Journal Articles by Edith Kauffer
Between colonising waters and extracting forest fronts: Entangled eco-frontiers in the Usumacinta River Basin
Political Geography, 2022
The eco-frontier concept has addressed the processes of certain territories that are subject to e... more The eco-frontier concept has addressed the processes of certain territories that are subject to ecological concern and appropriation of different actors. This study approaches the underexplored interaction with the frontier. The article sharpens the focus on the relations between the eco-frontier and the frontier as both a naturally rich periphery with importance to political centres and as an advancing front. The research discusses empirical results in the case of the transboundary Usumacinta River Basin (URB), which extends from Guatemala's highlands and lowlands through three Mexican states to the Gulf of Mexico. Three historical stages of eco-frontiers—exploratory, epistemic, and institutionalised—are identified in the URB. Its entangled eco-frontiers transform wildernesses and waters to forest ecosystems with inhabitants both spatially and mentally, yet contain some colonial, geopolitical, and global components. This article suggests that the eco-frontiers are fundamentally created because of contemporary frontier dynamics.
Conservation in the Frontier: Negotiating Ownerships of Nature at the Southern Mexican Border
Journal of Latin American Geography, 2021
The past decade has seen a revival of the long-disfavored concept of frontier, which now elucidat... more The past decade has seen a revival of the long-disfavored concept of frontier, which now elucidates the interdependence between political centers and their naturally rich peripheries in the Global South. “Frontier” has referred to the cyclical discovery of and competition over new resources, and the transformation of power relations in a given space. We contribute to this discussion by exploring its relation to nature conservation. Examining conservation practices along Mexico’s southern border, this article addresses conservation as an unsettled
process that pierces the frontier’s politics of nationalizing space and communities. In this way, conservation practices become negotiations over ownerships of nature. These negotiations involve resistance, adaptation, and counter-conservation, and they also influence human-nature relationships. The article shows that conservation practices relate to spheres of both the state and local communities in ways that allow the study of the frontier beyond given binaries and oppositional forces and toward contested, multiscale deliberations about the control of, access to, rights, and attachments to nature.
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Journal Articles by Edith Kauffer
process that pierces the frontier’s politics of nationalizing space and communities. In this way, conservation practices become negotiations over ownerships of nature. These negotiations involve resistance, adaptation, and counter-conservation, and they also influence human-nature relationships. The article shows that conservation practices relate to spheres of both the state and local communities in ways that allow the study of the frontier beyond given binaries and oppositional forces and toward contested, multiscale deliberations about the control of, access to, rights, and attachments to nature.