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Dicenta, Mara
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Biography
With a background in Social Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies (STS), my ethnographic work explores scientific communities and institutions, as well as their collaborations with human and other-than-human communities. I am particularly interested in how technoscience reproduces, responds to, or seeks to repair racial, colonial, and military legacies. Within this broad focus, I have engaged in various ethnographic and historical projects, ranging from the medicalization and psychologization of obesity in Spain and the Netherlands to the eradication of “invasive species” in Tierra del Fuego, more-than-human alliances to resist gated communities’ encroachment in Buenos Aires’ wetlands, and the restoration of river herring and local ecological knowledges along the Rappahannock River.
I hold a joint appointment between Anthropology and the Institute for Integrative Conservation. I am interested in working with students and collaborators on ethnographic projects exploring topics such as decolonizing science & technology, environmental knowledges & ethics, multispecies justice, feminist methodologies, race and racialization, and Latin American studies.
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Now showing 1 - 10 of 17
Publication Open Access Review: Salvaging Empire: Sovereignty, Natural Resources, and Environmental Science in the South Atlantic by James Blair(2024-01-01) Dicenta, Mara; William & MaryPublication Open Access How Changing Imaginaries of Nature and Tourism Have Shaped National Protected Area Creation in Argentine Patagonia(2023-01-01) Dicenta, Mara; Anderson, Christopher B.; Archibald, Jessica L.; Valenzuela, Alejandro E. J.; Institute for Integrative Conservation, William & Mary; Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego; Northern Arizona University; Universidad Nacional de Tierra del FuegoEven regions of the planet widely considered to be “remote” or “pristine” like Patagonia are actually dynamic social-ecological systems with interrelated local-international connections of discourses, practices, and institutions. Yet, their study and management often do not consider this complexity. In Argentine Patagonia’s iconic landscapes, protected areas (PAs) represent a major humannature relationship, and PA creation has been motivated by objectives ranging from geopolitical interests to biodiversity conservation. In this chapter, we employed the social imaginary framework to conduct an historical analysis of local, national, and international infuences regarding the way nature and tourism are conceived and managed in national PAs. We evaluated the discourses (ideals, values, beliefs) and institutions (norms, rules, structures, stakeholders) involved in creating these PAs in Argentine Patagonia. The national PA system was legally formed in the 1930s, but initial efforts reach back as far as the early 1900s. We found that while the globalization of Patagonian conservation-based development has consolidated since the 1980s, local-international relationships extended over more than a century to coproduce these social-ecological systems.Publication Open Access The promise of interspecies desegregation: Allying with capybaras against gated communities in Buenos Aires’ wetlands(2024-01-01) Dicenta, Mara; William & MaryNordelta is an exclusive gated community in Buenos Aires built over the wetlands of the Paraná Delta that has encroached on more-than-human bodies and lands through racialized discourses and infrastructures. In this article, I analyze a controversy that arose in 2021 when crowds of capybaras started roaming freely in the community. The event triggered a robust social media response that, I argue, generated popular epistemic tools to enlist capybaras into categories of multispecies endangerment and dispossession. In addition, I delve into the emergence of the communitarian territory of Punta Querandí, which, at the borders of Nordelta, seeks to repair segregation and encroachment for humans and other-than-humans. Drawing on scholarship on animals, race, and the built environment, I employ an ethnographically informed analysis of social media, archival documents, and interviews to explore the two cases as responses to racial capitalism and real extractivism in contemporary Argentina, shedding light into what I term “the promise of interspecies desegregation.”Publication Open Access Coproducir (en) diferencia: Éticas de colaboración entre científicos, cazadores y especies invasoras(2022-01-01) Dicenta, Mara; William & MaryEste artículo analiza la coproducción y sus retos en la ciencia de las invasiones biológicas a través de tres estudios de caso: una controversia científica en torno a las categorías nativo-invasor en Norte América, la configuración de núcleos de investigación sobre invasiones en el Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas (CADIC) en Ushuaia, y la inclusión de cazadores furtivos en un proyecto de erradicación de especies invasoras en el Parque Nacional El Palmar, Entre Ríos. A partir de una etnografía colaborativa en el CADIC (2018-2020), se explora cómo los expertos, grupos, y agendas responden a los retos de la coproducción entre naturaleza y cultura, ciencia y sociedad, y expertos y legos. El análisis de los tres casos sugiere la necesidad de estudios de coproducción que no generen visiones simétricas de la naturaleza y la cultura, que no propongan entendimientos binarios de los mundos en coproducción, y que no desatiendan las asimetrías que median el entrelazamiento de actores. Propongo así ahondar en cuestiones de diferencia, pluralidad, y lo que vengo a llamar "recolección," o formas de creación de conocimiento colectivas y compartidas, que cultiven la alteridad a través de la práctica, y en las que justicia y objetividad van de la mano.Publication Open Access Ecotourism, infrastructures, and the drama of sovereignty on a border island(2023-01-01) Dicenta, Mara; Gerrard, Ana Cecilia; William & Mary; Universidad Nacional de Tierra del FuegoThe Ruta 30 scenic road project in Argentine Tierra del Fuego has encountered significant resistance. In this article, we analyze a public hearing convened to assess the road’s impacts as an event illuminating the daily dynamics of the region. In this borderland, narratives about sovereignty create a space of liminalities between pasts and futures, centers and peripheries, and living and the dead. In this context, and with Patagonia’s expanding conservation and ecotourism frontiers, studying public reflexivity becomes crucial for understanding rapid changes. To this end, we employ Turner’s “social drama” concept to analyze the hearing as a performance enacting authorized discourses of experts, policymakers, environmentalists, industry, and workers. We conclude by discussing “liminal governance” in a border territory that transcends neoliberal and sovereign designs, and “impossible opposition,” revealing how the hearing reframed the road conflict as a sovereignty crisis, ultimately mitigating potential disruptions to established settler-colonial structures.Publication Open Access White animals: racializing sheep and beavers in the Argentinian Tierra del Fuego(Taylor & Francis, 2021-12-22) Dicenta, MaraIn the summer of 1946, a landowning bourgeoisie organized the II Livestock Exhibition of Tierra del Fuego, and the Argentinian Navy filmed the introduction of twenty Canadian beavers in the region. Both events echoed power disputes between a military government seeking to nationalize lands and capitals and the European landowners whose privileges were threatened. The events show that landowners and state officers negotiated their interests by articulating Argentina’s white exceptionalism with animals and against racialized others. Interrogating the interspecies articulation of whiteness in Tierra del Fuego during the 1940s, I examine how sheep and beavers helped secure white privilege through land concentration, breeding, racial purification, nature modernization, and eugenic moralities. To answer these questions, I analyze documents and films from local and national archives. My analysis shows the entangled racialization of humans and animals and its effects, including the appropriation of the Fuegian and native identification categories by settlers and the state. This article demonstrates that ‘White Argentina’ is a project desiring to live not only among white citizens but also among white animals. More broadly, I argue that including animals in race and ethnicity studies can better explain the intersectional production of race inequalities.Publication Open Access The Green Tide as a Boundary Object: Feminism Beyond the Curse of the Left(Somatosphere, 2019) Dicenta, Mara; Arts & SciencesScience and Technology Studies (STS) can engage with social movements in a variety of forms. STS scholarship has provided methods, theories, and concepts related to how information and values are communicated between scientific disciplines and affected communities, how those communities are formed and/or dissolved around matters of concern, how they are (not) listened to and (not) legitimated, and how issues reach political agendas. Thus, STS concepts can be utilized to leverage the possibilities of social movements for producing significant change. In this piece, I draw upon the possibilities for change produced by STS by depicting the green headscarves used in Argentina and other Latin American regions to demand abortion rights as ‘boundary objects’ (Star and Griesemer 1989; Star 2010). Green scarves as boundary objects are not merely icons, they also afford cooperation among very different communities of practice, thought, and belonging.Publication Open Access Un/repairing Through More-than-human Care in Latin America: Conversatorio(Anthropology and Environment Society, A Section of the American Anthropological Association, 2024) Rodriguez, Tyanif Rico; Ressiore C, Adriana; Coyotecatl-Contreras, Jessica Malinalli; Gonzalez-Duarte, Alberto E.; Dicenta, Mara; Arts & SciencesLatin American feminist thought has shaped theoretical and practical understanding of repairing our increasingly damaged planet by incorporating ecocriticism, decolonization scholarship, and Indigenous thought and practices (Heffes, 2013; Segato, 2018; Díaz Lozano et al., 2021; Castro, 2023; De Souza et al. 2024). This piece brings scholars from and/or working in Latin America to share their thoughts on care, extinction, and more-than-human reciprocity. Considering the last decade of theories and practices of care in Latin America, the following examines care and its capacity to repair the ‘care crisis.’Publication Open Access Ecotourism, infrastructures, and the drama of sovereignty on a border island(2023-10-05) Dicenta, Mara; Gerrard, Ana Cecillia; Arts & SciencesThe Ruta 30 scenic road project in Argentine Tierra del Fuego has encountered significant resistance. In this article, we analyze a public hearing convened to assess the road's impacts as an event illuminating the daily dynamics of the region. In this borderland, narratives about sovereignty create a space of liminalities between pasts and futures, centers and peripheries, and living and the dead. In this context, and with Patagonia's expanding conservation and ecotourism frontiers, studying public reflexivity becomes crucial for understanding rapid changes. To this end, we employ Turner's “social drama” concept to analyze the hearing as a performance enacting authorized discourses of experts, policymakers, environmentalists, industry, and workers. We conclude by discussing “liminal governance” in a border territory that transcends neoliberal and sovereign designs, and “impossible opposition,” revealing how the hearing reframed the road conflict as a sovereignty crisis, ultimately mitigating potential disruptions to established settler-colonial structures. KEYWORDS: belonging, ecotourism, frontiers, Patagonia, roads Resumen El proyecto de carretera escénica Ruta 30 en Tierra del Fuego argentina ha enfrentado resistencias. En este artículo, analizamos la audiencia pública convocada para evaluar los impactos de la carretera, un evento que arroja luz sobre las dinámicas diarias de una región fronteriza donde las narrativas de soberanía reafirman liminalidades entre pasados y futuros, centros y periferias, y vivos y muertos. Con la expansión de las fronteras de la conservación y el ecoturismo en Patagonia, el estudio de la reflexividad pública es crucial para comprender el entrelazamiento entre dinámicas globales y locales. Por ello, empleamos el concepto de “drama social” de Turner para analizar la audiencia como una representación que pone en escena discursos autorizados de expertos, políticos, ecologistas, empresarios, y trabajadores. Concluimos discutiendo la “gobernabilidad liminal” en un territorio fronterizo que trasciende los diseños neoliberales y soberanos, y la “oposición imposible”, mostrando cómo la audiencia transformó el conflicto de la carretera en una crisis de soberanía, mitigando su potencial para alterar las estructuras coloniales establecidas. PALABRAS CLAVE: carreteras, ecoturismo, fronteras, Patagonia, pertenenciaPublication Open Access The Relevance of Social Imaginaries to Understand and Manage Biological Invasions in Southern Patagonia(Springer, 2020) Archibald, Jessica; Anderson, Christopher; Dicenta, Mara; Roulier, Catherine; Slutz, Kelly; Nielsen, Erik; Arts & SciencesWestern environmental thought and practice historically separated humans and nature. This dichotomy led to an ecological bias in environmental research and management, but increasingly issues like biological invasions are being re-conceived as socio-ecological problems. Here, we studied how terrestrial and freshwater vertebrate species assemblages in Tierra del Fuego (TDF) have been co-constructed between humans and nature. The social imaginary concept was used to integrate shared discourses (e.g., species preferences, nature ideals, broader social values) and practices (e.g., species introductions, environmental management) via institutions (e.g., informal norms, laws, governmental entities, organizations). To analyze how socio-historical processes interact with biological invasions, we used TDF as a case study linked to broader geographic scales in Patagonia, Argentina, Chile and beyond. We found three predominant social imaginaries characterizing human–nature relationships that led to 20 species being introduced and subsequent efforts to remove or control seven of these: Colonization (ca. 1850–1930), Development (ca. 1930–1980) and Conservation (ca. 1980–present). Each imaginary materialized via formal and informal institutions operating from local to international scales. Specifically, we uncovered 10 discourse categories that related to human interventions of TDF’s species assemblage, ranging from racism and nationalism (Colonization and Development, respectively) to wilderness and uniqueness (Conservation). These ideas affected actions to introduce (eight and 10 species during Colonization and Development, respectively) or remove species (one and seven in Development and Conservation, respectively). An integrated socio-ecological understanding of biological invasions identified not only social preferences and values, but also underlying social processes that can help resolve the complex and underappreciated interactions between society and biological invasions.
