Constructing indigenous activism: Oaxaca, Mexico

This dissertation explores the experience of indigenous activists as they attempt to use the Internet and Internet-enabled alliances with global civil society to negotiate their conflicts with state and local governments in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Drawing on communication and globalizations studies, as well as anthropological literature, this case study sheds light on indigenous conceptualizations of and experience with identity politics, integration into what have been described as new social movements, and the shifting state powers that have come with the acceleration of economic and political globalization. Taken as a whole, the dissertation argues that indigenous activists have constructed a global actvisim that reflects their idiosyncratic cultural and historical context, as well as their employment of self-interested agency in the use of western communications technology and the new global resonance of their cause. In so doing, the dissertation also supports theories of an empowered and dualistic human agency capable of loosening structural restraints (Couldry, Inside Culture; Giddens, The Constition of Society).