Karen Stocker – författare

This book examines the consequences—positive, negative, and otherwise—of tourism in Costa Rica. Based on ethnographic research and interviews with tourists, tour operators, tourists-turned-settlers, and locals living in tourist destinations, this book brings together these varied perspectives with the aim of presenting forms of tourism beneficial to all parties. To examine both pitfalls and positive outcomes of tourism, it compares modes of tourism in destinations that are locally owned and foreign owned, ecotourism destinations, beach tourism, adventure tourism sites, and agrotourism projects. Furthermore, the author draws from two decades of research in two distinct communities to trace the ways in which the development of tourism in one community provided the springboard for changing gender roles and new opportunities for women, and, in the other, how the promise of tourism has spurred a cultural revitalization and positive change in Indigenous identity. Interviews with three generations of women in one tourist destination show generational changes in perspectives on tourism, and interviews covering the same time span show how in an Indigenous reservation poised to enter the heritage tourism industry, tourism offers a positive alternative to exploitative forms of labor and the stigma once associated with Indigeneity in that region. Interviews with locals in all four sites reveal the ways in which tourism carried out conscientiously would benefit them. These, juxtaposed with interviews of tourists regarding what they seek through tourism, offer a means of designing a mutually beneficial form of tourism. In sum, this book puts into conversation the varied views of those positioned differently within the realm of tourism in order to inform tourists and foreign land owners as to how they might glean the advantages that such an experience may bring to the traveler, while also playing up the benefits of these endeavors to local communities, and minimizing the potential damage these practices may cause.

While teaching and researching on an indigenous reservation in Costa Rica, Karen Stocker discovered that for Native students who attended the high school outside the reservation, two extreme reactions existed to the predominantly racist high school environment. While some maintained their indigenous identity and did poorly in school, others succeeded academically, but rejected their Indianness and the reservation. Between these two poles lay a whole host of responses. In I WON'T STAY INDIAN, I'LL KEEP STUDYING, Stocker addresses the institutionalised barriers these students faced and explores the interaction between education and identity. Stocker reveals how overt and hidden curricula taught ethnic, racial, and gendered identities and how the dominant ideology of the town, present in school, conveyed racist messages to students. I WON'T STAY INDIAN, I'LL KEEP STUDYING documents how students from the reservation reacted to, coped with, and resisted discrimination.

Return to Storytelling is a lyrical ethnographic work that presents stories from healers, community members, storytellers, witches, sceptics, and tricksters in an intentionally unnamed Central American Indigenous community. Anthropologist Karen Stocker investigates how stories of all kinds – written historical accounts, stories told within the community, and stories familiar to readers from North American backgrounds – shape people’s frameworks for interpreting both the everyday and the extraordinary. Stocker interrogates history as portrayed in sixteenth-century chronicles and upends scholarly writing styles in favour of the verbal artistry characteristic of the community as well as the Latin American magical realist genre. Thus, Return to Storytelling constitutes an inverted ethnography that prioritizes community collective memory over colonizers’ accounts, and privileges critical insight conveyed in accessible language over jargon-laden writing. At the same time, it remains grounded in sound, long-term ethnographic research and ultimately urges readers to question how they know what they know. By refusing clear distinctions between scholarly voice and storytelling, past and present, or belief and scepticism, this book invites readers to sit with ambiguity as a productive space of knowledge. It offers not only a rethinking of ethnographic practice but also a broader meditation on storytelling as a political, ethical, and imaginative force that continues to shape lives long after colonial encounters.

Through social movements that are both grassroots and global, young leaders in San José, Costa Rica, have sought to create positive social change in their communities. Using social media, art, local organizations, corporations, and government entities, these leaders have found creative ways to connect with and support one another’s efforts to promote change and tackle growing concerns, including environmental sustainability, freedom from sexual assault, food security, LGBTQ+ rights, and more.Presenting case studies of Costa Rican millennial leaders, Millennial Movements shows how youth activists in San José draw from global solutions to address the local problems inhabiting their city. Identifying with the youths that they encounter in each chapter, students will be inspired by the strategies and skills used by these leaders and can adapt them to their own schools and communities.

Through social movements that are both grassroots and global, young leaders in San José, Costa Rica, have sought to create positive social change in their communities. Using social media, art, local organizations, corporations, and government entities, these leaders have found creative ways to connect with and support one another’s efforts to promote change and tackle growing concerns, including environmental sustainability, freedom from sexual assault, food security, LGBTQ+ rights, and more.Presenting case studies of Costa Rican millennial leaders, Millennial Movements shows how youth activists in San José draw from global solutions to address the local problems inhabiting their city. Identifying with the youths that they encounter in each chapter, students will be inspired by the strategies and skills used by these leaders and can adapt them to their own schools and communities.