Sant 117: Regional Etnografi: Latin Amerika (5 poeng)
Aims of the Course
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To provide students with the framework to contextualise contemporary
anthropological research in Latin America.
To enable students to identify and describe core concepts in Latin American
anthropology and to relate these concepts to local, national and international
contexts of use.
To provide students with an understanding of the historical and cultural
diversity within the Latin American region.
This course will examine the key concerns and theoretical questions that constitute
Latin American anthropology. The coherence of the Latin America as a cultural
region has been generated from the shared and contrasting ways in which Indigenous,
Colonial and Republican histories have been invoked by cultural groups and nationstates in the twentieth century. The ways in which contemporary cultural practices are
associated with specific historical political moments and economic global forces form
the central focus of this course, and will provide a basis for looking at contemporary
relationships between cultural difference and social inequality. The association
between culture and place will also be critically examined. Drawing primarily on
ethnographic research the course will examine the ways in which conflicting notions
of personhood and agency are generated and reproduced. Discussion of movement,
landscape and marginality will be used to further understanding of the dynamic, but
often violent and confusing, sociality characteristic of the region.
Contents
This course includes six three hour classes involving lectures, seminars and
ethnographic films and is taught every third semester by members of the Dept. of
Social Anthropology with research experience in Latin America. Lectures are
accompanied by weekly student driven seminars under the supervision of the course
leader. Each student is required to participate in a written exam.
*Essential Reading
1.
A Latin American Past?: Citizens in the Making
*De la Cadena, M (2000) Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in
Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991. Duke University Press.
*Harris, Olivia (1995) ‘The Coming of the White People: Reflections on the
Mythologisation of History in Latin America’. Bulletin of Latin American Research
14(1), 9-24.
Nugent, D (1993) Spent Cartridges of Revolution : An Anthropological History of
Namiquipa, Chihuahua. University of Chicago Press.
Nugent, S (1993) Amazonian Caboclo Society: An Essay on Invisibility and the
Peasant Economy.
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Schackt, J (2005) Mayahood Through Beauty: Indian Beauty Pageants in Guatemala.
Bulletin of Latin American Research. Vol 24. No.3 pp 269-287.
2. A Globalised Future?: Modernity, Fetishism and Resistance
*Coronil, F (1997) ”Black Gold: Money Fetishism and Modernity” in The Magical
State : Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela. University of Chicago Press. (
*Lazar, S & McNeish, S (2006) Chapters by McNeish and Cannessa in “The Millions
Return: Democracy in Bolivia at the start of the 21st Century”. Special Edition.
Bulletin of Latin American Research. Vol 25. No.1. Blackwells Publishing:
Cambridge.
McNeish, J. A (2002) Globalisation and the Reinvention of Andean Tradition.
Chapter in Latin American Peasants. Library of Peasant Studies 21. Frank Cass:
London & New York. Also reprinted in The Journal of Peasant Studies Volume 29,
No 3/4 April/July. Frank Cass: London & New York.
Nash, June (2004) “Beyond Resistance and Protest: The Maya Quest for Autonomy”
in Pluralizing Ethnography: Comparison and Representation in Maya Cultures,
Histories and Identities. School of American Research: James Currey.
Skar, Sarah (1994) Lives Together Worlds Apart: Quechua Colonization in Jungle
and City, Scandinavian University Press (Part II Objectification)
Salman, T & Zoomers (eds) (2003) Chapters 1 & 2. Imagining the Andes: Shifting
Margins of a Marginal World. Aksent/CEDLA Publications.
Taussig, M ( 1980) The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in Latin America. Chapel
Hill: University of Carolina Press.
Short Film: Water War
Lecture 3: Myth, Lands cape and Movement
* Harvey, Penelope (2001) ‘Landscape and Commerce: Creating Contexts for the
Exercise of Power’ in B. Bender and M. Winer (eds) Contested Landscapes:
Movement, Exile and Place, Oxford: Berg, pp. 197-210.
* Harris, Mark (2000) ‘Rhythms’ in Life on the Amazon: The Anthropology of a
Brazilian Peasant Village, Oxford University Press, pp.125-141.
* Gow, Peter (1995) in E. Hirsch and M.O’Hanlon (eds) The Anthropology of
Landscape: Perspectives on Space and Place, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 43-62.
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Harvey, Penelope (1997) ‘Peruvian Independence Day: Ritual, Memory and the
Erasure of Narrative’ in R. Howard-Malverde (ed) Creating Context in Andean
Cultures, Oxford University Press.
Radcliffe, Sarah (2001) ‘Imagining the state as a space: territoriality and the formation
of the state in Ecuador’ in T. Blom Hansen and F. Steputat (eds) States of
Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Post-Colonial State, Duke University
Press, pp. 123-181.
FILM: The Condor and the Bull
Session 4: Personhood, Bodies, Gender and Race.
* Gutmann, Matthew (1996) The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City,
Berkeley: University of California Press, ‘Machismo’ pp. 221-242.
* McCallum, Cecilia (2001) ‘Creating Gender’ in Gender and Sociality in Amazonia:
How Real People are Made, Oxford: Berg, pp. 41-64.
* Kulick, Don (1998) Travesti: Sex, Gender and Culture among Brazilian
Transgendered Prostituties, University of Chicago Press, chapter 5 ‘Travesti
Gendered Subjectivity’, pp.191-238.
McCallum, Cecilia (2005) ‘Racialised bodies, naturalised classes: moving through the
city of Salvador da Bahia’ in American Ethnologist, 32:1, pp. 100-117.
Orlove, Ben (1998) ‘Down to Earth: Race and Substance in the Andes’ in Bulletin of
Latin American Research, 17:2, pp. 207-222.
De la Cadena, Marisol (1996) ‘Women are more Indian: Ethnicity and Gender in a
Community near Cuzco’ in B. Larso & O. Harris (eds) Ethnicity, Markets and
Migration in the Andes, Duke University Press, pp. 329-348.
Ehlers, Tracy Bachrach (2000) Silent Looms: Women and Production in a
Guatemalan Town, Austin: University of Texas Press, Chapter 6, ‘Women and Men’,
pp. 151–179.
Melhuus and K-A Stolen (1996) Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas: Contesting the
Power of Latin American Gender Imagery, London: Verso
Harvey, Penelope and Peter Gow (eds) (1994) Sex and Violence: Issues in
Representation and Experience, London: Routledge.
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Session 5: Ritual and Religion: Ambiguity, Transformation and Healing
* Romberg, Raquel (2003) Witchcraft and Welfare: spiritual capital and the business
of magic in modern Puerto Rico, Austin: Texas University Press, chapters 7, pp.210235.
* Myerhoff, Barbara (1974) Peyote Hunt: the sacred journey of the Huichol Indians,
Cornell University Press, pp.112-188.
Koss-Chioino, Joan D. et. Al (eds) (2003) Medical Pluralism in the Andes, London:
Routledge.
Taussig, Michael (1987) ‘To Become a Healer’, in Shamanism, Colonialism and the
Wildman, University of Chicago Press, pp.447-467.
Taussig, Michael (1993) ‘In Some Way or Another One Can Protect Oneslef From the
Spirits by Portraying Them’ in Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the
Senses, London: Routledge, pp. 1-18.
Harner, Michael (ed) (1973) Hallucinogens and Shamanism, New York: Oxford
University Press.
Hess, David (1991) Spirits and Scientists: Ideology, Spiritism and Brazilian Culture,
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Session 6. Cultures of Poverty, Cultures of Violence?
*Goldstein, D.M (2004) Chapter 5: Spectacular Violence and Citizen Security in The
Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia. Duke University
Press.
*Auyero, Javier (2000), ‘The Hyper-Shantytown: Neo-Liberal Violence(s) in the
Argentine Slum’, Ethnography 1(1), 93-116.
Auyero, J (2001) Poor People’s Politics. Duke University Press.
Caldeira, Teresa, P.R. (2000) “Talking of Crime and Ordering the World” in City of
Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo, Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Lewis, O (1967) La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty. London :
Secker & Warburg.
Ramos, Alcida ( 1995) ‘Reflecting on the Yanomami: Ethnographic Images and the
Pursuit of the Exotic, in G. Marcus (ed) Rereading Cultural Anthropology, Duke
University Press, 48-68.
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Wilson, Richard (1991) ‘Machine Guns and Mountain Spirits: the cultural effects of
state repression among the Q’eqchi of Guatemala’, Critique of Anthropology 11(1)
33-61.
Film: City of God
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