Du code du barrio à l’idéologie d’une entreprise : l’extorsion et l’économie morale de la violence des gangs au Guatemala‪ = From the Code of the Barrio to the Ideology of a Business: Gang Extortion and the Moral Economy of Violence in Guatemala City

Apparues dans les années 1990, les maras centraméricaines ont depuis connu des changements profonds dans leurs cultures de groupe et leurs économies criminelles, changements qui ont infléchi l’expérience de l’insécurité dans les communautés urbaines pauvres où elles sont implantées. S’appuyant sur une étude de terrain ethnographique menée sur un territoire de gang à Guatemala-ville, cet article suit l’évolution dans le temps de l’économie morale du crime et de la violence, en mettant en avant un virage prédateur vers l’extorsion entamé par ces maras. L’article soutient que l’évolution de la violence des gangs et ses effets dans ce territoire s’explique en particulier par des changements survenus dans les rapports entre les gangs et les barrios, et par la divergence des imaginaires sociaux. L’expansion de l’extorsion a coïncidé avec le déplacement du commandement et de l’organisation de ces maras des rues vers les prisons, ce qui a contribué à détacher les cliques du contexte social et éthique des barrios. Cette séparation a transformé le paysage moral de la violence et de la réciprocité dans les « zones rouges » de la ville. // Since their appearance in the 1990s, Central America’s maras have undergone profound changes in their group cultures and criminal economies that have reshaped the experience of insecurity in marginal urban communities where they operate. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Guatemala City gang territory, I trace how the moral economy of crime and violence has changed over time, focusing on the mara’s predatory turn to extortion. I propose that the evolution of gang violence and its impact here is best understood in terms of shifting relationships between gang and barrio and diverging social imaginaries. The expansion of extortion coincided with the city’s maras becoming prison- rather than street-based groups, severing gang cliques from the social and ethical worlds of their barrios. This estrangement has transformed the moral landscape of violence and reciprocity in the city’s ‘red zones’

Emma Saunders-Hastings: Philanthropy and Democracy

Overview & Shownotes Inquiries around the ethics of philanthropy might seem pretty cut-and-dry at first glance. Are the people receiving donations better off than they were before they received help? Even if the answer to that question is yes, political theorist Emma Saunders-Hastings argues that it’s not the only critical question we should be asking about philanthropy. On this episode of the podcast, we discuss her new book, Private Virtues, Public Vices: Philanthropy and Democratic Equality. For the episode transcript, download a copy or read it below. Contact us at [email protected] Links to people and ideas mentioned in the show Emma Saunders-Hastings, Private Virtues, Public Vices: Philanthropy and Democratic Equality Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Give Directly Please note that the Prindle Institute does not endorse any of the organizations linked in the show notes. Credits Thanks to Evelyn Brosius for our logo. Music featured in the show: “Gin Boheme” by Blue Dot Sessions “Songe d’Automne” by Latché Swing from the Free Music Archive. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 F

Red zone blues: Violence and nostalgia in Guatemala City

Based on ethnographic research in a Guatemala City mara territory, this article examines the place of nostalgia in residents’ accounts of spiralling insecurity and gang violence. Anchoring many depictions of their circumstances past and present, emotional and narrative structures of decline and nostalgia pervaded interviews, interactions, and the research experience here. While discourses of loss and longing pose certain methodological quandaries for attempts to reconstruct processes of change in a volatile environment, I propose that they do communicate true and valuable information for understanding the social experience of violence in Guatemala City’s gang territories. I also argue for understanding nostalgia as a resource – for inhabitants and for ethnographers alike – in the face of ‘ontological insecurity’ in violent fields. Providing reassuring narratives and tools for articulating normative claims for our informants, nostalgia also holds a strong appeal for ethnographers, presenting both dilemmas and possibilities in researching and representing contemporary insecurity

Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?

Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance

Genetics of Dispersal

Dispersal is a process of central importance for the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations and communities, because of its diverse consequences for gene flow and demography. It is subject to evolutionary change, which begs the question, what is the genetic basis of this potentially complex trait? To address this question, we (i) review the empirical literature on the genetic basis of dispersal, (ii) explore how theoretical investigations of the evolution of dispersal have represented the genetics of dispersal, and (iii) discuss how the genetic basis of dispersal influences theoretical predictions of the evolution of dispersal and potential consequences. Dispersal has a detectable genetic basis in many organisms, from bacteria to plants and animals. Generally, there is evidence for significant genetic variation for dispersal or dispersal-related phenotypes or evidence for the micro-evolution of dispersal in natural populations. Dispersal is typically the outcome of several interacting traits, and this complexity is reflected in its genetic architecture: while some genes of moderate to large effect can influence certain aspects of dispersal, dispersal traits are typically polygenic. Correlations among dispersal traits as well as between dispersal traits and other traits under selection are common, and the genetic basis of dispersal can be highly environment-dependent. By contrast, models have historically considered a highly simplified genetic architecture of dispersal. It is only recently that models have started to consider multiple loci influencing dispersal, as well as non-additive effects such as dominance and epistasis, showing that the genetic basis of dispersal can influence evolutionary rates and outcomes, especially under non-equilibrium conditions. For example, the number of loci controlling dispersal can influence projected rates of dispersal evolution during range shifts and corresponding demographic impacts. Incorporating more realism in the genetic architecture of dispersal is thus necessary to enable models to move beyond the purely theoretical towards making more useful predictions of evolutionary and ecological dynamics under current and future environmental conditions. To inform these advances, empirical studies need to answer outstanding questions concerning whether specific genes underlie dispersal variation, the genetic architecture of context-dependent dispersal phenotypes and behaviours, and correlations among dispersal and other traits.Peer reviewe