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University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School
2005
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Laurel Catherine Smith
University of Kentucky
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Smith, Laurel Catherine, "MEDIATING INDIGENOUS IDENTITY: VIDEO, ADVOCACY, AND KNOWLEDGE IN
OAXACA, MEXICO" (2005). University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations. 359.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/359
This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at UKnowledge. It has been
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ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION
Laurel Catherine Smith
The Graduate School
University of Kentucky
2005
MEDIATING INDIGENOUS IDENTITY:
VIDEO, ADVOCACY, AND KNOWLEDGE IN OAXACA, MEXICO
______________________________________
ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION
______________________________________
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
College of Arts and Sciences
at the University of Kentucky
By
Laurel Catherine Smith
Lexington, Kentucky
Co-Directors: Dr. John Paul Jones III, Professor of Geography
and Dr. Susan Roberts, Professor of Geography
Lexington, Kentucky
2005
Copyright © Laurel Catherine Smith 2005
ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION
MEDIATING INDIGENOUS IDENTITY:
VIDEO, ADVOCACY, AND KNOWLEDGE IN OAXACA, MEXICO
In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, many indigenous communities further
their struggles for greater political and cultural autonomy by working with transnational non-
governmental organizations (NGOs). Communication technology (what I call comtech) is
increasingly vital to these intersecting socio-spatial relations of activism and advocacy. In this
dissertation, I examine how comtech offer indigenous individuals and organizations with the
means for visualizing their political-cultural agendas. Approaching the access and use of
comtech, especially video technologies, as a partial and situated technoscience, I inquire into
how and why these activities reconfigure the production and evaluation of authoritative
knowledge about indigenous peoples, places, and practices.
More specifically, I undertook an organizational ethnography of a small intermediary
NGO comprised of individuals who self-identify as indigenous and others who do not, Ojo
de Agua Comunicación Indígena, which endeavors to place communication technologies
(especially video equipment) at the disposal of indigenous communities. Through
participation-observation and interviews, I explored this group’s everyday strategies of
networking in the name of assisting indigenous actors’ access and appropriation of visual
technologies. I also pursued interpretive analyses of video-mediated articulations of
indigenous knowledge and identity that were enabled by Ojo de Agua.
My research indicates that Ojo de Agua has selectively built upon the ambitions and
the socio-spatial connections of a government program that emerged from the initiatives of
academic advocates, who sought to open new spaces of participation for indigenous peoples.
Members of Ojo de Agua have, however, found their goal of service somewhat stymied by a
situation that positions them within a flexible labor force of knowledge workers. Their
livelihoods as media makers did not allow them (the time or money) to pursue as much
altruism and advocacy as they would have liked. Nonetheless, Ojo de Agua’s corpus of
videos established the group as an alternative and yet authoritative source of visual
knowledge of indigenous peoples, places, and practices. This relocation of advocacy is
symptomatic of the creative destruction fueled by the neo-liberal economic policies that, for
the last thirty years, have been reconfiguring spaces of cooperation and conflict in Latin
America.
KEYWORDS: Indigenous Peoples, Mexico, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs),
Communication Technologies, Cultural Politics
MEDIATING INDIGENOUS IDENTITY:
VIDEO, ADVOCACY, AND KNOWLEDGE IN OAXACA, MEXICO
By
Laurel Catherine Smith
Dr. John Paul Jones III, Professor of Geography
Co-Director of Dissertation
Dr. Susan Roberts, Professor of Geography
Co-Director of Dissertation
Wolfgang Natter, Professor of Geography
Director of Graduate Studies
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Name Date
DISSERTATION
Laurel Catherine Smith
The Graduate School
University of Kentucky
2005
MEDIATING INDIGENOUS IDENTITY:
VIDEO, ADVOCACY, AND KNOWLEDGE IN OAXACA, MEXICO
______________________________________
DISSERTATION
______________________________________
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
College of Arts and Sciences
at the University of Kentucky
By
Laurel Catherine Smith
Lexington, Kentucky
Co-Directors: Dr. John Paul Jones III, Professor of Geography
and Dr. Susan Roberts, Professor of Geography
Lexington, Kentucky
2005
Copyright © Laurel Catherine Smith 2005
To my beloved, supportive, and mightily patient family.
Description:In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, many indigenous communities further of video-mediated indigenous activism is followed by an introduction to the .. Furthermore, notes Wortham, such transnational circuits of exhibition
