Rooting in a Useless Land

Ancient Farmers, Celebrity Chefs, and Environmental Justice in Yucatan

Chelsea Fisher

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780520395886
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.
 

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Rooting in a Useless Land
• 1. The Celebrity Chef Lands in Yaxunah
• 2. Murderer of the Woodland
• 3. Seeds of Permanence
• 4. Taproot to Fibrous Root
• 5. Lines in the Forest
• 6. The Ghost of Chaipa Chi
• Appendix A. Time Line of Key Events in the History of the Yaxunah Ejido
• Appendix B. Comparison of Homesites Documented at Tzacauil
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index