Paper short abstract:

This paper wishes to discuss how an alternative development discourse among indigenous people and ethnic minorities can be documented and analyzed by a framework that aims to shred light into inter-ethnic power relations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper wishes to discuss how an alternative development discourse among indigenous people and ethnic minorities can be documented and analyzed by a framework that aims to shred light into inter-ethnic power relations. With a critical reading of mainstream development thinking, it focuses on the case of the Raramuri indigenous people of Northern Mexico and their political relations with dominant sectors of society. This is important as most studies use a universalizing approach to conceptualize development neglecting to consider conflicting local understandings of wellbeing.

The framework is composed by three main pillars. The first is to document through detailed ethnographic evidence local understandings of wellbeing for the Raramuri people which emerge in contexts of ethno-political oppression. The second is to uncover underlying power relations in the form of land conflicts and institutional arrangements hindering wellbeing and reproducing ethnically differentiated vulnerabilities. The third pillar is to analyze resulting mechanisms of resistance employed in order to control practices and customs that promotes ethnic distinction. These three pillars provide a novel framework to explore the formation and contestation of asymmetrical economic and political relations at the local level.

Using this framework, this paper finds that the Raramuri like other minority groups living in the margins of nation-states and global markets are constrained to act strategically to face political and socio-economic exclusion fluctuating between the tension of having the right to live differently and the need to be part of the larger society.