendships with Monique Nuijten by the Department of
Sociology of Development and Change at the University of Wageningen, where she
worked nearly her entire academic life.
The participants in this session, hailing from three
different countries, will discuss multiple methodological and theoretical
trajectories in their own current research.
References:
*- Monique Nuijten, Power, Community, and the State:
The Political Anthropology of Organisation in Mexico (Pluto Press, 2003), - Monique
Nuijten, “Power in practice: a force field approach to power in natural
resource management” (Journal of Transdisciplinary Environmental Studies,
2005), - Monique Nuijten, “Between fear and fantasy: governmentality and the
working of power in Mexico” (Critique of anthropology, 2004/6). - Monique Nuijten, Martijn Koster, Pieter de Vries, Augusto Antonio
Campelo Cabral, “Regimens of Spatial Ordering in Brazil: neoliberalism, leftist
populism and modernist aesthetics in slum upgrading in Recife”, Singapore
Journal of Tropical Geography, Singapura, v. 33, n. 2, p. 157-170, 2012. - Monique Nuijten
(2015) Political activism and the PAH (Platform of Mortgage Victims) in Spain:
the significance of Franz von Benda-Beckmann's work for the study of power,
political agency and legal pluralism at the grassroots, The Journal of Legal
Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 47:3, 476-492. - Martijn Koster, Monique Nuijten,
“Coproducing urban space: Rethinking the formal/informal dichotomy”, Singapore
Journal of Tropical Geography 37 (2016) 282–294. - Maritza Bode Bakker &
Monique Nuijten (2018) ‘When breaking you make your soul dance’ Utopian
aspirations and subjective transformation in breakdance, Identities, 25:2,
210-227
**(Elisabet Dueholm Rasch, Oscar Salemink, Bram
Büscher and Michiel Köhne -editors, Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2020)
Keywords: Monique Nuijten, politics, state, development, organising practices,
force field
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Algunas publicaciones en torno a Monique Nuijten
John Gledhill: Monique Nuijten: a tribute
José Luis Escalona: Los retornos del Estado. Preguntas sobre la fuerza de una idea. A Monique Nuijten
Engaged Encounters. Thinking about Forces, Fields and Friendships with Monique Nuijten. Editors: Elisabet Dueholm Rasch, Oscar Salemink, Bram Büscher and Michiel Köhne
