Indigeneity
and rural livelihoods
One major current of my research focuses on the politics of indigeneity and indigenous peoples’ social mobilization. My doctoral research, carried out in 1998-99 and funded by a Fulbright IIE grant and an Inter-American Foundation doctoral fellowship, examined the organizational histories, discursive shifts, and political practices of a regional indigenous federation and one of its member community associations in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This work may be seen as an institutional ethnography, which traced the roles of and relationship between these organizations in the context of nationalist development programs and ethnic cultural politics since the late 1960s. At the heart of this project were questions of political organizing and citizenship; land and territorial rights; and the cultural politics of identity.
This has remained a focus of my work in Bolivia, with an emphasis on the dynamics of indigenous mobilization and the constructions of indigenous identity. Questions of indigeneity emerged with particular salience during the presidency of Evo Morales and the MAS (Movement to Socialism) party, from 2006 to 2020. My work has examined how the election of Bolivia’s first indigenous president shaped understandings of indigeneity in the country, as well as the ways that indigenous-campesino peoples have mobilized in defense of natural resources.
Publications
2002 Tom Perreault, Movilización política e identidad indígena en el Alto Napo, Quito: Ediciones Abya Yala.
BOOK
2013 Tom Perreault and Barbara Green, “Reworking the spaces of indigeneity: the Bolivian ayllu and lowland autonomy movements compared,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31: 43-60.
2005 Thomas Perreault, “Why chacras (swidden gardens) persist: Agrobiodiversity, food security, and cultural identity in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” Human Organization, 64(4): 327-339.
2003 Thomas Perreault, “Social capital, development, and indigenous politics in Ecuadorian Amazonia,” Geographical Review, 93(3): 328-349.
2003 Thomas Perreault, “’A people with our own identity’: toward a cultural politics of development in Ecuadorian Amazonia,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 21(5): 583-606.
2003 Thomas Perreault, “Changing places: transnational networks, ethnic politics, and community development in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” Political Geography, 22(1): 61-88.
2003 Thomas Perreault, “Making space: community organization, agrarian change, and the politics of scale in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” Latin American Perspectives, 30(1): 96-121.
2003 J. Montgomery Roper, Thomas Perreault, and Patrick Wilson, “Indigenous transformational movements in contemporary Latin America,” (introduction to special edited issue), Latin American Perspectives, 30(1): 5-22.
2001 Thomas Perreault, “Developing identities: indigenous mobilization, rural livelihoods, and resource access in Ecuadorian Amazonia,” Ecumene, 8(4): 381-413.
1999 Anthony Bebbington and Thomas Perreault, “Social capital, development and access to resources in highland Ecuador,” Economic Geography, 75(4): 395-418.
1998 Thomas Perreault, Anthony J. Bebbington, and Thomas F. Carroll , “Indigenous irrigation organizations and the formation of social capital in northern highland Ecuador,” Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers Yearbook, 24: 1-15.
JOURNAL articles
2001 Thomas Perreault, “Vidas rurales y acceso a recursos naturales: El caso Guamote,” with Anthony Bebbington. In Capital Social en los Andes, A. Bebbington, and V.H. Torres (eds.), Quito: Abya Yala, pp. 69-104.
2001 Thomas Perreault, “Organizaciones de riego y la formación de capital social: El caso Cayambe,” with Anthony Bebbington and Thomas Carroll. In A. Bebbington, and V.H. Torres (eds.), Capital Social en los Andes, Quito: Abya Yala, pp. 105-139.