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To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00479.x Byline: Rinku Roy Chowdhury (*), BL Turner ([dagger]) Keywords: cultural and political ecology; Mexico; land-change science; land use; regression models Abstract: The agent-structure binary in human-environment relations has historically ascribed primacy to either decision-making agents or political-economic structures as the anthropogenic force driving landscape change. This binary has, in part, separated cultural and political ecology, despite important research weaving structure and agency in each of these and related subfields. The implications of approaching explanations of land use using this binary are illustrated systematically, drawing from empirical research on smallholder land use in the southern Yucatan of Mexico, a development frontier and environmental conservation region. The land-use strategies of mixed subsistence-market smallholder cultivators are explored through agent, structure, and integrated agent-structure models addressing parcel allocations to a suite of regionally evolving and/or extant land uses. The models are compared to illustrate what understanding is missed by a focus on either approach alone and what is gained by joining them. Results suggest that focusing on structure or agency alone may lead to inadequate and even erroneous characterizations of the variables that are of interest to the chosen approach. A sectorally disaggregated approach can identify suites of factors that drive particular land uses. Author Affiliation: (*)Department of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Miami ([dagger])Graduate School of Geography, Clark University Article History: Initial submission, October 2004; revised submission, July 2005; final acceptance, November 2005 Article note: Correspondence: Department of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Miami, 1000 Memorial Dr., Coral Gables, FL 33124, e-mail: rroychowdhury@miami.edu (Roy Chowdhury); Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, 950 Main St., Worcester, MA 01610, e-mail: bturner@clarku.edu (Turner).

Ethnic relations and state politics have been given focus in an attempt to analyze the effects of the Caste War on the development of the Mexican state's indigenist policies on education, legal support and land. The issues were more emphasized during President Cardenas' visit to Yucatan in Aug 1837, which saw the emergence of land reforms. The imminent danger of another social conflict was presented should landowners fail to comply with the Cardenista agrarian reform. However, the Cardenistas failed in their efforts to mobilize the Maya peasants towards a class-based social and political structure.