Economies of Representation: Communication, Conflict, and Mining in Guatemala.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the ways that people engage in environmental and political debates, including how people make themselves and their positions visible at multiple scales. I focus on recent debates between indigenous communities, non-governmental organizations, government institutions, and transnational corporations over large-scale mining projects in Guatemala. Actors in these debates are engaged in an economy of representation that puts competing discourses about development, environment, and indigenous rights into contention with each other, creating disjunctures that allow for the creative reimagining of political subjectivities. Economies of representation operate at different scales—they are a set of linked practices through which actors produce, circulate, consume, and reinterpret media objects, contexts, discourses, and subjectivities. Debates over mining in Guatemala can be understood as a single economy of representation that pro- and anti-mining blocs each use to promote their own goals; these competing discourses are therefore intertwined, shaping and shaped by one another.