Overview

In Rooting in a Useless Land, Chelsea Fisher examines the deep histories of environmental-justice conflicts in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. She draws on her innovative archaeological research in Yaxunah, an Indigenous Maya farming community dealing with land dispossession, but with a surprising twist: Yaxunah happens to be entangled with prestigious sustainable-development projects initiated by some of the most famous chefs in the world. Fisher contends that these sustainable-development initiatives inadvertently bolster the useless-land narrative—a colonial belief that Maya forests are empty wastelands—which has been driving Indigenous land dispossession and environmental injustice for centuries. Rooting in a Useless Land explores how archaeology, practiced within communities, can restore history and strengthen relationships built on contested ground.  

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9780520395862

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Reviews

""Chelsea Fisher, environmental anthropologist and archaeologist, presents an engaging ethnography of conflict between Western and Indigenous rationality by examining historical and contemporary land use practices in Yucatán, Mexico. . . . Fisher demonstrates how environmental justice and the misgivings it reveals are strongly linked to the racial and anti-Indigenous aspects of the political economy."" * Human Ecology *

Author Information

Chelsea Fisher is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina.

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