Conflict, Claim and Contradiction in the New Indigenous State of Bolivia

Recent conflict between indigenous people and a self-styled indigenous state in Bolivia has brought to the fore some of the paradoxes and contradictions within the concept of indigeneity itself. The contemporary politics of state sponsored indigeneity in Bolivia has as much capacity to create new inequalities as it does to address old ones and there is a conceptual deficit in understanding contemporary indigenous rights claims, in particular, as they relate to the state. I reject Peter Geschiere?s (2009) suggestion that one should distinguish between ?autochthony? and ?indigeneity? but am inspired by these arguments to suggest that one needs to make a critical distinction between the kinds of claims different indigenous people make against the state. Of interest here are the consequences of indigeneity being transformed from being a language of resistance to a language of governance. I propose a conceptual distinction between inclusive national indigeneity for the majority which seeks to co-opt the state through accessing the language of governance and a minority concept of indigeneity which needs protection from the state and continues to use indigeneity as a language of resistance. Only by looking at the kinds of claims people make through the rhetoric of indigeneity can we make sense of the current indigenous conflict in Bolivia and elsewhere

Who is indigenous? Self-identification, indigeneity, and claims to justice in contemporary Bolivia

Recent events in Bolivia have brought indigeneity to the center of the national stage. More and more people are identifying themselves as indigenous whereas in the recent past they would more likely have seen themselves simply as campesinos, peasants, or urban mestizos. International agencies such as the ILO, UN and World Bank stress the importance of self-identification for indigenous people; and in the last (2001) census just over 20% of the Bolivian population identified themselves as indigenous despite no recorded ethnolinguistic marker that would suggest they would be; others who do not self-identify as indigenous were recorded in the census as being indigenous. This paper explores some of the issues behind self-identification and in particular examines the case of an Aymara-speaking community where people were recorded as indigenous and "ethnolinguistic markers" abound, yet do not self-identify as such. Despite its apparent homogeneity in terms of a strong sense of shared culture and kinship relations, the people of Pocobaya vary considerably in how they identify themselves as ethnic/racial subjects. Whereas outside groups, agencies, and indigenous leaders are creating and recognizing an indigenous identity based on a particular view of history and conquest, many other people have a much more complex sense of who they are. © 2007 The Institute, Inc

Methods really do matter A response to Marisol de la Cadena

Comment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Bearing witness: Testimonies, translations, and ontologies in the andes

Comment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Stochastics theory of log-periodic patterns

We introduce an analytical model based on birth-death clustering processes to help understanding the empirical log-periodic corrections to power-law scaling and the finite-time singularity as reported in several domains including rupture, earthquakes, world population and financial systems. In our stochastics theory log-periodicities are a consequence of transient clusters induced by an entropy-like term that may reflect the amount of cooperative information carried by the state of a large system of different species. The clustering completion rates for the system are assumed to be given by a simple linear death process. The singularity at t_{o} is derived in terms of birth-death clustering coefficients.Comment: LaTeX, 1 ps figure - To appear J. Phys. A: Math & Ge

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pp. 95-9

The Emergence of “Createch” as a Required or Desired Skill for Digital Marketing Internships

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Gait-related frequency modulation of beta oscillatory activity in the subthalamic nucleus of parkinsonian patients

Background: Abnormal beta band activity in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) is known to be exaggerated in patients with Parkinson's disease, and the amplitude of such activity has been associated with akinetic rigid symptoms. New devices for deep brain stimulation (DBS) that operate by adapting the stimulation parameters generally rely on the detection of beta activity amplitude modulations in these patients. Movement-related frequency modulation of beta oscillatory activity has been poorly investigated, despite being an attractive variable for extracting information about basal ganglia activity. Objective: We studied the STN oscillatory activity associated with locomotion and proposed a new approach to extract movement related information from beta band activity. Methods: We recorded bilateral local field potential of the STN in eight parkinsonian patients implanted with DBS electrodes during upright quiet standing and unperturbed walking. Neurophysiological recordings were combined with kinematic measurements and individual molecular brain imaging studies. We then determined the information carried by the STN oscillatory activity about locomotion and we identified task-specific biomarkers. Results: We found a gait-related peak frequency modulation of the beta band of STN recordings of parkinsonian patients. This novel biomarker and the associated power modulations were highly informative to detect the walking state (with respect to standing) in each single patient. Conclusion: Frequency modulation in the human STN represents a fundamental aspect of information processing of locomotion. Our information-driven approach could significantly enrich the spectrum of Parkinson's neural markers, with input signals encoding ongoing tasks execution for an appropriate online tuning of DBS delivery