American Indian Studies Research Institute

Jorge L. Rios-Allier is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Anthropology. His research, which draws together the work of scholars in many fields, focuses on the problem of Cultural Heritage Management (CHM), including the diversity of institutional frameworks and organizational capacities about heritage management and cultural governance. His current project examines the feasibility of conceptualizing self-government CMH as a common pool resource in the Mexican action arena, applying the Institutional Analysis Framework (IAD) created by Elinor Ostrom. This research aims to contribute to our understanding of the emerging phenomenon of community-ruled heritage management in Southern Mexico, where communities, NGO’s, national and subnational government agencies perform collective decision-making scenarios in CHM exercise. His dissertation project’s main goal is to analyze institutional frameworks and dialogs that are developing among archaeologists, economists, environmental preservationists, and government agents with descendant communities. Also, this project emphasizes the importance of engaging with the cultural rights and knowledge of local and descendant communities in collaborative cultural heritage conservation where consuetudinary decision-making processes reflect social attributes such as beliefs, reciprocity, communality, or prestige.