Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- Mesopotamian roots of the modern financial system -- Mesopotamian financial innovations -- Financing ancient Egypt's organizational economy -- Finance and social capital in Classical Greece and Rome -- Justice to altruism: early Judeo-Christian finance -- Islamic finances and the Eastern Mediterranean -- Conclusion: hidden interests and the anthropology of credit

Finance in the Middle Ages and the Scholastic tradition -- Credit and faith in medieval Iberia : the road not taken -- Early European finance 1050-1650 -- Transcending feudal finance in Western Europe -- Mercantile credit and the Atlantic slave trade -- Chayanov, Marx, and hidden interests in rural Morocco -- Ethnicity and social capital in 1970s sefrou -- Problematizing modern consumer credit -- An anthropology of the 2008 Credit Crisis -- Conclusion: hidden interests and the development of finance

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-liberal policies have devalued the currency, eliminated subsidies, the Chatino have been pushed deeper into poverty, and into unsustainable uses of their forests. Thus, we contend that transformations of land-use patterns seen in these coastal mountains are part of a fundamental shift in local livelihoods from subsistence to cash-based strategies. Keywords: deforestation, Mexico, Oaxaca, Chatino, neo-liberal policy, ecological sustainablity, migration, political ecology, el Niño, privatization, climate change, environmental degradation, rural development.

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

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.

Drawing on a broad range of case studies, the contributors to Terrestrial Transformations explore the political and economic forces entangled in environmental and ecological problems and look at humanity's future in light of climate change and existing environmental problems.