Winner, Society of the Anthropology of Work Book Prize, 2010
When the ever-intensifying global marketplace "modernizes" rural communities, who stands to gain? Can local residents most impacted by changes to their social fabric ever recover or even identify what has been lost?
Frances Abrahamer Rothstein uses thirty years of sustained anthropological fieldwork in the rural Mexican community of San Cosme Mazatecochco to showcase globalization's complexities and contradictions.
Rothstein's lucid work chronicles the changes in production, consumption, and social relations during three distinct periods: the Mexican "miracle," when economic development fueled mobility for a large segment of the population, including San Cosme's worker-peasants; the lost decade of the 1980s, when much of what had been gained was lost; and the recent period of trade liberalization and globalization, considered by many in Mexico and beyond as a panacea and a disaster at the same time.
After Mexico's textile industry decline in the late 1980s, some families of former textile workers in San Cosme opened home workshops—talleres—and a small-scale, textile-based economy took root. These families, who managed to prosper through their own trade and industry, demonstrate that those who rely on consumer demand for their livelihood need not always follow the dictate of the marketplace, but rather can position themselves assertively to influence alternative economic possibilities held close to their culture.
Employing rich ethnography and broad analysis, Rothstein focuses on how everyday life has been transformed by these processes, but shows also how important continuities with the past persist. She strikes a delicate balance between firmly grounded scientific study and a deep compassion for the subjects of her work, while challenging contemporary views of globalization and consumption.
In this illuminating look at two Chicano gangs in East Los Angeles, Joan W. Moore examines the changes and continuities among three generations of barrio gangs. As a sequel to the author's award-winning study, Homeboys (Temple, 1979), this book returns to the same neighborhoods to chart the development of gang behavior, especially in terms of violence and drug use, and to compare experiences of male and female gang members.
In a remarkable research collaborative effort, Moore and gang members worked together to develop an understanding of both male and female gangs and an internal vision of gang members' lives. By using excerpts from individual interviews, the author depicts more about the gangs than simply their life together as a unit; she gives them a voice. Gang members discuss their personal reaction to violence, drug using and selling, family relations and intra-gang dating; they share intimacies that reveal varying levels of loyalty to and dependency on their affiliations, which often become a family substitute.
After maintaining neighborhood ties for 17 years, Moore's research group has established a relationship with these communities that gives her a rare perspective. This is a fascinating and informative book for anyone interested in sociology, criminology, youth behavior and deviance, and ethnic studies.
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