Latin America & Caribbean Anthropology 2016
At the end of my 2016 January Term course on the “Peoples and Cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean,” it was time for student projects. Students emerged with a rich and varied array of projects. For each I tried to suggest some accessible references, which in this case meant from AnthroSource or what was available at the Hartwick College Library.
Tainos: History Preserved by Everyday Culture
Hauser, Mark W. Routes and Roots of Empire: Pots, Power, and Slavery in the 18th-Century British Caribbean, American Anthropologist (2011).
The Two Worlds of Jamaica
Page, Sarah E. ‘Your President Is Not Black!’: Jamaican Reflections On Identity, Race, Class, and (Global) Politics, Transforming Anthropology (2015).
Jaffe, Rivke. The hybrid state: Crime and citizenship in urban Jamaica, American Ethnologist (2013).
Jamaican Freedom in Reggae Music
Thomas, Deborah A. Democratizing Dance: Institutional Transformation and Hegemonic Re-Ordering in Postcolonial Jamaica, Cultural Anthropology (2002).
Appropriations of Jamaican Patwa
Singh, Kavita Ashana. A Schizophrenic Metaphor? Disciplining Creoleness, Transforming Anthropology (2012).
Patrick, Peter L. and Arvilla Payne-Jackson. Functions of Rasta Talk in a Jamaican Creole Healing Narrative: “A Bigfoot Dem Gi’ Mi,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology (1996).
Cuba: Health and Tourism
Roland, L. Kaifa. T/Racing Belonging through Cuban Tourism, Cultural Anthropology (2013).
Brotherton, P. Sean. “We have to think like capitalists but continue being socialists”: Medicalized subjectivities, emergent capital, and socialist entrepreneurs in post-Soviet Cuba, American Ethnologist (2008).
Brotherton, P. Sean. Macroeconomic Change and the Biopolitics of Health in Cuba’s Special Period, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2005).
Puerto Rico: Money Trumps Everything
Duany, Jorge. Nation on the move: the construction of cultural identities in Puerto Rico and the diaspora, American Ethnologist (2000).
Safa, Helen. The Transformation of Puerto Rico: The Impact of Modernization Ideology, Transforming Anthropology (2011).
Puerto Rico: Hermanitas, Sisters, and Sœurs
Godreau, Isar P., Mariolga Reyes Cruz, Mariluz Franco Ortiz and Sherry Cuadrado. The lessons of slavery: Discourses of slavery, mestizaje, and blanqueamiento in an elementary school in Puerto Rico, American Ethnologist (2008).
Godreau, Isar P., Hilda Lloréns and Carlos Vargas-Ramos. Colonial Incongruence at Work: Employing US Census Racial Categories in Puerto Rico, Anthropology News (2010).
Hispaniola: A Comparative Rejoinder to a Divided Island
Hazel, Yadira Perez. Sensing Difference: Whiteness, National Identity, and Belonging in the Dominican Republic, Transforming Anthropology (2014).
Becoming “Latino,” Becoming “American”
Pérez, Gina. “Puertorriqueñas Rencorosas y Mejicanas Sufridas”: Gendered Ethnic Identity Formation in Chicago’s Latino Communities, Journal of Latin American Anthropology (2003).
De Genova, Nicholas and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas. Latino Rehearsals: Racialization and the Politics of Citizenship between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago, Journal of Latin American Anthropology (2003).
Dávila, Arlene. Latinizing Culture: Art, Museums, and the Politics of U.S. Multicultural Encompassment, Cultural Anthropology (1999).
Haiti: A Personal Journey
Yarrington, Landon. The Paved and the Unpaved: Toward a Political Economy of Infrastructure, Mobility, and Urbanization in Haiti, Economic Anthropology (2015).
Schuller, Mark. Being an Insider Without: Activist Anthropological Engagement in Haiti after the Earthquake, American Anthropologist (2014).
Haiti and the Radical Rethinking of Modernity
Beckett, Greg. The Ontology of Freedom: The Unthinkable Miracle of Haiti, Journal of Haitian Studies (2013).
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1996).
The Aztecs
Rodríguez-Alegría, Enrique. Narratives of Conquest, Colonialism, and Cutting-Edge Technology, American Anthropologist (2008).
Hirshman, Amy J. “Valor, Skill, and Resistance”: Tarascan Opposition to Aztec Ambitions, General Anthropology (2015).
Aztec Daily Life
Isaac, Barry L. Aztec Cannibalism: Nahua versus Spanish and mestizo accounts in the Valley of Mexico, Ancient Mesoamerica (2005).
The Making of Mexico: Food, Race, and Nationalism
Bondi, Ivonne Vizcarra. The “Authentic” Taco and Peasant Women: Nostalgic Consumption in the Era of Globalization, Culture & Agriculture (2006).
Hartigan, John. Translating “Race” and “Raza” between the United States and Mexico, North American Dialogue (2013).
Honduras
Wolseth, Jon. Everyday Violence and the Persistence of Grief: Wandering and Loss Among Honduran Youths, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2008).
The Inca State
Bauer, Brian S. and R. Alan Covey. Processes of State Formation in the Inca Heartland (Cuzco, Peru), American Anthropologist (2002).
Ogburn, Dennis. Dynamic Display, Propaganda, and the Reinforcement of Provincial Power in the Inca Empire , Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association (2004).
Bauer, Brian S. Legitimization of the State in Inca Myth and Ritual, American Anthropologist (1996).
Rethinking the Conquest via the Inca
Cahill, David. Advanced Andeans and Backward Europeans: Structure and Agency in the Collapse of the Inca Empire. In Questioning Collapse
The Inca, The Tourist, The Truth
Silverman, Helaine. Touring Ancient Times: The Present and Presented Past in Contemporary Peru, American Anthropologist (2002).
Greene, Shane. Entre lo indio, lo negro, y lo incaico: The Spatial Hierarchies of Difference in Multicultural Peru, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2007).
Peru’s Past and Present
Wernke, Steven A. Negotiating Community and Landscape in the Peruvian Andes: A Transconquest View, American Anthropologist (2007).
García, María Elena. The Taste of Conquest: Colonialism, Cosmopolitics, and the Dark Side of Peru’s Gastronomic Boom, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2013).
Religion, Conquest, Syncretism
Beatty, Andrew. The Pope in Mexico: Syncretism in Public Ritual, American Anthropologist (2006).
Watanabe, John M. from saints to shibboleths: image, structure, and identity in Maya religious syncretism, American Ethnologist (1990).
Kirsch, Thomas G. Restaging the Will to Believe: Religious Pluralism, Anti-Syncretism, and the Problem of Belief, American Anthropologist (2004).
Candomble!
Walker, Sheila S. A Choreography of the Universe: The Afro-Brazilian Candomble as a Microcosm of Yoruba Spiritual Geography, Anthropology and Humanism (1991).
Seligman, Rebecca. The Unmaking and Making of Self: Embodied Suffering and Mind-Body Healing in Brazilian Candomblé, Ethos (2010).
Port, Mattijs Van de. Circling around the Really Real: Spirit Possession Ceremonies and the Search for Authenticity in Bahian Candomblé, Ethos (2005).
Selka, Stephen. Morality in the religious marketplace: Evangelical Christianity, Candomblé, and the struggle for moral distinction in Brazil, American Ethnologist (2010).
Brazilian Portuguese
Collins, John. “But what if I should need to defecate in your neighborhood, Madame?”: Empire, Redemption, and the “Tradition of the Oppressed” in a Brazilian World Heritage Site, Cultural Anthropology (2008).
Turner, Jimmy. Uma cultura atrasada: The Luso-Baroque Manezinha, Hyper-Whiteness, and the Modern Middle Classes in Florianópolis, Brazil, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2014).
Brazil: Is Geography Destiny?
Pardue, Derek. Making Territorial Claims: Brazilian Hip Hop and the Socio-Geographical Dynamics of Periferia, City & Society (2010).
Campbell, Jeremy M. The Land Question in Amazonia: Cadastral Knowledge and Ignorance in Brazil’s Tenure Regularization Program, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review (2015).
Brazil: Appropriating Hardship for Pop Superstardom
Sheriff, Robin E. The Theft of Carnaval: National Spectacle and Racial Politics in Rio de Janeiro, Cultural Anthropology (1999).
Pravaz, Natasha. Brazilian Mulatice: Performing Race, Gender, and the Nation, Journal of Latin American Anthropology (2003).
Re-Indigenizing Argentina?
Logan, Joy. Constructing Indigeneity in Argentina: At the Crossroads of Mountaineering, Tourism, and Re-Ethnification, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2009).
Gordillo, Gastón and Silvia Hirsch. Indigenous Struggles and Contested Identities in Argentina Histories of Invisibilization and Reemergence, Journal of Latin American Anthropology (2003).
Anderson, Judith M. Will the Real Negros Please Stand Up? Understanding Black Identity Politics in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Transforming Anthropology (2015).
Uruguay: Absence and Presence in Latin America
Renfrew, Daniel. Punta del Este as Global City? competing visions of Uruguayan nationhood in a geography of exclusion, City & Society (2004).
Segato, Rita Laura. The untold story of the Afro-Brazilian religious expansion to Argentina and Uruguay, Critique of Anthropology (1996).
The Mapuche
Babidge, Sally. “Socios”: The Contested Morality of “Partnerships” in Indigenous Community-Mining Company Relations, Northern Chile, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2013).
Di Giminiani, Piergiorgio. The becoming of ancestral land: Place and property in Mapuche land claims, American Ethnologist (2015).
Tourism in Colombia
Viveros Vigoya, Mara. Social Mobility, Whiteness, and Whitening in Colombia, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2015).
Ng’weno, Bettina. Can Ethnicity Replace Race? Afro-Colombians, Indigeneity and the Colombian Multicultural State, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2007).
Streicker, Joel. Spatial Reconfigurations, Imagined Geographies, and Social Conflicts in Cartagena, Colombia, Cultural Anthropology (1997).
Bringing Biocultural Interpretations to Latin America
Ruiz, Ernesto, David A. Himmelgreen, Nancy Romero Daza and Jenny Peña. Using a Biocultural Approach to Examine Food Insecurity in the Context of Economic Transformations in Rural Costa Rica, Annals of Anthropological Practice (2014).
Brooks, B. B. Chucaque and social stress among Peruvian highlanders, Med Anthropol Q (2014).
Leatherman, Thomas. A Space of Vulnerability in Poverty and Health: Political-Ecology and Biocultural Analysis, Ethos (2005).
Remapping Bolivia
: Flop or Not?
This post is linked to Teaching Latin America & Caribbean Anthropology (January 2016) and is part of a series that includes:
- The most recent Latin America & Caribbean Anthropology 2021 which blogs through the second edition of The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean by Harry Sanabria.
- The 2019 Teaching Latin America and the 2019 Latin America Course Outline.
- Anthropologists Studying Immigration in the United States (2013).
- The very first post that launched the series, from 2012: Teaching: Latin America & Caribbean.
These posts are all cataloged in the Latin America index tag for the site, which also includes related blog-posts.