Gunther Dietz
Visiting Scholar 2004
University of Granada
Dpto. De Antropología y Trabajo Social
Facultad de Ciencas de la Educación

Area of Expertise: Minority integration and development policies in indigenous regions, ethnicity, interculturality and intercultural education; ethnic and/or multiculturalist movements and non-governmental organizations as new social actors; immigration and migrant community formation in Spain.

Country of Expertise: Mexico, Spain

Current Research Project: Project consists in contrasting the contents and forms of organization achieved by the main indigenous actors which since the seventies have emerged as a response to the failure of both indigenismo and agrarismo approaches to the "indigenous question" in Mexico. Both state-sponsored and independent, both class-based and ethnically defined organizations are compared in the course of their struggles vis-a-vis the nation-state and mestizo society. Since the nineties, in the course of the neoliberal retreat of the state from development and integration polices, state-society as well as minority-majority relations are being redefined by new ethnic actors, of whom the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) is only its most visible representative. The process through which these innovative coalitions of communities and alliances of highly heterogeneous social actors appear first in the regional and then in the national arena are illustrated with examples from Michoacán.

Project Title: "From Indigenismo to Zapatismo: The Struggle for Indigenous Rights in Mexico"

Academic Background: M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at Hamburg University (Germany); has been teaching at the Universities of Hamburg, Ghent (Belgium) and Aalborg (Denmark), currently Profesor Titular of Social Anthropology at the University of Granada (Spain). Ethnographic fieldwork on handicraft and indigenismo policy as well as on indigenous communities and ethnic movements in Michoacán (Mexico) and on migrant communities, non-governmental organizations and "multiculturalist" social movements in Hamburg (Germany) and Andalusia (Spain).

Selected Publications

• 1995 Teoría y práctica del Indigenismo. Quito & Mexico-City: Editorial Abya-Yala & Instituto Indigenista Interamericano.
• 1996 Del asistencialismo a la autonomía regional. Boletín Americanista, Vol. 46, pp. 67-97. Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona.
• 1997 Intercultural Education Materials (co-authored). 176 pp. Ghent: University of Ghent, Centre for intercultural Education.
• 1999 "La comunidad purhépecha es nuestra fuerza": etnicidad, cultura y región en un movimiento indígena en Michoacán, México. Quito: Editorial Abya-Yala.
• 1999 Indigenismo y educación diferencial en México. Revista Interamericana de Educación de Adultos, Año 21, Vol. 1, Nº 1-3, pp. 35-60. Pátzcuaro, Mexico: CREFAL.
• 2000 El desafío de la interculturalidad: el voluntariado y las organizaciones no-gubernamentales ante el reto de la inmigración. Granada & Barcelona: Laboratorio de Estudios Interculturales & Fundación "la Caixa."
• 2000 Ethnic Movements in Contemporary Mexico. Discussion Paper, Nº 15. Aalborg: School for Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Research on Interculturalism and Transnationality.
• 2002 Discrimination of Muslim Women in Spain. In: J. Blaschke (ed.): Multi-Level Discrimination Against Muslim Women in Europe, pp. 341-520. Berlin: Edition Parabolis.
• 2002 "Door to Door With Our Muslim Sisters": intercultural and inter-religious conflicts in Granada (co-authored). Studi Emigrazione/Migration Studies, Vol. 39 Nº 145, pp. 77-106. Rome: Scalabrini International Migration Institute.
• 2003 Globalización, resistencia y negociación en América Latina (co-editor). Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata.
• 2003 Multiculturalismo, interculturalidad y educación: una aproximación antropológica. Granada & Mexico-City: Editorial Universidad de Granada & CIESAS.