Indigenous Peoples In Latin America Economic Opportunities And Social Networks

Abstract: Despite significant changes in poverty overall in Latin America, the proportion of indigenous peoples living in poverty did not change much from the early 1990s to the present. While earlier work focused on human development, much less has been done on the distribution and returns to income-generating assets and the effect these have on income generation strategies. The authors show that low income and low assets are mutually reinforcing. For instance, low education levels translate into low income, resulting in poor health and reduced schooling for future generations. Social networks affect the economic opportunities of individuals through two important channels-information and norms. However, the analysis shows that the networks available to indigenous peoples do not facilitate employment in nontraditional sectors.

Despite significant changes in poverty overall in Latin America, the proportion of indigenous peoples living in poverty did not change much from the early 1990s to the present. While earlier work focused on human development, much less has been done on the distribution and returns to income-generating assets and the effect these have on income generation strategies. The authors show that low income and low assets are mutually reinforcing. For instance, low education levels translate into low income, resulting in poor health and reduced schooling for future generations. Social networks affect the economic opportunities of individuals through two important channels-information and norms. However, the analysis shows that the networks available to indigenous peoples do not facilitate employment in nontraditional sectors.

Despite significant changes in poverty overall in Latin America, the proportion of indigenous peoples living in poverty did not change much from the early 1990s to the present. While earlier work focused on human development, much less has been done on the distribution and returns to income-generating assets and the effect these have on income generation strategies. The authors show that low income and low assets are mutually reinforcing. For instance, low education levels translate into low income, resulting in poor health and reduced schooling for future generations. Social networks affect the economic opportunities of individuals through two important channels - information and norms. However, the analysis shows that the networks available to indigenous peoples do not facilitate employment in nontraditional sectors.

Indigenous people constitute a large portion of Latin America's population and suffer from severe and widespread poverty. They are more likely than any other groups of a country's population to be poor. This study documents their socioeconomic situation and shows how it can be improved through changes in policy-influenced variables such as education. The authors review the literature of indigenous people around the world and provide a statistical overview of those in Latin America. Case studies profile the indigenous populations in Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, examining their distribution, education, income, labour force participation and differences in gender roles. A final chapter presents recommendations for conducting future research.

Indigenous peoples make up less than 5 percent of the world's population, yet comprise 15 percent of the world's poor. The indigenous population of Latin America is estimated at 28 million. Despite significant changes in poverty overall, the proportion of indigenous peoples in the region living in poverty - at almost 80 percent - did not change much from the early 1990s to the early 2000s. Economic Opportunities for Indigenous Peoples in Latin America moves beyond earlier work which focused primarily on human development, and looks at the distribution and returns to income generating assets - physical and human capital, public assets and social capital - and the affect these have on income generation strategies. Low income and low assets are mutually reinforcing. Low education levels translate into low income, resulting in poor health and reduced schooling of future generations. Low assets not only reduce the ability to generate income, they also hinder the capacity to insure against shocks, thus increasing vulnerability. This is especially true when coupled with missing credit and insurance markets. There are significant complementarities across assets, which imply that the returns to one asset depend on access to another. These synergies between assets accumulate the disadvantages of the asset-poor in terms of returns to income-generating activities. They also dictate policies that facilitate access not only to one key productive asset, such as land, but also to complementary assets, such as training and infrastructure, which affect the returns to land.

This book documents poverty systematically for the world's indigenous peoples in developing regions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The volume compiles results for roughly 85 percent of the world's indigenous peoples. It draws on nationally representative data to compare trends in countries' poverty rates and other social indicators with those for indigenous sub-populations and provides comparable data for a wide range of countries all over the world. It estimates global poverty numbers and analyzes other important development indicators, such as schooling, health and social protection. Provocatively, the results show a marked difference in results across regions, with rapid poverty reduction among indigenous (and non-indigenous) populations in Asia contrasting with relative stagnation - and in some cases falling back - in Latin America and Africa.

This book deals with the perennial tensions between ethnic groups and the modern nation-state and does so from the perspective of a leading Mexican anthropologist with deep and long experience in these matters. As such, it is both a superb introduction to the basic issues and a presentation of the author's own original contributions. The appearance of this book in English gives North American readers access to these important and political currents in Latin American anthropology and political economy. It is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the current recrudescence of indigenous peoples at this moment in history?when conventional wisdom had predicted its demise.

"This book explores how Indigenous people in Mesoamerica use social networks to alter, enhance, preserve, and contribute to self-representation"--Provided by publisher.

This book addresses the social implications of climate change and climatic variability on indigenous peoples and communities living in the highlands, lowlands, and coastal areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. Across the region, indigenous people already perceive and experience negative effects of climate change and variability. Many indigenous communities find it difficult to adapt in a culturally sustainable manner. In fact, indigenous peoples often blame themselves for the changes they observe in nature, despite their limited emission of green house gasses. Not only is the viability of their livelihoods threatened, resulting in food insecurity and poor health, but also their cultural integrity is being challenged, eroding the confidence in solutions provided by traditional institutions and authorities. The book is based on field research among indigenous communities in three major eco-geographical regions: the Amazon; the Andes and Sub-Andes; and the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. It finds major inter-regional differences in the impacts observed between areas prone to rapid- and slow-onset natural hazards. In Mesoamerican and the Caribbean, increasingly severe storms and hurricanes damage infrastructure and property, and even cause loss of land, reducing access to livelihood resources. In the Columbian Amazon, changes in precipitation and seasonality have direct immediate effects on livelihoods and health, as crops often fail and the reproduction of fish stock is threatened by changes in the river ebb and flow. In the Andean region, water scarcity for crops and livestock, erosion of ecosystems and changes in biodiversity threatens food security, both within indigenous villages and among populations who depend on indigenous agriculture, causing widespread migration to already crowded urban areas. The study aims to increase understanding on the complexity of how indigenous communities are impacted by climate change and the options for improving their resilience and adaptability to these phenomena. The goal is to improve indigenous peoples rights and opportunities in climate change adaptation, and guide efforts to design effective and sustainable adaptation initiatives.

In recent years the concept and study of “civil society” has received a lot of attention from political scientists, economists, and sociologists, but less so from anthropologists. A ground-breaking ethnographic approach to civil society as it is formed in indigenous communities in Latin America, this volume explores the multiple potentialities of civil society’s growth and critically assesses the potential for sustained change. Much recent literature has focused on the remarkable gains made by civil society and the chapters in this volume reinforce this trend while also showing the complexity of civil society - that civil society can itself sometimes be uncivil. In doing so, these insightful contributions speak not only to Latin American area studies but also to the changing shape of global systems of political economy in general.