The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship will support Joel's dissertation fieldwork in Paraguay from February 2014 to January 2015. Joel's research comprises a comparative case study of three Inter-American Court of Human Rights cases in favor of indigenous territorial claims in the Paraguayan Chaco. Using a variety of qualitative methods he will investigate how international indigenous rights law intersects with domestic politics to create new indigenous subjectivities and governable spaces. Joel's study draws from political ecology, legal geography, and cultural geography to question how the process of making territorial claims before the Court renders identity and territory governable by the state in new ways. Joel will work closely with local partners from the Universidad Colombia del Paraguay Faculty of Human Rights and Law, the Universidad Catolica de Asunción Center for Anthropological Studies, Tierraviva, and each of the three communities that his research focuses on--Sawhoyamaxa, Yakye Axa, and Xákmok Kásek. Joel's research will advance debates on the "territorial turn", indigenous rights and the role of the Court, and cultural politics.
See US Department of Education Fulbright-Hays for more information.