Livia Stone | Illinois State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Livia Stone

The Americas, 2021

mass-organic parties of the left in the region, most notably Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (... more mass-organic parties of the left in the region, most notably Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). It traces how its leaders gradually deprived activists of an “efficacious voice” and transformed the organization into a “professional electoral party.” By contrast, the authors conclude, the Frente Amplio’s unique structure, which consistently makes room for the grassroots movement, has preserved it as a mass party beholden to its activist base.

Taiwan journal of democracy, 2011

This essay examines the convergence of a genre of film called ”social documentary” with the Mexic... more This essay examines the convergence of a genre of film called ”social documentary” with the Mexican anticapitalist social movements, La Otra Campana and the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra. Film takes on characteristics and cultivates practices in the context of social movements that are distinct from its commercial forms. The essay argues that filmmaking is a political practice in creating autonomy, helping subjects to construct a new form of citizenship that is purposefully and actively detaching itself from the state and the idea of a general public. It contrasts the idea of ”autonomy work” advocated by La Otra Campana with the more traditional ”resistance work” of past social movements. Although the autonomy project of these social movements has perhaps been unsuccessful, the idea of autonomy work has changed the political culture of Mexico, as well as its tradition of social documentary film.

Visual Anthropology Review, 2009

Literature investigating human rights videos has concentrated on their usefulness in creating pol... more Literature investigating human rights videos has concentrated on their usefulness in creating political pressure through shaming perpetrators of abuses. Analyzing confrontations between police and a social movement in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, in 2006, I show that the separation between communication and action implicit in this communications model obscures how human rights films form a field of political organization and direct action. In this case, films open a de facto legal space not available through formal institutional channels, and provide a platform through which political actors can transform themselves from bystanders to active participants. I conclude by proposing that the production and distribution of political film in Mexico represent an attempt at social and political change that is more profound than modifications to laws and policies.

Visual Anthropology Review, 2015

This article argues that a visual focus on suffering bodies can obscure the power relationships t... more This article argues that a visual focus on suffering bodies can obscure the power relationships that result in inequality and injustice through (1) obscuring the mechanisms and perpetrators of violence, (2) not disrupting dominant conceptual frameworks, and (3) not leaving room for solutions. I use a corpus of films made about and by a Mexican social movement in San Salvador Atenco to ask a practical question: How might we represent issues of structural violence without focusing on images of suffering and victimization? The solution that these films present is a focus on what I call "scenes of confrontation." [Atenco, documentary film, Mexico, social movements, structural violence] bs_bs_banner

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

Cine Político en México (1968-2017), edited by Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Nicolas Défossé and Diego Zavala Scherer, 49-69, 2019

This chapter asks what the production and distribution of one exceptional Mexican social document... more This chapter asks what the production and distribution of one exceptional Mexican social documentary, Romper el Cerco (Canalseisdejulio & Promedios 2006) can tell us about the changing relationship between professional filmmaking and the alternative economies of practice of collaborative and indigenous video. Romper el Cerco is largely a human rights documentary that argues Mexican police forces and commercial televised media conspired to justify horrific acts of police violence against a pueblo originario (San Salvador Atenco in the state of Mexico). According to the film, the national media, especially televised news, purposefully portrayed the local activists as dangerous criminals so that there would not be a public outcry when the police brutalized and arrested scores of people who were suspected of being part of a local social movement. This paper argues that Romper el Cerco represents a vector of influence that is a reversal of how indigenous media practices have converged with the conventions of professional filmmaking in the past. In this case, an independent professional production company (Canalseisdejulio) collaborated with a foreign professionally-trained filmmaker involved in an indigenous media association (Promedios) and utilized the open, collaborative production practices of community media to produce their film. Furthermore, an association that historically had reserved copyright restrictions on their work and distributed their products commercially (albeit independently without a corporate distributor), utilized an open, non-copyrighted, and non-capitalist distribution strategy generally associated with indigenous and collaborative media. Romper el Cerco demonstrates that the seemingly localized production practices innovated over the past thirty years of Mexico’s indigenous media centers have created a transnational diaspora of media-makers that have integrated alternative economies of practice into their repertoires of professional production practice. In short, I argue that the vector of influence between commercial/professional film and community/indigenous video production practices operates in both directions. Furthermore, rather than being a liability in the case of Romper el Cerco, the open, collaborative process through which the film was produced (inspired by indigenous filmmaking practices in Chiapas) deeply improved the language, content, distribution, and lasting influence of the film.

The use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media in the Arab Spring, #Occupy Wall St... more The use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media in the Arab Spring, #Occupy Wall Street, and Mexico’s #YoSoy132 student movement have all generated excitement about the new uses of digital technology in organized social movements. This dissertation concerns itself with media and social transformation, but recognizes that even as media content can have a deep impact on society and culture, it is ultimately human beings who create and use technology off screen for our own purposes. This dissertation focuses ethnographically on one social movement, the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (The Peoples’ Front in Defense of Land) of San Salvador Atenco on the outskirts of Mexico City, and their relationships with a range of national and international filmmakers. Through examining the daily practices of producing and distributing social documentary films, I show how people used media as an ethical and political practice to purposefully shape and transform face-to-face human relationships. I argue that filmmaking and distributing was one set of practices through which people attempted to cultivate a collectivist disposition called compañerismo, and through which they could build partial autonomies from the state and corporate capitalism. I argue that the historical shift from ‘resistance’ political practices to ‘autonomy’ practices represents a significant departure for contemporary transnational social movements, and signifies a trend away from a Marxist tradition of organizing and toward greater articulation with anarchist thinking and organizing. The cultivation of compañerismo is part of this shift and is indicative of a partial relocation of objectives away from institutional, legal, and policy changes and toward personal and collective transformations of self. I argue that the intersection between cultural production and self production is a crucial locus for examining how social movements help to bring about elusive social and cultural changes that exist outside the grasp of legal and institutional frameworks. These arguments build from and contribute to three large bodies of anthropological research: a political anthropology interested in social movements, a visual anthropology interested in media production, and a broad theoretical anthropological interest in transformations of self, society, and culture through practice.

Cultural Anthropology, 2014

Link to original: https://culanth.org/photo\_essays/4-as-fluid-as-a-brick-wall Livia Stone became... more Link to original: https://culanth.org/photo_essays/4-as-fluid-as-a-brick-wall

Livia Stone became fascinated with the surfaces of Oaxaca de Juarez’s walls while doing ethnographic research in the city in 2009. She took these images because of her aesthetic attraction the wall textures and an intellectual interest in how power struggles were playing out visually in different spaces. The written portion of the essay came about as a conversation between Livia (a cultural anthropologist) and Abigail Stone (an archaeologist) about what the physical, visual evidence that people leave behind can tell us about peoples’ particular lives, and human beings in general. Although the written and visual portions of the essay are deeply intertwined, the written portion is meant to give context for the viewer to better interpret the images and provide some analysis of what we hoped to accomplish in the visual portion. The images are ordered to lead the viewer through a visual journey, first contextualizing the graffiti images historically and culturally, then giving size and location context clues before delving into the flattened, decontextualized images that isolate the walls’ surfaces and textures. We believe this isolation is important in order to challenge viewers to see the collaborations on wall surfaces as aesthetic (as well as anthropological) works. Our recommendation is to view the images first in their visual order and then click the embedded links in the text as they are referenced.

Visual Anthropology Review, 2015

This article argues that a visual focus on suffering bodies can obscure the power relationships t... more This article argues that a visual focus on suffering bodies can obscure the power relationships that result in inequality and injustice through (1) obscuring the mechanisms and perpetrators of violence, (2) not disrupting dominant conceptual frameworks, and (3) not leaving room for solutions. I use a corpus of films made about and by a Mexican social movement in San Salvador Atenco to ask a practical question: How might we represent issues of structural violence without focusing on images of suffering and victimization? The solution that these films present is a focus on what I call " scenes of confrontation. " [Atenco, documentary film, Mexico, social movements, structural violence]

This essay examines the convergence of a genre of film called "social documentary" with the Mexic... more This essay examines the convergence of a genre of film called "social documentary" with the Mexican anticapitalist social movements La Otra Campaña and the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra. Film takes on characteristics and cultivates practices in the context of social movements that are distinct from its commercial forms. The essay argues that filmmaking is a political practice in creating autonomy, helping subjects to construct a new form of citizenship that is purposefully and actively detaching itself from the state and the idea of a general public. It contrasts the idea of "autonomy work" advocated by La Otra Campaña with the more traditional "resistance work" of past social movements. Although the autonomy project of these social movements has perhaps been unsuccessful, the idea of autonomy work has changed the political culture of Mexico, as well as its tradition of social documentary film.

Visual Anthropology Review, 2009

Literature investigating human rights videos has concentrated on their usefulness in creating pol... more Literature investigating human rights videos has concentrated on their usefulness in creating political pressure through shaming perpetrators of abuses. Analyzing confrontations between police and a social movement in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, in 2006, I show that the separation between communication and action implicit in this communications model obscures how human rights films form a field of political organization and direct action. In this case, films open a de facto legal space not available through formal institutional channels, and provide a platform through which political actors can transform themselves from bystanders to active participants. I conclude by proposing that the production and distribution of political film in Mexico represent an attempt at social and political change that is more profound than modifications to laws and policies. [

Books by Livia Stone

Atenco Lives!: Filmmaking and Popular Struggle in Mexico, 2019

The People's Front in Defense of Land of Atenco (the "Frente") is an emblematic force in contempo... more The People's Front in Defense of Land of Atenco (the "Frente") is an emblematic force in contemporary Mexican politics and in anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal activist networks throughout the world. Best known for years of resistance against the encroachment of a government airport project on communal farmland, the Frente also became international news when its members were subject to state violence, rape, and intimidation in a brutal government crackdown in 2006. Through it all, documentary filmmaking has been one aspect of the Frente and its allies' efforts. The contradictions and difficulties of this moral and political project emerge in the day-to-day experiences of local, national, and international filmmakers and film distributors seeking to participate in the social movement.

Stone highlights the importance of how the circulation of the physical videos, and not just their content, promotes the social movement. More broadly she shows how videographers perform their activism, navigating the tensions between neoliberal personhood or ego and an ethos of compañerismo that privileges community. Grounded in the lived experiences of Atenco's activists and allied filmmakers, Atenco Lives! documents the making and circulating of films as an ethical and political practice purposefully used to transform human relationships

The Americas, 2021

mass-organic parties of the left in the region, most notably Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (... more mass-organic parties of the left in the region, most notably Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). It traces how its leaders gradually deprived activists of an “efficacious voice” and transformed the organization into a “professional electoral party.” By contrast, the authors conclude, the Frente Amplio’s unique structure, which consistently makes room for the grassroots movement, has preserved it as a mass party beholden to its activist base.

Taiwan journal of democracy, 2011

This essay examines the convergence of a genre of film called ”social documentary” with the Mexic... more This essay examines the convergence of a genre of film called ”social documentary” with the Mexican anticapitalist social movements, La Otra Campana and the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra. Film takes on characteristics and cultivates practices in the context of social movements that are distinct from its commercial forms. The essay argues that filmmaking is a political practice in creating autonomy, helping subjects to construct a new form of citizenship that is purposefully and actively detaching itself from the state and the idea of a general public. It contrasts the idea of ”autonomy work” advocated by La Otra Campana with the more traditional ”resistance work” of past social movements. Although the autonomy project of these social movements has perhaps been unsuccessful, the idea of autonomy work has changed the political culture of Mexico, as well as its tradition of social documentary film.

Visual Anthropology Review, 2009

Literature investigating human rights videos has concentrated on their usefulness in creating pol... more Literature investigating human rights videos has concentrated on their usefulness in creating political pressure through shaming perpetrators of abuses. Analyzing confrontations between police and a social movement in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, in 2006, I show that the separation between communication and action implicit in this communications model obscures how human rights films form a field of political organization and direct action. In this case, films open a de facto legal space not available through formal institutional channels, and provide a platform through which political actors can transform themselves from bystanders to active participants. I conclude by proposing that the production and distribution of political film in Mexico represent an attempt at social and political change that is more profound than modifications to laws and policies.

Visual Anthropology Review, 2015

This article argues that a visual focus on suffering bodies can obscure the power relationships t... more This article argues that a visual focus on suffering bodies can obscure the power relationships that result in inequality and injustice through (1) obscuring the mechanisms and perpetrators of violence, (2) not disrupting dominant conceptual frameworks, and (3) not leaving room for solutions. I use a corpus of films made about and by a Mexican social movement in San Salvador Atenco to ask a practical question: How might we represent issues of structural violence without focusing on images of suffering and victimization? The solution that these films present is a focus on what I call "scenes of confrontation." [Atenco, documentary film, Mexico, social movements, structural violence] bs_bs_banner

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology

Cine Político en México (1968-2017), edited by Adriana Estrada Álvarez, Nicolas Défossé and Diego Zavala Scherer, 49-69, 2019

This chapter asks what the production and distribution of one exceptional Mexican social document... more This chapter asks what the production and distribution of one exceptional Mexican social documentary, Romper el Cerco (Canalseisdejulio & Promedios 2006) can tell us about the changing relationship between professional filmmaking and the alternative economies of practice of collaborative and indigenous video. Romper el Cerco is largely a human rights documentary that argues Mexican police forces and commercial televised media conspired to justify horrific acts of police violence against a pueblo originario (San Salvador Atenco in the state of Mexico). According to the film, the national media, especially televised news, purposefully portrayed the local activists as dangerous criminals so that there would not be a public outcry when the police brutalized and arrested scores of people who were suspected of being part of a local social movement. This paper argues that Romper el Cerco represents a vector of influence that is a reversal of how indigenous media practices have converged with the conventions of professional filmmaking in the past. In this case, an independent professional production company (Canalseisdejulio) collaborated with a foreign professionally-trained filmmaker involved in an indigenous media association (Promedios) and utilized the open, collaborative production practices of community media to produce their film. Furthermore, an association that historically had reserved copyright restrictions on their work and distributed their products commercially (albeit independently without a corporate distributor), utilized an open, non-copyrighted, and non-capitalist distribution strategy generally associated with indigenous and collaborative media. Romper el Cerco demonstrates that the seemingly localized production practices innovated over the past thirty years of Mexico’s indigenous media centers have created a transnational diaspora of media-makers that have integrated alternative economies of practice into their repertoires of professional production practice. In short, I argue that the vector of influence between commercial/professional film and community/indigenous video production practices operates in both directions. Furthermore, rather than being a liability in the case of Romper el Cerco, the open, collaborative process through which the film was produced (inspired by indigenous filmmaking practices in Chiapas) deeply improved the language, content, distribution, and lasting influence of the film.

The use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media in the Arab Spring, #Occupy Wall St... more The use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media in the Arab Spring, #Occupy Wall Street, and Mexico’s #YoSoy132 student movement have all generated excitement about the new uses of digital technology in organized social movements. This dissertation concerns itself with media and social transformation, but recognizes that even as media content can have a deep impact on society and culture, it is ultimately human beings who create and use technology off screen for our own purposes. This dissertation focuses ethnographically on one social movement, the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (The Peoples’ Front in Defense of Land) of San Salvador Atenco on the outskirts of Mexico City, and their relationships with a range of national and international filmmakers. Through examining the daily practices of producing and distributing social documentary films, I show how people used media as an ethical and political practice to purposefully shape and transform face-to-face human relationships. I argue that filmmaking and distributing was one set of practices through which people attempted to cultivate a collectivist disposition called compañerismo, and through which they could build partial autonomies from the state and corporate capitalism. I argue that the historical shift from ‘resistance’ political practices to ‘autonomy’ practices represents a significant departure for contemporary transnational social movements, and signifies a trend away from a Marxist tradition of organizing and toward greater articulation with anarchist thinking and organizing. The cultivation of compañerismo is part of this shift and is indicative of a partial relocation of objectives away from institutional, legal, and policy changes and toward personal and collective transformations of self. I argue that the intersection between cultural production and self production is a crucial locus for examining how social movements help to bring about elusive social and cultural changes that exist outside the grasp of legal and institutional frameworks. These arguments build from and contribute to three large bodies of anthropological research: a political anthropology interested in social movements, a visual anthropology interested in media production, and a broad theoretical anthropological interest in transformations of self, society, and culture through practice.

Cultural Anthropology, 2014

Link to original: https://culanth.org/photo\_essays/4-as-fluid-as-a-brick-wall Livia Stone became... more Link to original: https://culanth.org/photo_essays/4-as-fluid-as-a-brick-wall

Livia Stone became fascinated with the surfaces of Oaxaca de Juarez’s walls while doing ethnographic research in the city in 2009. She took these images because of her aesthetic attraction the wall textures and an intellectual interest in how power struggles were playing out visually in different spaces. The written portion of the essay came about as a conversation between Livia (a cultural anthropologist) and Abigail Stone (an archaeologist) about what the physical, visual evidence that people leave behind can tell us about peoples’ particular lives, and human beings in general. Although the written and visual portions of the essay are deeply intertwined, the written portion is meant to give context for the viewer to better interpret the images and provide some analysis of what we hoped to accomplish in the visual portion. The images are ordered to lead the viewer through a visual journey, first contextualizing the graffiti images historically and culturally, then giving size and location context clues before delving into the flattened, decontextualized images that isolate the walls’ surfaces and textures. We believe this isolation is important in order to challenge viewers to see the collaborations on wall surfaces as aesthetic (as well as anthropological) works. Our recommendation is to view the images first in their visual order and then click the embedded links in the text as they are referenced.

Visual Anthropology Review, 2015

This article argues that a visual focus on suffering bodies can obscure the power relationships t... more This article argues that a visual focus on suffering bodies can obscure the power relationships that result in inequality and injustice through (1) obscuring the mechanisms and perpetrators of violence, (2) not disrupting dominant conceptual frameworks, and (3) not leaving room for solutions. I use a corpus of films made about and by a Mexican social movement in San Salvador Atenco to ask a practical question: How might we represent issues of structural violence without focusing on images of suffering and victimization? The solution that these films present is a focus on what I call " scenes of confrontation. " [Atenco, documentary film, Mexico, social movements, structural violence]

This essay examines the convergence of a genre of film called "social documentary" with the Mexic... more This essay examines the convergence of a genre of film called "social documentary" with the Mexican anticapitalist social movements La Otra Campaña and the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra. Film takes on characteristics and cultivates practices in the context of social movements that are distinct from its commercial forms. The essay argues that filmmaking is a political practice in creating autonomy, helping subjects to construct a new form of citizenship that is purposefully and actively detaching itself from the state and the idea of a general public. It contrasts the idea of "autonomy work" advocated by La Otra Campaña with the more traditional "resistance work" of past social movements. Although the autonomy project of these social movements has perhaps been unsuccessful, the idea of autonomy work has changed the political culture of Mexico, as well as its tradition of social documentary film.

Visual Anthropology Review, 2009

Literature investigating human rights videos has concentrated on their usefulness in creating pol... more Literature investigating human rights videos has concentrated on their usefulness in creating political pressure through shaming perpetrators of abuses. Analyzing confrontations between police and a social movement in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico, in 2006, I show that the separation between communication and action implicit in this communications model obscures how human rights films form a field of political organization and direct action. In this case, films open a de facto legal space not available through formal institutional channels, and provide a platform through which political actors can transform themselves from bystanders to active participants. I conclude by proposing that the production and distribution of political film in Mexico represent an attempt at social and political change that is more profound than modifications to laws and policies. [

Atenco Lives!: Filmmaking and Popular Struggle in Mexico, 2019

The People's Front in Defense of Land of Atenco (the "Frente") is an emblematic force in contempo... more The People's Front in Defense of Land of Atenco (the "Frente") is an emblematic force in contemporary Mexican politics and in anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal activist networks throughout the world. Best known for years of resistance against the encroachment of a government airport project on communal farmland, the Frente also became international news when its members were subject to state violence, rape, and intimidation in a brutal government crackdown in 2006. Through it all, documentary filmmaking has been one aspect of the Frente and its allies' efforts. The contradictions and difficulties of this moral and political project emerge in the day-to-day experiences of local, national, and international filmmakers and film distributors seeking to participate in the social movement.

Stone highlights the importance of how the circulation of the physical videos, and not just their content, promotes the social movement. More broadly she shows how videographers perform their activism, navigating the tensions between neoliberal personhood or ego and an ethos of compañerismo that privileges community. Grounded in the lived experiences of Atenco's activists and allied filmmakers, Atenco Lives! documents the making and circulating of films as an ethical and political practice purposefully used to transform human relationships