The making of the global indigenous movement and its relation to Bolivian indigeneity today Anthropology, development and transnationalism (1930-2012)

This dissertation documents how discourses and legal frameworks regarding global indigeneity influenced Bolivia’s polity and laws. From a historical approach, it attempts to answer the question regarding how international legal instruments for ‘indigenous peoples’, such as the ILO Convention 169 and the Declaration for United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), became major references for the modification of the Bolivian Constitutions in 1994 and 2009. These constitutional changes converted the country first into a ‘multi-ethnic and pluricultural’ state, and later into a ‘plurinational’ one.
The study specifically explores the role of anthropology, international development and transnationalism in this transformation. By exploring the making of the global indigenous movement and Bolivian current indigeneity through a geneaology, the research seeks to unravel how the West, and generally people who do not consider themselves ‘indigenous’, have constructed ‘the other’ over time. Following this, it analyzes the influence of the development industry (which includes NGOs, churches and all types of international development organisations) in the construction of a range of indigeneities within a transnational and historical perspective.