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An ethnographic contribution describing the beliefs and ideas associated with witchcraft as shared "knowledge" that the Apaches have about their universe. Uncovers the types of interpersonal relationships with which witchcraft accusations are regularly associated and posits explanations for these associations.

A fairly comprehensive monograph, highly suitable for classroom use, that offers a wide range of information fit into traditional anthropological categories...an interesting study of cultural integrity and pattern in a setting of what appears to be complex sociopolitical chaos. American Anthropologist ""Whether or not one accepts Susan Lobo's optimistic analysis, her ability to translate the apparent chaos of shanty-town lives into such neat patterns and to help outsiders view life as the inhabitants do are important contributions."" Inter-American Review of Bibliography ""An extremely competent ethnography, simple and straightforward."" Anthropos ""A pleasure to read, a mine of information which will be useful in teaching students to formulate their own hypotheses."" International Journal of Urban & Regional Research ""Very well written and provides a great wealth of the liveliest sort of ethnographic detail."" Latin American Research Review ""Lobo's study of two squatter settlements in Lima provides a solid, well-written, detailed, traditional ethnography of poor families in a Third World urban setting."" Hispanic American Historical Review ""This well-written account ...has a lot of heart and feeling for the human face of the urban poor. "" International Migration Review

Too often in the history of Mexico, women have been portrayed as marginal figures rather than legitimate participants in social processes. As the twentieth century draws to a close, Mexican women of the countryside can be seen as true historical actors: mothers and heads of households, factory and field workers, community activists, artisans, and merchants. In this new book, thirteen contributions by historians, anthropologists, and sociologistsfrom Mexico as well as the United Stateselucidate the roles of women and changing gender relations in Mexico as rural families negotiated the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. Drawing on Mexican community studies, gender studies, and rural studies, these essays overturn the stereotypes of Mexican peasant women by exploring the complexity of their lives and roles and examining how these have changed over time. The book emphasizes the active roles of women in the periods of civil war, 1854-76, and the commercialization of agriculture, 1880-1910. It highlights their vigorous responses to the violence of revolution, their increased mobility, and their interaction with state reforms in the period from 1910 to 1940.The final essays focus on changing gender relations in the countryside under the impact of rapid urbanization and industrialization since 1940. Because histories of Latin American women have heretofore neglected rural areas, this volume will serve as a touchstone for all who would better understand women's lives in a region of increasing international economic importance. Women of the Mexican Countryside demonstrates that, contrary to the peasant stereotype, these women have accepted complex roles to meet constantly changing situations. CONTENTS-I Women and Agriculture in Nineteenth-Century Mexico-1. Exploring the Origins of Democratic Patriarchy in Mexico: Gender and Popular Resistance in the Puebla Highlands, 1850-1876, Florencia Mallon-2. "Cheaper Than Machines": Women and Agriculture in Porfirian Oaxaca (1880-1911), Francie R. Chassen-Lopez-3. Gender, Work, and Coffee in Ci??rdoba, Veracruz, 1850-1910, Heather Fowler-Salamini-4. Gender, Bridewealth, and Marriage: Social Reproduction of Peons on Henequen Haciendas in Yucatan (1870-1901), Piedad Peniche Rivero-II Rural Women and Revolution in Mexico-5.The Soldadera in the Mexican Revolution: War and Men's Illusions, Elizabeth Salas-6. Rural Women's Literacy and Education During the Mexican Revolution: Subverting a Patriarchal Event?, Mary Kay Vaughan-7. Dona Zeferina Barreto: Biographical Sketch of an Indian Woman from the State of Morelos, Judith Friedlander-8. Seasons, Seeds, and Souls: Mexican Women Gardening in the American Mesilla (1900-1940), Raquel Rubio Goldsmith-III Rural Women, Urbanization, and Gender Relations-9. Three Microhistories of Women's Work in Rural Mexico, Patricia Arias-10. Intergenerational and Gender Relations in the Transition from a Peasant Economy to a Diversified Economy, Soledad Gonzalez Montes-11. From Metate to Despate: Rural Women's Salaried Labor and the Redefinition of Gendered Spaces and Roles, Gail Mummert-12. Changes in Rural Society and Domestic Labor in Atlixco, Puebla (1940-1990), Maria da Gloria Marroni de Velazquez-13. Antagonisms of Gender and Class in Morelos, Mexico, JoAnn Martin

The U.S.-Mexico border is frequently presented by contemporary media as a violent and dangerous place. But that is not a new perception. For decades the border has been constructed as a topographic metaphor for all forms of illegality, in which an ineffable link between space and violence is somehow assumed. The sociological and cultural implications of violence have recently emerged at the forefront of academic discussions about the border. And yet few studies have been devoted to one of its most disturbing manifestations: gender violence. This book analyzes this pervasive phenomenon, including the femicides in Ciudad Juárez that have come to exemplify, at least for the media, its most extreme manifestation. Contributors to this volume propose that the study of gender-motivated violence requires interpretive and analytical strategies that draw on methods reaching across the divide between the social sciences and the humanities. Through such an interdisciplinary conversation, the book examines how such violence is (re)presented in oral narratives, newspaper reports, films and documentaries, novels, TV series, and legal discourse. It also examines the role that the media have played in this process, as well as the legal initiatives that might address this pressing social problem. Together these essays offer a new perspective on the implications of, and connections between, gendered forms of violence and topics such as mechanisms of social violence, the micro-social effects of economic models, the asymmetries of power in local, national, and transnational configurations, and the particular rhetoric, aesthetics, and ethics of discourses that represent violence.

When an international health initiative succeeded in wiping out river blindness in Burkina Faso, it allowed the settlement of the sparsely populated Volta Valley by the Mossi people--a development plan by which the Burkinabe government sought to relieve population pressure, establish communities, and increase cotton production. Anthropologist Della McMillan followed this visionary plan over twelve years as people relocated communities, founded farms, dealt with officials, entered the market, and in some instances moved on. Her study examines the question of how development occurs or fails to occur and offers unusual insight into how visions of progress--held by developers, settlers, and even researchers--originate and are revised.

Women's participation, both formal and informal, in the creation of what we now call Spanish America is reflected in its literary legacy. Stacey Schlau examines what women from a wide spectrum of classes and races have to say about the societies in which they lived and their place in them. Schlau has written the first book to study a historical selection of Spanish American women's writings with an emphasis on social and political themes. Through their words, she offers an alternative vision of the development of narrative genres critical, fictional, and testimonial from colonial times to the present. The authors considered here represent the chronological yet nonlinear development of women's narrative.They include Teresa Romero Zapata, accused before the Inquisition of being a false visionary; Ines Suarez, nun and writer of spiritual autobiography; Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, author of an indigenist historical romance; Magda Portal, whose biography of Flora Tristan furthered her own political agenda; Dora Alonso, who wrote revolutionary children's books; Domitila Barrios de Chungara, political leader and organizer; Elvira Orphee, whose novel unpacks the psychology of the torturer; and several others who address social and political struggles that continue to the present day. Although the writers treated here may seem to have little in common, all sought to maneuver through institutions and systems and insert themselves into public life by using the written word, often through the appropriation and modification of mainstream genres. In examining how these authors stretched the boundaries of genre to create a multiplicity of hybrid forms, Schlau reveals points of convergence in the narrative tradition of challenging established political and social structures.Outlining the shape of this literary tradition, she introduces us to a host of neglected voices, as well as examining better-known ones, who demonstrate that for women, simply writing can be a political act.

Latina theater and solo performance emerged in the 1990s as vibrant, energetic new genres found on stages from New York to Los Angeles. Many women now work in all aspects of Latina theater often as playwrights or solo performers with practitioners ranging from teenagers to grandmothers. Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez and Nancy Saporta Sternbach have previously published a groundbreaking anthology of Latina theater, Puro Teatro. They now offer a critical analysis of theatrical works, presenting a theoretical perspective from which to examine, understand, and contextualize Latina theater as a genre in its own right. This is the first in-depth study of the entire corpus of Latina theater, based on close readings of works both published and in manuscript. It considers a large body of productions and performances, including works by such internationally known authors as Dolores Prida, Cherrie Moraga, and Janis Astor del Valle.Applying feminist and postcolonial theory as well as theories of transculturation, Sandoval-Sanchez and Sternbach show how, despite cultural differences among Latinas, their works share a common poetics by building upon the politics of representation, identity, and location. In addition to covering theater, this study also shows that solo performance has its own history, properties, structure, and poetics. It examines performances of Carmelita Tropicana, Monica Palacios, and Marga Gomez artists whose hybrid identities as Latina lesbians constitute living examples of transculturation in the making to show how solo performance has roots in and digresses from more traditional modes of theater. With their Latina heritage as a unifying link, these women reflect common traits, patterns, dramatic structures, and properties that overcome regional differences. Stages of Life reads these eclectic cultural productions as a unified body of work that contributes to the formation of Latina identity in America today.

Federal policy toward Native Americans has fluctuated wildly in the twentieth century. Washington long envisioned that Indians would be assimilated into American culture until FDR's New Deal introduced tribal self-government. Then, during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, its goal became the termination of federal wardship status for Indians. This book considers the changes in attitude that began in 1960 and culminated in the Indian Self-Determination Act of 1975. Drawing on personal interviews with key players, George Castile goes behind the scenes in Washington to reveal what motivated policy makers and who really shaped policy from the Kennedy to the Ford administrations. To Show Heart is a detailed and unbiased account of one of the least understood periods in Indian affairs. It tells how "termination" became a political embarrassment during the civil rights movement, how Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty prompted politicians to rethink Indian policy, and how championing self-determination presented an opportunity for Presidents Nixon and Ford to "show heart" toward Native Americans.Along the way, Castile assesses the impact of the Indian activism of the 1960s and 1970s and offers an objective view of the American Indian Movement and the standoff at Wounded Knee. He also discusses the recent history of individual tribes, which gives greater meaning to decisions made at the national level. Castile's work greatly enhances our understanding of the formulation of current Indian policy and of the changes that have occurred since 1975. To Show Heart is an important book not only for anthropologists and historians but also for Native Americans themselves, who will benefit from this inside look at how bureaucrats have sought to determine their destinies.

In the early 1970s construction began on a nuclear power plant at Laguna Verde in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Initially, most local citizens were largely unconcerned with the prospect of having the nuclear plant in their community. With the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, however, residents' complacency toward the power plant soon turned to opposition. Protest groups such as the Madres Veracruzanas emerged to join existing environmental groups in a fight to close down the facility. In Mothers and the Mexican Antinuclear Power Movement, Velma García-Gorena traces the protest movement against the Mexican government's Laguna Verde nuclear plant, outlining the movement's formation, development, and decline. Documenting the movement's key players and turning points in superb detail, she interweaves important historical narrative with a deft examination of the events, framing her analysis in terms of social movement literature.In a departure from the more conventional New Social Movements approach to analyzing antinuclear movements, García-Gorena demonstrates how, in many ways, movements of this kind are not so new and how a modified "political process" approach fits much better. With a sophisticated application of various social movements' paradigms, García-Gorena incorporates perspectives such as resource mobilization, political process paradigms, and feminist theory. Timely, well written, and thoroughly researched, Mothers and the Mexican Antinuclear Power Movement fills a major gap in the literature on grassroots environmental movements in Latin America. Both rich in empirical detail and convincing in its conclusions, this study provides a broader understanding of Mexican social movements and the quest for democracy in developing countries.