DOCSLIB.ORG

Social Movements: an Anthropological Reader – Edited by June Nash

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Social Movements: an Anthropological Reader – Edited by June Nash Book reviews Correction guides us on a whistle-stop tour of material Please note that in the Book Reviews Section of culture studies and its relation to an the December 2007 issue of the JRAI (volume 13, anthropology of the senses. We learn that issue 4), the bibliographic details of the reviewed different cultures create their own sensory book, Signe Howell. The kinning of foreigners: orders; that sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste transnational adoption in a global perspective, may be combinatory. Interestingly, the authors published on page 1040 of the issue, contained raise the possibility of considering pain and an error. The price of the book should be £45 speech as senses. We move rapidly through (cloth) and £15 (paper). recent intellectual debates in material culture towards what is described as the advent of the ‘sensory turn’–arecognition in material culture of the multi-sensorial qualities of the artefactual Anthropology of ‘the senses’ world – before ending with a neat summary of key points to ponder. This of course sets the stage for the volume’s impetus: the Edwards,Elizabeth,Chris Gosden & multi-sensory dimensions of artefacts, colonial Ruth B. Phillips (eds). Sensible objects: encounters, and museums around which the colonialism, museums and material culture. xiv, contributions are organized. 306 pp., maps, illus., bibliogrs. Oxford, New The first set of contributions leads with two York: Berg Publishers, 2006.£50.00 (cloth), papers examining the multi-sensory aspects of £18.99 (paper) African modernity. Geurts and Adikah begin with an exploration of a local concept translated as Over the last decade or so, a growing number of ‘feeling in the body, flesh or skin’ to reflect on anthropological studies have focused on the artefacts and enduring traditions in southeastern senses in society. These studies give a critique of Ghana, while Buckley provides a novel Western preoccupations with sight and hearing, examination of the relation between studio once indicators of so-called ‘civilized’ societies, photography and citizenship in the Gambia and move towards engaging with the through an ethos of elegance: the feeling of multi-sensory channels of human sociality. being cherished and wanted by the nation-state. This volume adds another to the list, with Sutton’s contribution provides an extremely colonialism, museums, and material culture as interesting insight into the interrelationship its focus. It consists of papers predominantly between the senses, skill, and memory in from anthropologists, but with contributions everyday cooking. Two short ethnographies from art historians, art experts, and of cooking in Greece and the US provide archaeologists, most of which were presented at examples of contrasting social contexts for the symposium ‘Engaging all the senses’ held in learning-how-to-cook. This paper stands out, Portugal in 2003. much like the work of David Howes, in that its The volume begins with an introductory strength lies in the fact that in exploring both chapter (Edwards, Gosden, and Phillips) which the technical and sensory aspects of cooking, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 14, 431-472 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2008 432 Book reviews it urges us to consider pluralistic ways of possibly imagine that what things really want is knowing. not necessarily to draw attention to themselves The sensory aspects of colonialism are but instead to shy away into the background. addressed in the second set of contributions. Graeme Were University College London Te Awekotuku leads with a study of Maori tattooing, considering pain as a sense. While this contribution provides useful historical and Geurts,Kathryn Linn. Culture and the ethnographic detail, more could possibly have senses: bodily ways of knowing in an African been provided about the process of gouging the community. xvi, 315 pp., map, illus., bibliogr. skin as a transformative and sensory process London, Berkeley: Univ. California Press, rather than in terms of social memory and 2002.£37.95 (cloth), £15.95 (paper) cultural identity. Indeed, the tactile skills acquired by Maori tattooists are left unremarked. Among the more subtle discussions of cultural Jonaitis tackles taste and smell in relation to differences can be found the idea that culturally pungent fish grease consumed by the conditioned experience might be grounded in Kwakwaka’wakw in British Columbia. In reading culturally divergent modes of perception. The this material, one really gets an impression of implications of this idea might seem merely the overpowering flavours that have offended reasonable to a phenomenologist but would the European palate. Barringer’s exploration of definitely pose an epistemological threat to an mass ritual concentrates on the senses of sight old-school empiricist. The issue has remained and hearing. He considers the performative peripheral not because of its potential aspects of Empire in India and in London significance but because culturally conditioned through musical performances and anthems. variations in perception are difficult to The final contributions encourage us to think investigate. Nevertheless, in concert with of museums as sensescapes. Classen and Howes classicists’ discussions of mnemonic devices in examine the history of touch in museums, the oral historical epics, anthropologists have formalization of seeing in exhibition spaces, and engaged in worthwhile reflections about the the consequent de-sensing of artefacts on senses, often revolving around sensitivity to display. While this paper provides some comparative differences in the transmission of wonderful insights into sensory relations, knowledge when based in literacy or orality. the development of handling galleries in Another area of reflection, more problematic ethnographic museums seems to have been methodologically though quite stimulating, has overlooked. Losche’s paper concentrates on an directed attention to kinesics and kinaesthetics, analysis of the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific that is, to body language and to body awareness Peoples at the American Museum of Natural in communication and learning. History and how attempts to contextualize A highly worthwhile contribution to this area artefacts through sound, space, and light of inquiry is Kathryn Linn Geurts’s Culture and encountered difficulties. Feldman offers a the senses: bodily ways of knowing in an African thoughtful paper on the relation between community. She states her main thesis on her bodies, objects, and the senses through a opening page: ‘Ultimately, this book will argue discussion of many Bushman casts and the that sensing, [or] ... “bodily ways of gathering thousands of shoes of Nazi concentration camp information,” is profoundly involved with a victims exhibited in museums, while Ouzman society’s epistemology, the development of covers a range of issues in museum and its cultural identity, and its forms of archaeological practice, concluding with a being-in-the-world’ (p. 3). Her introductory discussion of the senses, story-telling, and chapter provides an overview of anthropological identity formation in Southern Africa. This is precedents on the themes of her research. The particularly relevant to recent discussions by field location for her project is the Anlo-Ewe- archaeologists on soundscapes. speaking area of southeastern Ghana. It is Overall, the volume ought to be considered difficult to convey the impressive detail with as a starting-point from which to explore further which Geurts portrays the Anlo Ewe ‘sensorium’, the anthropology of the senses. This is especially that is, its sensory ordering of perception and so as, while the contributors have obviously set experience. She relies on a wide range of out to highlight the role of the senses in society, elaborately integrated data, and it is clear that rather frustratingly several papers tend to lose she was profoundly involved in her fieldwork. focus on the senses in their analysis. Perhaps this After a second chapter that provides was deliberate; as ‘sensible’ objects, one could ethnographic background on the Anlo Ewe, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 14, 431-472 © Royal Anthropological Institute 2008 Book reviews 433 Geurts organizes her discussion into four parts. attempted such a complex cultural analysis, but The first part, chapter 3, focuses on Anlo Ewe even more to her credit is the extent to which conceptions of the senses, the linguistic she has succeeded. Geurts’s detailed categories with which Anlo-Ewe-speakers define descriptions certainly resonated well with my their own ways of perception and experience. personal experience of the Anlo Ewe area. I hope This chapter, where other studies might end, is that other scholars will want to engage the where Geurts only begins. The second part of wealth of material she presents and the larger her presentation, chapters 4 and 5, focuses on questions she raises within their own areas of what she calls ‘moral embodiment and sensory familiarity or expertise. socialization’. In these chapters, Geurts describes John M. Chernoff Pittsburgh, PA child-rearing from the perspective of kinaesthethics – in her words, how ‘balance, movement, and a more generalized feeling in Howes,David (ed.). Empire of the senses: the the body ... are critical components of an sensual culture reader.x,421 pp., bibliogrs. indigenous theory of inner states’ – bolstered by Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers, 2005. extensive observations of customary practices £19.99 (paper) and symbolism showing
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Kay B. Warren Department of Anthropology Brown University
    2/8/2016 CURRICULUM VITAE, 2015 NAME: Kay B. Warren Department of Anthropology Brown University Giddings House Box 1921 Providence, RI 02912 CURRENT POSITION: Charles C. Tillinghast Jr. ’32 Professor of International Studies, Brown University Professor of Anthropology, Brown University EDUCATION AND DEGREES: Ph.D. Princeton University (1974) in Cultural Anthropology M.A. Princeton University (1970) in Cultural Anthropology B.A University of California at Santa Barbara (1965-68) in Cultural Anthropology; Cultural Geography EMPLOYMENT: 2003-present Tillinghast Professor in International Studies & Professor of Anthropology, Brown 2010-14 Pembroke Center Director, 2010-14, Brown 2003-09 Professor (Research), Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown 2003-08 Director, Politics, Culture, and Identity Program, Watson Institute, Brown 1998-03 Professor of Anthropology, Harvard 1994-98 Chair, Anthropology, Princeton 1993-94 Director, Graduate Studies, Anthropology, Princeton 1988-98 Professor of Anthropology, Princeton 1982-88 Associate Professor of Anthropology, Princeton 1982-88 Founding Director, Program in Women's Studies, Princeton 1973-82 Lecturer to Associate Professor of Anthropology, Mount Holyoke SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, NAMED LECTURES, AWARDS: •Hua Ying Distinguished Visiting Professor of Nanjing University, 2012. •Pembroke Center “Lifetime Achievement Award.” National Council for Research on Women, June 2012. •Director, Pembroke Advanced Research Seminar on “Markets and Bodies in Transnational Perspective,” 2009-10,funding for three postdoctoral fellowships, three faculty fellowships, and three graduate student fellowships. •Chesler-Mallow Senior Faculty Research Fellow, Pembroke Center, Brown, 2009-10. •Member, Council on Illicit Trade of the World Economic Forum, 2008 – 2010. • Robert G. Meade, Jr. Lecture, University of Connecticut. “When Numbers Count: The Practice of Combating Trafficking From Colombia to Japan.” November 8, 2007.
    [Show full text]
  • Water, Rum, and Coca-Cola from Ritual Propitiation to Corporate Expropriation in Highland Chiapas
    CONSUMING INTERESTS: Water, Rum, and Coca-Cola from Ritual Propitiation to Corporate Expropriation in Highland Chiapas JUNE NASH CCity UniversityA of New York A growing demand for water that exceeds scarce resources is changing political and social alignments and provoking the emergence of water wars. The scarcity of water is a result of deforestation, the contamination of existing water sources, and the diversion of groundwater to commercial enterprises. These commercial enterprises include irrigation agriculture and, increasingly, consumer beverage production, especially of bottled water, now sold to people who face growing water scarcity. A natural resource once considered a blessing for all people granted by the rain gods is now a contested commodity exacerbating the growing divide between classes. In this article, I examine ways in which a consuming interest in water that once promoted community integration in early civilizations in Mesoamerica has become a multibillion-dollar industry with sales throughout the world, based on a commodity that many local people cannot afford. The concern of preconquest civilizations to ensure the water supply was transformed by the Spanish conquerors, who drained and diverted the abundant waters in the Aztec capital and then intro- duced commercialized cane and maguey used in the production of rum and tequila. Adopted by indigenous pueblos as a libation in ceremonies offered to the saints and divine powers during colonial and independence times, the demand was finally diverted to the consumption of Coca-Cola and other soft drinks imported by local concessionaires responding to corporate inducements. Today the major extraction of groundwater in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas is done by the Coca-Cola CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • The Making of a Marxist-Feminist-Latin Americanist Anthropologist: an Interview with Helen I
    Caribbean Studies ISSN: 0008-6533 [email protected] Instituto de Estudios del Caribe Puerto Rico Yelvington, Kevin A. THE MAKING OF A MARXIST-FEMINIST-LATIN AMERICANIST ANTHROPOLOGIST: AN INTERVIEW WITH HELEN I. SAFA Caribbean Studies, vol. 38, núm. 2, julio-diciembre, 2010, pp. 3-32 Instituto de Estudios del Caribe San Juan, Puerto Rico Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=39222626002 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative KEVIN A. YELVINGTON 3 THE MAKING OF A MARXIST-FEMINIST-LATIN AMERICANIST ANTHROPOLOGIST: AN INTERVIEW WITH HELEN I. SAFA Kevin A. Yelvington ABSTRACT Helen I. Safa is a pioneering anthropologist of Puerto Rico, the Carib- bean, and Latin America, one who brought Marxist and feminist per- spectives to her work and who in her research and administrative duties engaged with progressive and feminist academics and activists in the region. She has maintained a long interest in investigating inequalities alone various axes—especially gender, class, and “race”—and locating these in structural conditions and social relationships of dominance and subordination. This article is a life-history interview in which Safa reflects on her childhood and family, her coming of age, her training, and the development of her theoretical approach, as well as on her relationships with her colleagues in her nearly 50 years of anthropo- logical research. Keywords: Helen I. Safa, history of anthropology, Marxist anthropol- ogy, feminist anthropology, anthropology of Puerto Rico, anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean, critical anthropology, biographies of anthropologists RESUMEN Helen I.
    [Show full text]
  • LASA Forum 51:2
    IN MEMORIAM June C. Nash (1927–2019) by Florence Babb | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | [email protected] Carmen Diana Deere | University of Florida | [email protected] Lynn Stephen | University of Oregon | [email protected] It is with great sadness that we note the passing out research in Bolivia and Peru over the next of June Nash, Distinguished Professor Emerita of decade and a half. In the mid-1980s, she turned her Anthropology at the City University of New York, on attention to New England, and over the past couple December 9, 2019, at the age of 92. The recipient of of decades alternated her research focus between LASA’s 2004 Kalman Silvert Award, June was one Chiapas and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A common of the pioneers in the anthropology of gender, the thread to this research was garnering local-level anthropology of work, and in the study of social understandings of and responses to national and movements in Latin America. global processes of change. Another was the interplay between class, race, and gender. A 1948 graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, June earned her MA and then PhD in June’s contribution as an advocate, mentor, and 1960 in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. scholar to building the interdisciplinary field of She taught at Northeastern Illinois University, Yale gender in Latin American studies was enormous. University, and New York University before joining Her advocacy on behalf of the field began during the City University and Graduate Center at CUNY her tenure (1971–1974) on the SSRC-ACLS Joint as professor in 1972, where she remained until her Committee on Latin American Studies.
    [Show full text]
  • Francis-Okongwu, Anne; Susser, TITLE Anthropology
    DOCUMENT RESUME HE 032 671 ED 432 963 Francis-Okongwu, Anne; Susser, AUTHOR Mencher, Joan P.; Nash, June; Ida. the Disciplines. Women TITLE Anthropology. CUNY Panel: Rethinking in the Curriculum Series. National Center for Curriculum INSTITUTION Towson Univ., Baltimore, MD. Transformation Resources on Women. Fund for the Improvement of SPONS AGENCY Ford Foundation, New York, NY.; Postsecondary Education (ED), Washington,DC. ISBN ISBN-1-885303-09-2 PUB DATE 1997-00-00 in this series, see HE 032 NOTE 58p.; For related documents 663-689. Road, Baltimore, MD 21252; Tel: AVAILABLE FROM Towson University, 8000 York 800-847-9922 (Toll Free); Fax: 410-830-3482;Web site: http://www.towson.edu/ncctrw ($10). PUB TYPE Collected Works - General (020) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC03 Plus Postage. Curriculum; *College DESCRIPTORS *Anthropology; Archaeology; *College Instruction; Ethnicity; Females;Feminism; *Feminist Criticism; Higher Education; Race; *SexBias; Sex Differences; *Sex Fairness; SexualIdentity; Social Class; Social Science Research; TeachingMethods; Theories Latin America IDENTIFIERS Cultural Anthropology; Gender Issues; ABSTRACT This collection of four essaysexamines the ways in which anthropology, as a discipline, reflectsongoing scholarship on gender, race, ethnicity, social class, and sexualorientation. In "The Impact of Gender Studies on Anthropology," Joan P. Mencherreviews the effects of gender anthropology. studies on physical anthropology,archeology, and developmental Nash In "Gender Critique of SocialScience Models in Latin America," June argues that feminist modelshave upset preconceived models based on structural dimensions. In "The Studyof Gender, Race, Ethnicity, andClass: Anthropology and Social Change," AnneFrancis-Okongwu reviews theoretical shifts that treat gender relations as oneof the central sets of social relations for structuring and organizingthe functioning of societies.
    [Show full text]
  • (575) 621-5999 Email: [email protected]
    CHRISTINE E. EBER 1825 Myrtle Ave. Las Cruces, New Mexico 88001, U.S.A. cell phone: (575) 621-5999 email: [email protected] EDUCATION___________________________________________________________ Ph.D. 1991 (with distinction) Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo, NY Dissertation: "Before God's Flowering Face: Women and Drinking in a Tzotzil-Maya Community." M.A. 1983 Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo, NY. Thesis: "Continuity and Change in a Spiritualist Community" B.A. 1969 Divisional Social Sciences – Anthropology, Sociology & Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT_______________________________________________ Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico. January 2011 to present. Professor, Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico. August 2009 – 2010. Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico. August 2004 - 2009. Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico. August 1995 – July 2004. Assistant Professor, Anthropology Department, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT. August 1992 – May 1995. Visiting lecturer, Anthropology Department, State University of New York at Albany. Fall 1991. OTHER TEACHING AFFILIATIONS________________________________________ Adjunct faculty member, Anthropology Department, University of San Carlos, Cebu Island, Philippines. 2002 to 2010. Instructor, Buffalo Museum of Science Education Department. Spring 1991. 1 HONORS & AWARDS___________________________________________________ 2011 Honorable Mention for poem, “Do you want me to cut more vegetables, Boss?”, Society for Humanistic Anthropology 2011 Poetry Competition. 2010 Donald C. Rousch Excellence in Teaching Award, New Mexico State University. 2009 Arts & Sciences Faculty Outstanding Achievement Award, New Mexico State University.
    [Show full text]
  • TRANSFORMATIONS Comparative Shtdy of Social Transformatims
    TRANSFORMATIONS comparative shtdy of social transformatims CSST WORKING PAPERS The University of Michigan Ann Arbor SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF GENDER IN ANDEAN SOUTH AMERICA: A WORKING ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY JANISE HURTIG CSST Working CRSO Working Paper #17 Paper #376 December 1988 Social Transformations of Gender in Andean South America: A Working Annotated Bibliography Janise Hurtig September, 1988 CSST Working Paper *Unavailable **Not read 1. Social formation and change in (~ndean)South America Backaround Readinas Bourricaud, Francois (1970). Power and Society in Contemporary Peru. New York: Praeger Pubs. Cardosa, F. H. and Faletto, E. (1969). Dependencia y ~esarolioen America Latina. Mexico: Siglo XXI ~ditores. Chilcote, R.H. and Edelstein, J.C., eds. (1974). Latin America: The Struggle with Dependency and Beyond. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Frank, Andre Gunder (1969). Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press. Horowitz, Irving, et al, eds. (1969). Latin American Radicalism. Horowitz, Irving, ed. (1970). Masses in Latin America, Irving Horowitz, ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Stein, Steve (1980). Populism in Peru: The emergence of the Masses and the Politics of Social Control. adi is on: U. of Wisconsin Press. R eadah Ameri *Fuenzalida, F. et a1 (1970). El Indio y el poder en el Peru. Lima: Moncloa. Galeano, Eduardo (1973). The Open Veins of Latin America. [~edric Belfrage, trans.]. New York: Monthly Review Press. An eloquently presented conceptualization of the patterns of socio-economic domination that have contributed to the formation of modern Latin American nations -- including, of course Andean countries. In writing this "informal history" which locates Latin America within an international political and economic context, Galeano disrupts many of the models of "underdevelopmentw informing social scientific analyses of the region.
    [Show full text]
  • Historical Memory and the Limits of Peace Education: Examining Guatemala's 'Memory of Silence' and the Politics of Curriculum Design
    Historical Memory and the Limits of Peace Education: Examining Guatemala's 'Memory of Silence' and the Politics of Curriculum Design Elizabeth Oglesby Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona [email protected] Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs Fellows Program, History and the Politics of Reconciliation June 2004 Let the history we lived Be taught in the schools, So that it is never forgotten, So that our children may know it. Testimony given to the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification Truth is not a matter of exposure of the secret, but a revelation that does justice to it. Walter Benjamin Introduction Truth Commissions have proliferated over the past decade, amid intense debate over whether they are an essential unveiling of the past, or a weak substitute for justice. We now know a good deal about how such commissions are situated within the particular political configurations and power arrangements of "post-conflict" societies, as well as how the commissions themselves constitute sites of struggle over the construction and narration of "truthful" accounts of violent and painful histories.1 Less is known, however, about the multifaceted effects of Truth Commission projects over time. This paper seeks to broaden that debate, by examining Guatemala’s Commission for Historical Clarification and the struggles to introduce its report, Memory of Silence, into the country’s school system. 1 See, for example, Tina Rosenberg, “Designer Truth Commissions,” New York Times Magazine, December 9, 2001 Vol. 151, Issue 519622, p. 66; Pricilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity, New York/London: Routledge, 2001; Audrey B.
    [Show full text]
  • January 2000
    July / 2014 Curriculum Vitae FLORENCE E. BABB Department of Anthropology Tel: 919-962-1242 (w) 301 Alumni Building, CB 3115 919-942-6784 (h) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [email protected] Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195 PRESENT POSITION Anthony Harrington Distinguished Professor Department of Anthropology University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill EDUCATION Ph.D. 1981 Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo M.A. 1976 Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo B.A. 1973 Anthropology and French, cum laude, Tufts University ‍‍1971-72 Tufts University Program in Paris, France AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION Cultural/economic/feminist anthropology; Gender and sexuality; Critical development studies; Urbanization in the global South; Tourism studies; Latin American studies; Central America, Central Andes, Caribbean LANGUAGES Spanish and French ACADEMIC POSITIONS University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2014-present Anthony Harrington Distinguished Professor Affiliate in the Institute for the Study of the Americas University of Florida 2005-2014 Vada Allen Yeomans Professor of Women’s Studies Graduate Faculty, Anthropology and Latin American Studies 2011-2012 Research Affiliate, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima, Peru University of Iowa 2001-2004 Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies 1988-2001 Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies 1982-1988 Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies 2001-2003 Chair, Department of Anthropology Fall 1998 Chair, Latin American Studies Program 1994-1997 Chair, Women's Studies Program 1993-1994 Co-Chair, Program in Gender, Culture, and Politics 1988-1990 Chair, Women in International Development Program 1983-1985 Chair, Women's Studies Program Colgate University 1979-1982 Visiting Instructor to Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Florence E.
    [Show full text]
  • Anthropology 70800: Economic Anthropology Fall, 2006 Professor Michael Blim [email protected] Office Hours: Thursdays and Fridays, Drop-In and by Appt
    Anthropology 70800: Economic Anthropology Fall, 2006 Professor Michael Blim [email protected] Office hours: Thursdays and Fridays, drop-in and by appt. Course Description This seminar examines the major issues that have confronted anthropologists as they have analyzed economies, and as they have contributed to the wider debates in economic discourse. After an initial overview of the classic contributions to neoclassical economics and so-called "substantive" or Polanyian studies of economic formations, the seminar will undertake an analysis of anthropology's contributions to the study of capitalism. Emphasis will also be placed on the important analyses undertaken by anthropologists and like-minded social scientists on local economies embedded in societies non-capitalist or anti- capitalist in orientation. Please note that our modus operandi will be to divide the readings among us, as typically there is more reading here per week than anyone can probably handle. Each student will cover at least one ethnography for the class, giving a short report and circulating a short precis and critique among all of us. Moreover, this syllabus is as much a bibliographic reference of sorts as it is an actual assignment list. The latter we will determine a week or two before each class. In addition, students are invited to submit proposals at any time, but no later than mid-term say, for a longer writing project that they would like to do for the seminar. Books and Materials Most our readings will be on e-reserve. Those that we can’t for one reason or another put on e-reserve or get on e-reserve in time will be on file in the Brockway Room.
    [Show full text]
  • The Challenge of Trade Liberalization to Cultural Survival on the Southern Frontier of Mexico
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Indiana University Bloomington Maurer School of Law Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Volume 1 | Issue 2 Article 5 Spring 1994 The hC allenge of Trade Liberalization to Cultural Survival on the Southern Frontier of Mexico June Nash City College of the City University of New York Follow this and additional works at: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls Part of the International Law Commons, and the International Trade Law Commons Recommended Citation Nash, June (1994) "The hC allenge of Trade Liberalization to Cultural Survival on the Southern Frontier of Mexico," Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies: Vol. 1: Iss. 2, Article 5. Available at: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol1/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies by an authorized administrator of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Challenge of Trade Liberalization to Cultural Survival on the Southern Frontier of Mexico JUNE NASH* Mexico, once considered the most protectionist nation of major trading countries in the world, has reversed its policies of high tariffs and tightly controlled permits to import goods in the 1980s and 1990s. Responding in part to the demands of the International Monetary Fund to promote export-oriented production, remove barriers to imports, and release corporate controls over national lands and enterprises, Mexico's President de la Madrid reversed the earlier decision to stay out of GATT, resulting in a drop of average import tariffs from forty-five percent to nine percent.
    [Show full text]
  • Maya Market Women's Sales Strategies in a Stationary Artesania
    Maya Market Women’s Sales Strategies in a Stationary Artesania Market and Responses to Changing Gender Relations in Highland Chiapas, Mexico by Robin O’Brian University of California-Los Angeles Working Paper #261 July 1997 Abstract: While the literature on women’s participation in the informal economy as marketers is vast, much of it focuses on the larger forces that drive women to adopt this economic strategy. Because such women become familiar with the market and understand its cycles, I further suggest that women in the informal economy learn to adapt their products, attendance, and pricing accordingly. Based on data collected during four field seasons in a stationary artesania (crafts) market in highland Chiapas, Mexico, I show how Tzotzil Maya vendedoras (market women) adapt to seasonal fluctuations in the market. Population counts, price and commodity surveys, and informal interviews are used to illustrate that women are sensitive to the volatility of the tourist market and adapt their own economic strategies accordingly. I further note how participation in the market has contributed to changing patterns in indigenous gender relations. About the Author: Robin O’Brian received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1994. She has taught at UCLA and at UC Riverside. She is currently research affiliate at UCLA and adjunct assistant professor of liberal studies at the University of Redland’s Whitehead College. In addition to her continuing research among Maya women in highland Chiapas, she is conducting field research at a large open-air Latino market in San Fernando, California, and writing a critical analysis of U.S.
    [Show full text]