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Significant scholarship exists on anthropological fieldwork and methodologies. Some anthropologists have also published memoirs of their research experiences. Renowned anthropologist Jeffrey Cohen’s Eating Soup without a Spoon is a first-of-its-kind hybrid of the two, expertly melding story with methodology to create a compelling narrative of fieldwork that is deeply grounded in anthropological theory. Cohen’s first foray into fieldwork was in 1992, when he lived in Santa Anna del Valle in rural Oaxaca, Mexico. While recounting his experiences studying how rural folks adapted to far-reaching economic changes, Cohen is candid about the mistakes he made and the struggles in the village. Fr...
In the villages and small towns of Oaxaca, Mexico, as in much of rural Latin America, cooperation among neighbors is essential for personal and community survival. It can take many forms, from godparenting to sponsoring fiestas, holding civic offices, or exchanging agricultural or other kinds of labor. This book examines the ways in which the people of Santa Ana del Valle practice these traditional cooperative and reciprocal relationships and also invent new relationships to respond to global forces of social and economic change at work within their community. Based on fieldwork he conducted in this Zapotec-speaking community between 1992 and 1996, Jeffrey Cohen describes continuities in the Santañeros' practices of cooperation, as well as changes resulting from transnational migration, tourism, increasing educational opportunities, and improved communications. His nuanced portrayal of the benefits and burdens of cooperation is buttressed by the words of many villagers who explain why and how they participate-or not-in reciprocal family and community networks. This rich ethnographic material offers a working definition of community created in and through cooperative relationships.
Collection of essays examining the ways in which humanity is enmeshed in its surroundings.
This volume presents analyses on the theory and practice of economic development in rural and urban communities around the world. The 13 contributions cover topics including market systems; agricultural knowledge; modernization; population growth; conservation strategies; participatory, culturally sustainable, and urban development; globalization and privatization; tourism; and financial markets. Of interest for comparative research in the fields of anthropology, development, agricultural research, geography, and the environment. Edited by Cohen (anthropology, Pennsylvania State U.) and Dannhauser (anthropology, Texas A & M U.), who are also contributors. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Around the globe, people leave their homes to better themselves, to satisfy needs, and to care for their families. They also migrate to escape undesirable conditions, ranging from a lack of economic opportunities to violent conflicts at home or in the community. Most studies of migration have analyzed the topic at either the macro level of national and global economic and political forces, or the micro level of the psychology of individual migrants. Few studies have examined the "culture of migration"—that is, the cultural beliefs and social patterns that influence people to move. Cultures of Migration combines anthropological and geographical sensibilities, as well as sociological and eco...
For centuries it was believed that all matter was composed of four elements: earth, air, water, and fire in promiscuous combination, bound by love and pulled apart by strife. Elemental theory offered a mode of understanding materiality that did not center the cosmos around the human. Outgrown as a science, the elements are now what we build our houses against. Their renunciation has fostered only estrangement from the material world. The essays collected in Elemental Ecocriticism show how elemental materiality precipitates new engagements with the ecological. Here the classical elements reveal the vitality of supposedly inert substances (mud, water, earth, air), chemical processes (fire), an...
Mobile Selves illuminates how transnational communicative practices and forms of exchange produce new forms of kinship, social relations, and subjectivities for global labor migrants. It shows how migrants create and circulate new portrayals of themselves, which work both to challenge the class and racial biases that they had faced in their home country and to shape how they construct and experience their mobility, and reenvision themselves and their communities in the process. In this engaging volume Ulla D. Berg examines the conditions under which racialized Peruvians of rural and working-class origins leave the central highlands of Peru to migrate to the United States, how they fare, and ...
Offers a comprehensive introduction to the environmental humanities. It addresses the 21st century recognition of an environmental crisis.
The first full-length authoritative Encyclopedia on the Blues as a musical form. A to Z in format, this work covers not only the performers, but also musical styles, regions, record labels and cultural aspects of the blues.