The CSSH Jack Goody Prize for 2018 has been awarded to Andrew Canessa, for his paper “Indigenous Conflict in Bolivia Explored through an African Lens: Towards a Comparative Analysis of Indigeneity“ (CSSH 60-2). The panel of judges sent us the following summary of why they chose Andrew’s paper:
“Andrew Canessa’s article analyses a substantial scholarly literature, and does so with admirable succinctness and clarity. At one level, it is a study of discourses of indigeneity in contemporary Bolivia under the presidency of Evo Morales, the nation’s first head of state to be recognised as ‘indigenous’. The article adopts a thoroughly comparative perspective towards its subject, however, giving the essay interest to a readership much wider than specialists in Bolivia or Latin America alone. It compares discourses of indigeneity in Bolivia (and Latin America more broadly) and Africa (primarily West Africa), and derives from this juxtaposition some original theoretical conclusions. Canessa argues that indigeneity, as currently practiced, needs to be understood as a global phenomenon. Moreover, it is one that has come into being relatively recently and is now growing rapidly in global significance. His comparison of Latin America and Africa enables him to distinguish between types of discourses of indigeneity, according to – crucially – their relationship with the state. Specifically, Canessa identifies five dimensions along which discourses of indigeneity can vary in this way. These are original and important contributions to a timely issue, and the essay is a novel demonstration of the enduring power and productivity of the comparative method.”
