Global threats to biocultural diversity and decolonial alternatives: Indigenous engagements with agrobiodiversity and language maintenance in Yucatan, Mexico
Final Report Abstract
Situated in the transdisciplinary research field of biocultural diversity, the project investigated indigenous people’s struggle to maintain local agrobiodiversity and the indigenous language in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. In Yucatan, the everyday practice of Maya speakers has played a central role in maintaining biocultural diversity. The continued practice of traditional agriculture has sustained local agrobiodiversity, conserving maize landraces in situ. At the same time, the Yucatec Maya language has been transmitted from generation to generation through socialization practices in family and community life. However, the two forms of diversity – agrobiological and linguistic – are currently under threat owing to the increasing tendency to turn away from traditional milpa agriculture and the shift from Yucatec Maya to Spanish in daily language use. In view of the homogenizing pressure on local biocultural diversity, there are several Yucatec Mayan initiatives to maintain indigenous grains and language. The project identified three main areas in which indigenous people in Yucatan engage in biocultural diversity conservation: (i) everyday practices in the rural habitus, (ii) trade fairs for native seeds, and (iii) digital activism. Onsite and digital ethnography with Yucatec Maya speakers demonstrated how these heterogeneous spheres become connected to form an assemblage to resist the pressure imposed on the Yucatec Mayan way of life. Trade fairs for native seeds and digital activism are initiatives nurtured in the rural habitus but expanding beyond its limits, disseminating values of biocultural diversity conservation to wider audiences. While the rural habitus for biocultural diversity conservation is increasingly jeopardized, trade fairs for native seeds and digital activism are emanative social movements for the cause that engage many stakeholders beyond the local communities. In the face of homogenizing impacts of economic globalization, Yucatec Mayan endeavors at maintaining agrobiodiversity and the autochthonous language can be considered an indigenous proposal of an alternative future that counterposes the current “homogenocene” causing a loss of diversity in multiple dimensions.
Link to the final report
https://doi.org/10.18452/34442
Publications
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“Biokulturelle Diversität – über den Zusammenhang zwischen linguistischer und agrobiologischer Vielfalt auf der Halbinsel Yukatan, Mexiko“, Vortrag im Seminar “Sprachenvielfalt und Typologie“ von Prof. Dr. Melanie Uth, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam.
Yamasaki, Eriko
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“Global threats to biocultural diversity and decolonial alternatives: Indigenous engagements with agrobiodiversity in Yucatan, Mexico”, 17th European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference, Belfast.
Yamasaki, Eriko
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Nurturing Alternative Futures. Routledge.
Kavesh, Muhammad & Fijn, Natasha
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“Food security between cultivating maize and buying tortillas: Shifting foodways among the Yucatec Maya in contemporary Mexico”, Workshop “Politics of basic foodstuff in times of crisis (17th-20th century)”, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Marburg.
Yamasaki, Eriko
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“Memes in Yucatec Maya: Indigenous language activism between virality and rootedness”, Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie, München.
Yamasaki, Eriko
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“Milpa und yukatekisches Maya – indigene Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Erhalt der biokulturellen Diversität auf der Halbinsel Yukatan, Mexiko”, Forschungskolloquium “Die Amerikas: Forschungskolloquium zu den Amerikas aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Sicht”, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München.
Yamasaki, Eriko
