Clark IDCE

Professors in the Field

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

Education

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

Research interests: political ecology, peasants and agrarian change, conservation and sustainable development, Mesoamerica, globalizations (corporate versus grassroots), indigenous knowledge and cultural survival

As Liza Grandia has been settling into her new teaching post, she has been primarily working on the Spanish version of her forthcoming English book, Unsettling, which is currently under academic review. In coordination with the Spanish publication in fall 2008, several NGOs in Guatemala are planning grassroots education campaigns to disseminate Professor Grandia’s research to the Q’eqchi’ people to aid in their struggles for land. Her most recent journal publication is “Between Bolivar and Bureaucracy: Biodiversity Conservation and the Lost Potential of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor” in a special edited volume of Conservation and Society under the theme of “Conservation as Business Venture,” with editors Jim Igoe and Dan Brockington, 2007 (vol. 5, no. 2). Continuing her goal of making her research available in Spanish as well as English, she published “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. Other publications written in 2007 include her forthcoming chapter “Milpa Matters: Maya Communities of Toledo v. Government of Belize” in Waging War, Making Peace: Reparations and Human Rights, compiled by editors Barbara Rose Johnston and Susan Slyomovics for Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press June of 2008, as well as a book chapter for another anthology edited by Roberto Gonzalez and Rachael Stryker about “The Work of Studying Up.” Based on a conference panel at the 2007 Geography meetings in San Francisco is an article under review with Geoforum called “Raw Hides: Hegemony and Cattle in Guatemala’s Lowlands” for a special edited volume by Nathan Sayer on “Land, Labor, Livestock and (Neo)Liberalism: Historical and Contemporary Transformations in Pastoralism and Ranching.”

Grandia also continues more than a dozen years of involvement a Guatemalan environmental non-profit organization called ProPeten. In the greater Maya Biosphere Reserve region, since 1993 she has worked to expand the typical conservation package of forest and park management into new arenas such as health, organic agriculture, gender and ethnic equity, opposition to petroleum extraction, and agrarian reform. Most notably, between 1997-2000, she founded an integrated health, population, and environment program called Remedios which established family planning services for more than half a million people living in this area of northern Guatemala. Liza became a founding member of ProPeten’s board of directors, serving as its President from May 2003-August 2005. For her distinguished service to conservation and sustainable development in Petén, she was elected as a permanent emeritus member of ProPetén’s board in 2005. She speaks Spanish and Q’eqchi’ Maya fluently.

Selected Publications

•          “Milpa Matters: Maya Communities of Toledo v. Government of Belize” in Waging War, Making Peace: Reparations and Human Rights, compiled by editors Barbara Rose Johnston and Susan Slyomovics for Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, June of 2008.
•          (submitted for consideration by publishers, spring 2008). "The Work of Studying Up." In Studying Up, Down, and Sideways, eds. Roberto Gonzalez and Rachael Stryker.
•          “Raw Hides: Hegemony and Cattle in Guatemala’s Lowlands” to a special edited volume of Geoforum, “Land, Labor, Livestock and (Neo)Liberalism: Historical and Contemporary Transformations in Pastoralism and Ranching,” with editor Nathan Sayre.
•           2007 (vol. 5, no. 2). “Between Bolivar and Bureaucracy: Biodiversity Conservation and the Lost Potential of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.” For a special edited volume of Conservation and Society under the theme of “Conservation as Business Venture,” eds. Jim Igoe and Dan Brockington.
•          “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.
•           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.