Anthropology 515E
ANTHROPOLOGY OF CENTRAL AMERICA
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Spring 2006
Professor Ellen Moodie
Office Davenport 391
emoodie@uiuc.edu
216-244-7849
Tuesdays 10 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
Classroom Davenport 113
Office hours M 1-3 p.m.
and by appointment
In this seminar we will explore recent approaches to cultural, political and
historical processes in Central America (and southern Mexico), concentrating on
scholarship in history and anthropology produced since 1989. Tending toward
the conceptual rather than the chronological (but acknowledging their
coincidence), course readings will range from studies of rearticulations of
nineteenth-century indigenous communities to research on the emergence of
twenty-first-century maquiladora worker movements. We will interrogate
regional and scholarly trajectories of globalization, neoliberalism and the state;
ethnic/race, gender and class consciousness and mobilization; capital, labor,
power relations and violence.
This semester holds a particular theoretical task. We will grapple with a
core set of questions arising out of the regional and global historical ruptures
from the Marxist, class-based frameworks of analysis that dominated Latin
American intellectual and (oppositional) political production for much of the
twentieth century. Revolutionary consciousness, while always emergent, has
transformed palpably over the past twenty years. We can link such processes to
many interrelated factors: in particular, the rapid rise of global neoliberalism, the
crises and transformations of leftist and populist political projects and the
proliferation of pan-hemispheric movements. How have analyses of structural
conditions and economic relations transformed as “multicultural” orientations
have gained force? Which categories of citizenship have been meaningful and
agentive? Which kinds of struggles have been effective in Central America, and
beyond, through the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries?
Although I will offer some talks over the semester, I expect everyone to
participate in the creation of an intellectual community. I am especially
interested in honing our zeal to tackle hard questions in public, and to disagree
with scholars—including each other—rigorously, passionately and respectfully.
To that end, each Monday night before class we will post on the Compass web
site (http://compass.uiuc.edu) a page or more of thoughtful reading notes that
both relate readings to the course’s central questions and pose discussion
questions. Each student will also offer a well-researched presentation on one of
the major readings, directing the class conversation by placing the work in an
intellectual, political and historical genealogy. At the end of the term we will
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present the results of final papers that build on the course’s ongoing theoretical
concerns within the context of students’ own projects.
Evaluation
Your grade for this class will be divided among the following three elements:
Participation
Reading notes
Final papers
(well-grounded critiques, creative
thinking, respectful interactions)
(thorough reflection, good questions)
(well-executed, organized, relates
to class questions; details to come)
20 percent
30 percent
50 percent
Class texts
Most articles and chapters can be accessed on-line through the library e-reserve
system at http://web.library.uiuc.edu/ereserves/querycourse.asp. Articles
marked with an asterisk are posted on the Compass web site in the “Extra
Readings” folder. Books are available at local university-area bookstores, and
have also been placed on reserve in the Undergraduate Library. If you can afford
it, I recommend ordering the books on-line rather than supporting book stores
that sell products promoting the sports mascot.
Binford, Leigh. The El Mozote Massacre: Anthropology and Human Rights. Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1996.
Edelman, Marc. Peasants Against Globalization: Rural Social Movements in Costa
Rica. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Gould, Jeffrey L. To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje,
1880-1965. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998.
Hale, Charles R. Más que un Indio: Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal
Multiculturalism in Guatemala. Santa Fe: School of American Research
Press, 2006.
Lauria-Santiago, Aldo. An Agrarian Republic: Commercial Agriculture and the
Politics of Peasant Communities in El Salvador, 1823-1914. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.
Levenson-Estrada, Deborah. Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City 19541985. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Mendez, Jennifer Bickham. From the Revolution to the Maquiladoras: Gender, Labor
and Globalization in Nicaragua. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2005.
Nash, June C. Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization.
New York: Routledge, 2001.
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Class schedule
Posts of reading notes due by midnight Monday at the class web site, accessible
through http://compass.uiuc.edu.
Introduction
January 17
ORIENTATIONS:
Identification and position
January 24
Gilroy, Paul. “’Race,’ Class and Agency.” In ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union
Jack’: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987: 15-42.
Bourgois, Philippe. “Preface.” In Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central
American Banana Plantation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1989: ix-xiv.
Laclau, Ernesto. “Introduction.” In The Making of Political Identities, edited by
Ernesto Laclau, 1-8. London and New York: Verso, 1994.
Mallon, Florencia. “The Promise and Dilemma of Subaltern Studies: Perspectives
from Latin American History.” American Historical Review 99 (1994): 14911515.
Chicago Cultural Studies Group. “Critical Multiculturalism.” Critical Inquiry 18
(3) (Spring 1992): 530-555.

Subject to change, given interests of class members and prerogative of
professor.
 Available on the Compass web site.
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Berlant, Lauren and Michael Warner. “Introduction to ‘Critical
Multiculturalism.’” In Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader, edited by David
Theo Goldberg, 107-113. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994.
Optional: Dirlik, Arif. “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age
of Global Capitalism.” Critical Inquiry 20 (2) (Winter 1994): 328-356.
Laclau, Ernesto. “Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity.” In
Emancipation(s), 20-35. London and New York: Verso, 1996.
Laclau, Ernesto and Lillian Zac. “Minding the Gap: The Subject of Politics.” In
The Making of Political Identities, edited by Ernesto Laclau, 11-39. London
and New York: Verso, 1994.
Social movements
January 31
Alvarez, Sonia, Evelina Dagnino and Arturo Escobar. “Introduction: The
Cultural and the Political in Latin American Social Movements.” In
Culture of Politics/Politics of Cultures: Re-Visioning Latin American Social
Movements, edited by Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino and Arturo Escobar,
1-29. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998.
Dagnino, Evelina. “Culture, Citizenship and Democracy: Changing Discourses
and Practices of the American Left.” In Culture of Politics/Politics of
Cultures: Re-Visioning Latin American Social Movements, edited by Sonia
Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino and Arturo Escobar, 30-63. Boulder: Westview
Press, 1998.
Petras, James. “Peasant-Based Sociopolitical Movements in Latin America.” In
The New Development Politics: The Age of Empire Building and New Social
Movements. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003: 81-108.
Empire, state and power
February 7
Saldaña Portillo, María Josefina. “Introduction” and “Irresistible Seduction: Rural
Subjectivity under Sandinista Agricultural Policy. ” In The Revolutionary
Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2003: 1-16, 109-147.
Petras, James. “Imperialism and Empire-Building in the Twenty-First Century”
and “The Centrality of the State” In The New Development Politics: The Age
of Empire Building and New Social Movements, 1-17; 39-53. Burlington, Vt.:
Ashgate, 2003.

Available on the Compass web site.
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Optional: Saldaña Portillo, María Josefina. “Development and Revolution:
Narratives of Liberation and Regimes of Subjectivity in the Postwar
Period. ” In The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of
Development. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003: 17-59.
Robinson, William I. “Transnational Processes, Development Studies and
Changing Social Hierarchies in a World System: A Central American Case
Study.” Third World Quarterly 22 (4) 2001: 529-563.
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. “Preface: Life in Common.” In Multitude: War
and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Press, 2004: xixviii.
Gordon, Edmund T. “Revolution, Common Sense and the Dynamics of African
Nicaraguan Politics, 1979-85.” Critique of Anthropology 15(1): 5-36.
Indigenous movements
February 14
Yashar, Deborah J. “Questions, Approaches and Cases.” “Citizenship
Regimes, the State and Ethnic Cleavages,”; and “The Argument:
Indigenous Mobilization in Latin America.” In Contesting Citizenship in
Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005: 3-82.
Hale, Charles R. “Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights
and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala.” Journal of Latin American Studies
34 (2002): 485-524.
Optional: Warren, Kay B. “Pan-Mayanism and Its Critics Left and Right.” In
Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activism in Guatemala, 3351. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
De la Peña, Guillermo. “Social and Cultural Policies Toward Indigenous Peoples:
Perspectives from Latin America.” Annual Review of Anthropology 2006
(34): 717-739.
MONOGRAPHS
February 21
Binford, The El Mozote Massacre (El Salvador)
February 28
Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unions Against Terror (Guatemala)
March 7
Lauria-Santiago, An Agrarian Republic (El Salvador)

Available on the Compass web site.
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March 14
Gould, To Die in This Way (Nicaragua)
March 21
Spring Break
March 28
Edelman, Peasants Against Globalization (Costa Rica)
April 4
Nash, Mayan Visions (Mexico)
April 11
Mendez, From the Revolution to the Maquiladoras (Nicaragua)
April 25
Hale, Más que un Indio (Guatemala)*
May 2
Final presentations
*
Pending availability
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