Development policy and indigenous identities in Ecuador: A study in cultural citizenship.

This paper argues that state institutions and legal mechanisms are not only mediators of citizenship. Instead, globally configured expectations and interactions may shape citizenship in ways that do not conform to rights articulated in government legislation or international institutional mandates. Adopting the concept of cultural citizenship from anthropology, the paper analyzes de facto citizenship at two intersections of international development policy and Ecuadorian indigenous identity politics: one involving national water legislation and the other entailing a local irrigation project. Based on ethnographic research, it shows how involvement of indigenous people in regimes of resource access and decision-making is contingent on their meeting Ecuadorian and global elites' perceptions of civility and progress, even though rights to such involvement are recognized in the Ecuadorian constitution and international legal instruments. While the indigenous peoples' organizations active in each scenario are part of the same national confederation and share political agendas, they fashion their citizenship differently, according to the way that they negotiate or contest the policy terms in each case. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]