Nueve estudios sobre el espacio: Representacion y formas de apropiacion (review)

Nueve estudios sobre el espacio: Representación y formas de apropriación. Edited by ODILE HOFFMANN and FERNANDO I. SALMERÓN CASTRO. Mexico City: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social. 1997. Maps. Figures. Notes. Bibliographies. 190 pp. Paper.

Historians will find these provocative essays useful in rethinking the geographical aspect of our work. The editors divided the chapters into two groups: the first serves to introduce the reader to postmodern trends in geography; and the second part analyzes how social actors create regional identities in a given geographic space. Unlike many books produced from conferences, the papers in this collection work well together and the observations of the first section establish themes that the more empirical studies of the second half develop. Some contributions still read like presentations and could use more elucidation to achieve their ambitious objectives.

Eric Van Young once wrote that, "Regions are like love--they are difficult to define, but we know them when we see them." This collection agrees that the categories often used to define regions "objectively" (ethnicity, politics, hydrology, ecology), are rarely consistent. Regions are socially constructed and constantly changing but also grounded in space (p. 17). Another theme centers on how cartography represents space and how such representations are exercises in power and popular identity. Maps draw lines that reify regions, representing transitory social processes as concrete.

Claude Bataillon's article uses comparisons across Mexico to demonstrate the contradictory principles that divide space. Mexico contains economic, religious, administrative cities that are "centralizing poles" of regions, while at the same time activity is organized along networks (redes) tending to "equalize" relations between communities. Luc Cambrezy follows up on this theme pointing out how these networks challenge the hierarchical organization of space. The tools geographers have to represent information: lines, points and shaded "zones," tend to privilege administrative units and emphasize "internal continuity and external discontinuity" of regions (p. 74). Alfred Siemens suggests maps are analogous to Bentham's panopticon. They have a point of view that is fuereño y arribeño, a perspective drenched with power that has been especially detrimental to understanding Mexico's tropical lowlands.

Roberto Melville illustrates the state's role in creating regions noting how development projects legislate the creation of regions out of watersheds. Jean-Yves Marchal and Rafael Palma Grayeb demonstrate that region has become una palabra vacia by ably deconstructing the traditional definitions of the Huasteca. Their essay proposes some alternative approaches that need further development.

The volume's second part provides insightful essays describing the relationships between popular identities, territory, and the state. Interactions between dominant and subaltern groups build geographical spaces from the bottom up. Emilia Velázquez demonstrates how subordinate indigenous groups preserved local controls as the government forced them to abandon communal land holding under the liberal state and later introduced land reform and cattle use after the revolution. José Velasco's essay describes the fate of the Chinatecas relocated to a completely new territory when the Cerro de Oro dam flooded their traditional settlements. Velasco demonstrates that in spite of the coercive nature of this government controlled process (the state dictated settlements and aimed at "integrating" the natives into the national culture) the villagers recreated ethnic territories and identities on their own terms. Marielle Pepin Lehalleur compares four agricultural communities and finds villagers refused to accept the backward economic role national policy had assigned ejidatarios, demonstrating that popular agency, not state policy, determined local realities.

Finally, Michel Agier meditates on the limitations of maps in portraying the network of social interactions that characterize the urban lives of the inhabitants of Salvador de Bahía, Brazil. The essay returns to the "question of scale" raised throughout the volume between local agency and the elusive cartographic dream of mapping reality.

Michael T. Ducey, University of Colorado at Denver

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