Papers by Kendra McSweeney
World Development, 2022
Illicit economies have become a major driver of socio-environmental change in Latin America's rur... more Illicit economies have become a major driver of socio-environmental change in Latin America's rural spaces. The arrival of transnational drug trade networks in rural communities has significantly altered the economic, political, and social dynamics of entire regions. The drug trade has particularly affected the ancestral territories of Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples, which coincide with significant areas of forests and high biodiversity, increasingly making trafficking an issue of racial and environmental justice as well. Furthermore, the decades-long drug wars, sponsored in large part by the United States Government, have fundamentally altered economic, social, environmental, and political conditions in areas of production and transshipment. The convergence of competing claims on rural spaces coupled with the violence provoked by the drug trade and state reactions to it enable and constrain possibilities for transformative action on the part of rural communities, and for development and governance projects. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we provide an overview of cross-cutting insights and key conceptual and methodological themes from the nine included papers. These findings challenge normative narratives of how illicit economies negatively affect political stability and economic development, problematizing especially the role of the state and market economies in this nexus. These papers also make clear the importance of mixed methods and ethnographic research that attends to questions of power to describe, explain, and transform illicit economies' roles in this dynamic region.
Geoforum, 2014
In this paper we review the implications of neoclassical economic framings within the interdiscip... more In this paper we review the implications of neoclassical economic framings within the interdisciplinary field of land-change science. We argue that current pressing global environmental problems, such as land grabs, loss of critical carbon sinks and the increasing importance of corporate actors in land-use decisionmaking, necessitate a reconsideration of neoclassical conceptualizations of what the economy is, who economic actors are and how they make decisions, and how environment-economy linkages operate in a globalized world. We argue that concepts from economic geography can help land change science move beyond neoclassical framings. The first concept is that the economic (including markets, commodities, and rational decision-makers) is neither separate nor universal, but is historical and socially embedded. The second is to use these notions to understand the spatial organization of economic activity. The framework of global production networks, in particular, will help land change scientists conceptualize and represent teleconnections. Using economic geography to move beyond neoclassical economic framings will bring a fresh approach to economic change that holds much promise for invigorating land change science.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Counterdrug interdiction efforts designed to seize or disrupt cocaine shipments between South Ame... more Counterdrug interdiction efforts designed to seize or disrupt cocaine shipments between South American source zones and US markets remain a core US “supply side” drug policy and national security strategy. However, despite a long history of US-led interdiction efforts in the Western Hemisphere, cocaine movements to the United States through Central America, or “narco-trafficking,” continue to rise. Here, we developed a spatially explicit agent-based model (ABM), called “NarcoLogic,” of narco-trafficker operational decision making in response to interdiction forces to investigate the root causes of interdiction ineffectiveness across space and time. The central premise tested was that spatial proliferation and resiliency of narco-trafficking are not a consequence of ineffective interdiction, but rather part and natural consequence of interdiction itself. Model development relied on multiple theoretical perspectives, empirical studies, media reports, and the authors’ own years of fiel...
Journal of Illicit Economies and Development
Journal of Land Use Science
Global Environmental Change
Geographical Review
] *This introduction was written and this special issue edited while Antoinette WinklerPrins work... more ] *This introduction was written and this special issue edited while Antoinette WinklerPrins worked at the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and editors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
One Earth
This Reflection considers recommendations of the recent report ''Climate Change and Land.'' Appli... more This Reflection considers recommendations of the recent report ''Climate Change and Land.'' Applied climate science largely connects physical outcomes to available social proxies: population density and income per capita. We argue for deeper engagement with social systems, particularly a better understanding of how corporations (agribusiness and energy) shape social and environmental change. We seek to understand how and why land and environmental defenders who should be celebrated as heroes for protecting their communities and ecosystems are routinely being murdered, arrested and intimidated. Our report finds that on average more than three activists were killed every week in 2018 defending their land from invasion by industries like mining, logging and agribusiness.-Global Witness (p. 6) 1 Figure 2. Land-Climate Relationships as Embedded within Social and Political-Economic Systems
Geoforum
This paper uses a global commodity chain (GCC) framework to explore the nexus of illicit economic... more This paper uses a global commodity chain (GCC) framework to explore the nexus of illicit economic activities and rural change. We unpack the micro-level economic processes by which a de facto land grab in eastern Honduras' Moskitia region was catalyzed and accelerated by the region's ascendance as a global hub of cocaine transit (ca. 2008-2012). We show how 'narco-brokers' mobilized a long-standing economic infrastructure to harness land and labor in the service of moving drugs, and how these 'mid-stream' activities captured millions of dollars from the cocaine commodity chain. We detail the processes by which those dollars ultimately concentrated land among in situ and ex situ elites by profoundly distorting social relations around land governance, labor, food production, and-ultimately-land ownership. The result was widespread dispossession, land and resource privatization, increased food insecurity, community conflict, and increased social stratification. Lands transferred from resident smallholders to elites helped to (a) integrate the region horizontally into Honduras' rentier-based cattle economy, and (b) improve the vertical integration of the pan-hemispheric cocaine trade through the speculation and profit-laundering services that the region's enclosure provided. This case highlights how economic coercions work synergistically with the more well-studied role of overt physical violence in frontier land grabs. We urge greater attention to the role of illicit capital in agrarian transformation globally. The study also points to the potential for transit spaces to shed much light on the workings of (illicit) global commodity chains and illicit economic geographies more broadly.
NACLA Report on the Americas
Well, maybe. In September, the government of President Porfirio Lobo granted Miskitu people forma... more Well, maybe. In September, the government of President Porfirio Lobo granted Miskitu people formal ownership over almost 3,000 square miles of their ancestral territory in the northeastern region known as La Mosquitia. This appears to be a vital victory in indigenous Hondurans' struggle for territorial autonomy. But it can also be read as a deeply cynical gesture by a government that, facing an upcoming election, was keen to distract attention from its otherwise appalling record on native rights and its avaricious approach to indigenous lands and resources. In just the past few months, the Honduran army has shot dead an indigenous Lenca leader protesting the construction of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam, and has imprisoned indigenous leader Berta Cáceres for her support of the protests. A few days after the killing, the "Law for the Promotion of Development and Reconversion of the Public Debt" was passed, which authorizes the administration to leverage the country' s "idle" resources as collateral to woo investment in resource extraction and agroindustry. Then, in mid-August, the administration
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 00221340508978632, Aug 16, 2007
ABSTRACT
Latin American Research Review, Feb 1, 2005
Abstract In contrast to the rich scholarship documenting the traumatic post-contact destruction o... more Abstract In contrast to the rich scholarship documenting the traumatic post-contact destruction of indigenous populations in the Latin American tropics, little is known about their contemporary population dynamics. What accounts for the "demographic turnaround" reported for some ...
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2015
ABSTRACT
Human Ecology, 2011
Despite improved national censuses and "microdemographic" studies, demographic processes and heal... more Despite improved national censuses and "microdemographic" studies, demographic processes and health conditions among indigenous populations in Amazonia and elsewhere in lowland Latin America are not well understood. A new source of demographic and health data has emerged in the past decade, namely meso-scale surveys initiated and administered by indigenous organizations. These surveys offer the potential for filling information gaps, shedding light on culturally specific factors that shape demographic processes and health, and empowering indigenous organizations with data that could inform health initiatives. This article assesses the indigenous-run survey "2005 Health Analysis of the Shuar and Achuar Nations" of eastern Ecuador in which the authors were involved, which reached 1,943 households in 257 communities in Morona-Santiago Province. We present findings on fertility, migration, sanitation, and health, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the survey. We argue that despite flaws in the survey design and implementation, this survey revealed important linkages among fertility, migration, and health. Such surveys have the potential to provide much needed detail, representativeness, and cultural specificity that macro and micro data sources cannot provide. We conclude with recommendations to improve surveys of this type.
Human Organization, 2000
Ricardo Godoy is a research associate in the Department of Anthropol-ogy, Brandeis University. Ka... more Ricardo Godoy is a research associate in the Department of Anthropol-ogy, Brandeis University. Kathleen O'Neill is on the faculty at Cornell University. David Bravo is a graduate student at Harvard University, Kendra McSweeney is a graduate student at McGill ...
Nature, Jan 6, 2000
Researchers recognize that society needs accurate and comprehensive estimates of the economic val... more Researchers recognize that society needs accurate and comprehensive estimates of the economic value of rain forests to assess conservation and management options. Valuation of forests can help us to decide whether to implement policies that reconcile the value different groups attach to forests. Here we have measured the value of the rain forest to local populations by monitoring the foods, construction and craft materials, and medicines consumed or sold from the forest by 32 Indian households in two villages in Honduras over 2.5 years. We have directly measured the detailed, comprehensive consumption patterns of rain forest products by an indigenous population and the value of that consumption in local markets. The combined value of consumption and sale of forest goods ranged from US$17.79 to US$23.72 per hectare per year, at the lower end of previous estimates (between US$49 and US$1,089 (mean US$347) per hectare per year). Although outsiders value the rain forest for its high-use...
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Papers by Kendra McSweeney