Maximilian Viatori
My primary research interests are race and ethnicity, social movements, and nationalism/transnationalism in Latin America.
My dissertation research examined the role that official multicultural reforms have played in both restricting and enabling new forms of local Indigenous activism in Ecuador. My doctoral study was based on roughly two years of ethnographic research with the Zápara Nationality of Ecuador, a grassroots organization in the country’s Amazonian region. This research was supported by scholarships from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Phi Beta Kappa, the Endangered Language Foundation and the University of California. I have published the results of my doctoral research in several peer-reviewed journals and just completed a book manuscript on the subject, Representing Revitalization: Official Multiculturalism and Indigenous Activism in Ecuador, which is currently undergoing external review.
My current project is a study of nationalism, popular politics and public culture in Ecuador. This study will explore the intersections of political power, popular culture and emergent narratives of post-colonial nationalism in Ecuador. Specifically, I am interested in showing how public culture is being used by both populist politicians and middle-class Ecuadorians to articulate new understandings of national identity, ones that are fashioned in dialogue and conflict with national narratives furthered by traditional national elites and grassroots social movements. I have begun to gather ethnographic and textual data for this project from a wide range of sources: speeches given by national politicians, editorials in Ecuador’s national papers, attendance at public spectacles like soccer games, graffiti in Quito’s urban center, and web video and blog postings. I have also begun work on a comparison of certain aspects of Ecuadorian and Colombian nationalism and hope to expand this facet of my research in the next five years.
Selected Publications:
Forthcoming Re-imagining Amazonia. Focaal: The European Journal of Anthropology.
2008 Soccer Nationalism: Ecuador and the World Cup. City & Society 20(2):275-282.
2008 Gender and Indigenous Self-Representation in the Zápara Nationality of Ecuador. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 3(2):193-203.
2007 Speaking Sovereignty: Indigenous Languages and Self-determination (with Gloria Ushigua). Wicazo Sa Review 22 (2):7-21.
2007 Zápara Leaders and Identity Construction in Ecuador: The Complexities of Indigenous Self-Representation. Journal of Latin American Anthropology 12(1):104-133.
