State Fixations, Fugitive Landscapes: A Spatial History of Modern Mexico

FAIN: FT-51500-03

Raymond Craib
Cornell University (Ithaca, NY 14850-2820)

I am finishing a manuscript that analyzes the relationship between national and regional cartographic projects and rural populations in 19th and 20th century Mexico. I examine how surveyors and cartographers struggled to construct and naturalize notions of property, jurisdiction, and resources, with the villagers and landowners they encountered in the field. In the process, I show how an analysis of the social production of space can transform our understandings of state formation. At the same time, by basing my analysis on extensive research in local archives, I provide a concrete historical and social context within which to follow how such processes unfolded on the ground and the role different actors played in those processes.

Associated Products