Liza Grandia IDSC Faculty

Professors in the Field

Liza Grandia, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of International Development and Social Change

Coordinator of the International Development and Social Change Undergraduate Program

Education

Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 2006
B.A. in Women’s Studies (summa cum laude), Yale University, 1996

Research Interests

political economy and corporate capitalism, the commons, political ecology and the politics of biodiversity conservation, peasants and agrarian change, Mesoamerica and the Q’eqchi’ Maya people, DR-CAFTA and the Puebla to Panama Plan, indigenous knowledge and cultural survival, the global cancer epidemic

Biography

Liza Grandia joined the Clark faculty as a cultural anthropologist in the fall of 2007. She received her B.A. (summa cum laude) in Women’s Studies from Yale University in 1996 and her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California-Berkeley in 2006. From 2006-07, she returned to Yale University as a fellow in the Program in Agrarian Studies. Having carried out almost seven years of fieldwork in northern Guatemala and southern Belize, Dr. Grandia speaks fluent Spanish and is proficient in Q’eqchi’ Maya.

Since 1993, Dr. Grandia has collaborated with a Guatemalan environmental NGO called ProPetén in the greater Maya Biosphere Reserve region—working to expand the typical conservation package of forest and park management into new arenas such as health, organic agriculture, ethnobotany, gender and ethnic equity, environmental justice, and agrarian reform. Most notably, between 1997-2000, she founded an integrated health and environment program called Remedios, which established family planning services for more than half a million people living in northern Guatemala. After ProPetén’s separation from Conservation International, Grandia became a founding member its board of directors.

Research Projects

Liza Grandia is currently editing her book entitled Unsettling: The Recurring Enclosures of the Q’eqchi’ Maya, which examines the impacts of the World Bank’s agrarian reform and corporate neoliberalism on Guatemala’s second largest indigenous group. In September 2009, AVANCSO one of Guatemala’s leading social science research institutions, will release her book Tz’aptzooqeb’: El Despojo Recurrente del Pueblo Q’eqchi’. Financed by Oxfam-Great Britain, this special Spanish edition of Grandia’s book was designed for a Guatemalan audience with a greater emphasis on history, land and agricultural data, and agrarian policy reforms. With additional support from Oxfam International, a coalition of Guatemalan NGOs are organizing an education campaign through a Q’eqchi’-language documentary video to disseminate Grandia’s research to Q’eqchi’ villages across northern Guatemala to help them defend their land against cattle ranchers, African palm plantations, and other threats from trade and globalization projects.

Across the border, Grandia accompanied Maya communities as an expert witness in two constitutional land cases in 2007. On October 18, 2007, the Supreme Court of Belize made a historic ruling in favor of the Maya plaintiffs, citing at length testimony from the expert witnesses, including evidence presented by Professor Grandia. Another ruling is expected in the fall of 2009. To encourage more of such collaborative activism between academics and communities, in 2006, Dr. Grandia launched the Q’eqchi’ Scholars Network. Anyone interested in joining this listserv should contact her by email.

As a recent survivor of lymphoma, her next research project will examine the cultural aspects of the global cancer epidemic. She will also be collaborating with her doctoral advisor, Laura Nader, on an edited anthology about the history of anthropology at UC-Berkeley since the 1960s through intellectual autobiographies of the past and present faculty.

Selected Publications

2009. “Raw Hides: Hegemony and Cattle in Guatemala’s Northern Lowlands.” Geoforum, “Land, Labor, Livestock and (Neo)Liberalism: Historical and Contemporary Transformations in Pastoralism and Ranching,” special volume edited by Nathan Sayre. 40:720-31.

2009. “Milpa Matters: Maya Communities of Toledo v. Government of Belize” in Waging War, Making Peace: Reparations and Human Rights. Eds. Barbara Rose Johnston and Susan Slyomovics. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. 153-182.

2007 “Between Bolivar and Bureaucracy: Biodiversity Conservation and the Lost Potential of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.” For a special edited volume, “Engaging Neoliberal Conservation,” Eds. Jim Igoe and Dan Brockington, Conservation and Society 5(2): 478-503.

2007 (April 27). “The Tragedy of the Enclosures’: Rethinking Primitive Accumulation from the Guatemalan Hinterland.” Agrarian Studies Colloquium Series, Yale University. Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

“Los Motivos Detrás de Los Programas de Tierras de los Bancos Multilaterales de la Perspectiva Q’eqchi’” in Gobernabilidad Ambiental y Desarrollo Sostenible en Petén, edited by FLACSO in Guatemala City: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales y Fundación Ford, 2007, 247-255.

2006 (May). “Unsettling: Land Dispossession and Enduring Inequity for the Q’eqchi’ Maya in the Guatemalan and Belizean Frontier Colonization Process.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California-Berkeley. 554 pp.

2005 (November). "Appreciating the Complexity and Dignity of People's Lives: Integrating Population-Health-Environment Research in Petén, Guatemala." FOCUS. Report of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP). Issue 10. 12 pp.

2001. “Look At The World Through Women’s Eyes: On Empathy and International Civil Society.” Identity Politics in the Women’s Movement. Ed. Barbara Ryan. New York: New York University Press. 291-304.

2001 (with N. Schwartz, A. Corzo, O. Obando and L. Ochoa). Salud, Migración y Recursos Naturales en Petén: Resultados del Módulo Ambiental en la Encuesta de Salud Materno Infantil 1999. Instituto. Part 1. Part 2.

Recent Op-Eds

2006 (December 26). With Rick Stepp. Op-ed. “Mel Gibson's Movie Scratches Surface of Mayan History.” Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union.

2006 (December 17). Op-ed: “The Sober Racism of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.” Common Dreams News Center.

2005 (July 30). Op-ed: “In Their Own Words: The House Debate on CAFTA.” Common Dreams News Center.

2005 (July 27). Op-ed: “CAFTA to Hurt Guatemala, U.S. Workers.” Birmingham Post Herald. Pp. A9.

2005 (July 26). Op-ed: “Hidden in the 2,400 Pages of CAFTA.” San Diego Union Tribune. Pp. B7.

2005 (June 2). With Laura Nader, Michael Dorsey, Carmelo Ruiz, Magalí Rey Rosa and Jorge Cabrera. “Silence is Beholden: Are Corporations Hog-Tying Conservation Groups in CAFTA Fight?” The Daily Grist.

2005 (April 5). Op-ed: “An Honest Mistake?” Common Dreams News Center.

Courses

Graduate
Peasants, Agrarian Change, and Rural Development
International Development Program and Project Management
Aid and Empire: Looking the Gift Horse in the Mouth

Undergraduate
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Controlling Capitalism: Another World Is Possible