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Syllabus

Introduction to the course

Possible background reading for the course:

Inasmuch as the course begins with the assumption that everyone already knows how import substitution industrialization was replaced by neoliberalism, I would suggest that anyone who does not feel confident that she or he knows how neoliberalism came to replace state centered development models could easily cover this ground with a reading of John Rapley Understanding Development, (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004), Introduction and chapters 1-3. (I have some “lending copies” available in my office if you would like to borrow one.)

The social impact of neoliberal reforms: Continuity and change

Judith Adler Hellman, Mexican Lives, (New York: The New Press, 1994), Chapt. 1, pp. 15-42; Chapt. 6 (“Ramon Ortega,”), pp. 127-139; Chapt. 6, (“Rosario Valdez”) pp. 152-159.

Cristóbal Kay, "Agrarian Reform and the Neoliberal Counter-Reform in Latin America," in Chase op cit, pp. 24-52;

Jacqueline Chase, "Introduction: The Spaces of Neoliberalism,"in J. Chase, ed. The Spaces of Neoliberalism: Land, Place and Family in Latin America, (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2002), pp. 1-14;

[Recommended: Agustín Escobar Latapí and Mercedes González de la Rocha, "The Restructuring of Labor Markets, International Migration, and Household Economies in Urban Mexico, in Chase, op. cit. pp. 187-212; Mercedes González de la Rocha, "From the Resources of Poverty to the Poverty of Resources," (On reserve); J. Chase, "Privatization and Private Lives: Gender, Reproduction and Neoliberal Reforms in a Brazilian Company Town," in Chase, op. cit. pp. 119-4; Helen Safa, "Women and Globalization: Lessons from the Dominican Republic," in Chase, op. cit. pp. 141-56;.Saskia Sassen, "Notes on the Incorporation of Third World Women into Wage Labor," in S. Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money, (New York: The New Press, 1998), pp.111-31; and Deborah Barndt, "Fruits of Injustice: Women in the Post-NAFTA Food System,"in Gerardo Otero, Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State, and Civil Society, (London: Zed Press, 2004), pp. 37-51.]

Critical perspectives on new social movements and their interpreters

Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena León, "Individual vs. Collective Land Rights: Tensions Between Women and Indigenous Rights Under Neoliberalism," in Chase, op. cit. pp. 53-79;

Judith Adler Hellman, "The Riddle of New Social Movements: Who They Are and What They Do," in Richard Harris and Jorge Nef, eds., Capital, Inequality and Power in Latin America, (Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008) pp.133-153. (Available as a pdf file)

Marc Edelman, Peasants Against Globalization: Rural Social Movements in Costa Rica, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), "Introduction: Debt Crisis, Social Crisis, Paradigm Crisis," pp. 1-43.

[Recommended: Judith Adler Hellman, "Latin American Social Movements and the Question of Autonomy," in Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez, eds., New Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy and Democracy, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 52-61.]

Critical perspectives on movements, (cont’d)

Marc Edelman, op. cit. chapter 1 through 4, pp.44-155.

Rural Movements

Marc Edelman, op. cit. chapter 5, and "Conclusions: Peasant Movements in the Late Twentieth Century," pp. 156- -211.

Monica de Hart, "Fried Chicken or Pop? Redefining Development and Ethnicity in Totonicapan," Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 28 Issue 1, January 2009, pp 63-82;

[Highly Recommended for anyone particularly interested in rural movements would be to read either: Enrique Cienfuegos and Laura Carlsen, "Human Rights, Ecology and Economic Integration: The Peasant Ecologists of Guerrero," in Timothy Wise, Hilda Salazar and Laura Carlsen, eds, Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico, (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2003) pp. 43-64;

OR

Miguel A. Altieri and Victor Manuel Toledo, “The Agroecological Revolution in Latin America: Rescuing Nature, Ensuring Food Sovereignty and Empowering Peasants,” The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol 38, No. 3, July 2011, pp. 587-612.]

[Recommended: S. Ryan Isakson, “No hay ganancia en la milpa: The Agrarian Question, food sovereighnty, and the onfarm conservation of agrobiodiversity in the Guatemalan Highlands,” The Jounal of Peasant Studies, Published on line 19 November 2009, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36:4, 725-759, DOI: 10.1080/03066150903353876. To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150903353876  Published online: 19 Nov 2009. (ISSN: 0306-6150 (Print) 1743-9361 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjps20. ); Guillermo Trejo, "Religious and Ethnic Mobilization in Latin America: Why the Catholic Church Promotes Indigenous Movements in Mexico," American Political Science Review, Vol. 103, No. 3, August 2009, pp.323-34; David Barton Bray and Leticia Merino, "El Balcón, Guerrero: A Case Study of Globalization Benefitting a Forest Community, in Wise, et al. op. cit., pp. 65-80; and Liisa L. North and John D. Cameron, eds., Rural Progress, Rural Decay: Neoliberal Adjustment Policies and Local Initiatives, (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2003), especially Liisa North, ARural Progress or Rural Decay? An Overview of the Issues and Case Studies," L. North, "Endogenous Rural Diversification: Family Textile Enterprises in Pelileo," and L. North, "Externally Induced Rural Diversification: the Communitarian Experience of Salina."]

Producers’ cooperatives

Gavin Fridell, "Fair Trade and Neoliberalism: Assessing Emerging Perspectives," Latin American Perspectives 33, no. 6 (November 2006).

María Elena Martínez Torres, "Survival Strategies in Neoliberal Markets:  Peasant Organizations and Organic Coffee in Chiapas," in Gerardo Otero, ed., Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State, and Civil Society, (London: Zed Press, 2004), pp. 169-185.

Jennifer J. Johnson, "Deregulating Markets, Reregulating Crime: Extralegal Policing and the Penal State in Mexico," in Saskia Sassen, ed., Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces and Subjects, (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 265-282.

[Recommended: Jennifer J. Johnson, "When the Poor Police themselves: Public Insecurity and Extralegal Criminal-Justice Administration in Mexico," in Tom R. Tyler, ed., Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: International Perspectives, (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), pp. 167-185.Timothy Wise, Hilda Salazar and Laura Carlsen, "Introduction: Globalization and Popular Resistance in Mexico in Timothy Wise, Hilda Salazar and Laura Carlsen eds, Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico, (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2003), pp. 1-14; Josefina Aranda Bezaury, "Peasant Farmers in the Global Economy: The State Coalition of Coffee Producers of Oaxaca," in Wise, et al. op. cit., pp. 149-70; Lois Stanford "The Binational Integration of the US-Mexican Avocado Industries: Examining Responses to Economic Globalization," in Gerardo Otero, ed., Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State, and Civil Society, (London: Zed Press, 2004), pp 186-203 Gavin Fridell, "Fair Trade Coffee and Commodity Fetishism: the Limits of Market-Driven Social Justice," Historical Materialism, Vol., No. 2007, pp.]

Reading Week: February 15th -19th

Gangs

Dennis Rodgers, "Nicaragua's Gangs: Historical Legacy or Contemporary Symptom?" NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol 45, No. 1, spring, 2012,  pp. 66-69.   

Dennis Rodgers, "Joining the Gang an Becoming a Broder: The Violence of Ethnography in Contemporary Nicaragua."  Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 26, No.4.  2007, pp 444-61.

Robert Gay, Clientelism, Democracy and Violence in Rio de Janeiro" in Tina Hilgers, ed.,  Clientelism in Everyday Latin American Politics,, (Oxford:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) pp.81-98.

[Recommended:  Robert Courtney Smith, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), the chapter on pandillas.]

Why migrate? Who migrates?

Bill Buford, "Sweat is Good," The New Yorker, April 26 and May 3, 1999, pp. 130-139;           

Judith Adler Hellman, The World of Mexican Migrants: The Rock and the Hard Place, (New York: The New Press, 2008), Prologue and Introduction, + Chapter 1, 3, 4, and 5.

Wayne A. Cornelius., David Fitzgerald, Jorge Hernández-Díaz, and Scott Borger, eds. Migration from the Mexican Mixteca: A Transnational Community in Oaxaca and California ,  (La Jolla: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2009), Preface, pp. vii-ix, and Chapter 1, ASan Miguel Tlacotepec as a Community of Emigration," pp. 1-29. 

[Recommended: Wayne A. Cornelius, David Fitzgerald, and Scott Borger., eds., Four Generations of Norteños: New Research from the Cradle of Mexican Migration, (La Jolla: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California San Diego, 2009; Chapter 1; Merilee Grindle, Searching for Rural Development: Labor Migration and Employment in Mexico, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), Chapter 1, pp. 1-22  (At least the bottom of page 11 to middle of p. 20) and Chapter 2,  pp. 23-49; Saskia Sassen, "America's Immigration >Problem'," in S. Sassen, Globalization and its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money, (New York: The New Press, 1998), pp. 31-53; Raul Delgado Wise, "Labour and Migration Policies under Vicente Fox: Subordination to U.S. Economic and Geopolitical Interests," in Otero, op. cit., pp. 138-153;  S. Sassen, "Beyond Sovereignty: Immigration Policy Making Today," in Sassen, op. cit. Pp 15-26; Néstor Rodríguez, "The Battle for the Border: Notes on Autonomous Migration, Transnational Communities and the State," in Susanne Jonas and Suzie Dod Thomas, eds., Immigration: A Civil Rights Issue for the Americas, (Wilmington: SR Books, 1999), pp. 27-43.]

The Impact of out migration on the sending communities

Hellman, The World of Mexican…., Chapter 2, pp. 23-33;.

Eric Popkin, "Transnational Household Relations and Social Change in Peripheral Migrant Sending Communities: The Case of Santa Eulalia, Guatemala," 2003

Gail Mummert, "Reshaping of Gender and Generational Relations Among Rural Mexican Migrants to the U.S."  Paper presented at LASA, Los Angeles, California, 24-27 September 1992. 

Jeffrey H. Cohen, "Community, Economy, and Social Change in Oaxaca, Mexico: Rural Life and Cooperative Logic in the Global Economy,"  in Otero, op. cit., pp. 154-168.]

The “receiving society” : Migrant workers in Canadian and U.S. agriculture and society

Cindy Hahamovitch, "Creating Perfect Immigrants: Guestworkers of the World in Historical Perspective," Labor History, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2003; pp.  69-94       

Leigh Binford, "Social and Economic Contradictions of Rural Migrant Contract Labor Between Tlaxcala, Mexico and Canada," Culture & Agriculture Vol. 24, No. 2, Fall 2002, pp. 1-19; 

Kerry Preibisch, "Migrant Agricultural Workers and Processes of Social Inclusion in Rural Ontario: Encuentros and Desencuentros" Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Vol. 29, Nos. 57 and 58, July 2004, pp. 203-239; 

[Strongly recommended for anyone especially interested in temporary migration in general and SAWP in particular: Leigh Binford, "From Fields of Power to Fields of Sweat: The Dual Process of Constructing Temporary Migrant Labour in Mexico and Canada," Third World Quarterly, Vol.30, No. 3., 2009, pp. 503-517; Leigh Binford, Tomorrow We’re All Going to the Harvest: Temporary Foreign Worker Programs and Neoclassical Political Economy,  (Austin:  University of Texas Press, 2013), Chapters 2 and 3, pp. 44-92.  Jenna L. Hennbry and Kerry Preibisch, "A Model for Managed Migration?  Re-Examining Best Practices in Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program," International Migration, 2010; David  Griffith,  American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market., (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), and for particularly interesting comparisons with SAWP see, Juan Vicente Palerm, “The Expansion of California Agriculture and the Rise of Peasant Worker Communities,” in Susanne Jonas and Sosie Dod Thomas, eds., Immigration:  A Civil Rights Issue for the Americas,  (Wilmington: SR Books, 1999) pp. 45-68.]

Immigrant strategies

Judith Adler Hellman, op. cit.,  Part II, "The Journey," Chapters 6 through 13,  pp. 65-116; and Part III, "The Hard Place," Chapters 14 through 16, pp. 119-166. 

[Highly recommended: Katherine Boo, "The Churn: Creative Destruction in a Border Town," The New Yorker, March 29, 2004, pp. 62-73;  Louise Lamphere, Alex Stepick and Guillermo Grenier, eds.  Newcomers in the Workplace: Immigrants and the Restructuring of the U.S. Economy, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), "Miami: Capital of Latin America,"  pp. 129-145,, and "The View from the Back of the House: Restaurants and Hotels in Miami," pp. 181-196]

“Transnational Communities”

Read three of the following sources, according to your interests:

Judith Adler Hellman, op. cit.,  Part IV, ATo Stay or Go Home," Chapters 17 through 19, pp. 169-209 and "Conclusion,"  pp. 210 B-231. 

Jonathan Fox, "Exit Followed by Voice:  Mexico=s Migrant Civil Society,"  in J. Fox, Accountability Politics: Power and Voice in Rural Mexico,  (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008,  pp. 287-332.

Héctor Cordero-Guzmán, Robert C. Smith and Ramón Grosfoguel, "Introduction: Migration, Transnationalization and Ethnic and Racial Dynamics in a Changing New York," in  Héctor Cordero-Guzmán, Robert C. Smith and Ramón Grosfoguel, eds.  Migration, Transnationalization and Race in a Changing New York, (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 1999), pp 1-34; (this chapter covers a good deal of the theoretical debates in this field, such as they are.)

Nancy Foner, "Transnationalism Then and Now: New York Immigrants Today and at the Turn of the Twentieth Century," in Cordero-Guzmán et al, op. cit., pp. 35-57;

Sarah J. Mahler, "Suburban Transnational Migrants: Long Island=s Salvadorans,"  in Cordero-Guzmán et al, op. cit., pp.109- 130;   

Philip Kasinitz and Milton Vickerman, "Ethnic Niches and Racial Traps: Jamaicans in the New York Regional Economy," in Cordero-Guzmán et al, op. cit., pp. 191-211.   

Georges E. Fouron and Nina Glick Schiller, "The Generation of Identity: Redefining the Second Generation within a Transnational Social Field," in Cordero-Guzmán et al, op. cit., pp. 58-86.  (On Haitian migrants to New York).

Nestor Rodriguez, "Comparing Mexicans and Central American in the Present Wave of U.S. Migration," in Jose Luis Falconi and Jose Antonio Mazzotti, eds., The Other Latinos:  Central and South Americans in the United States, Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2007),pp. 81-100;

[Recommended on Home Town Associations: Luin Goldring, "The Mexican State & Transmigrant Organizations: Negotiating the Boundaries of Membership & Participation in the Mexican Nation."  Latin American Research Review 37(3), 2002, pp.  55-99; and Miguel Moctezuma Longoria, "The Migrant Club of Remolino: A Binational Community Experience, in Wise et al, eds.  op. cit., pp. 195-210.  And on political clout in the US and the sending country, Pamela M. Graham, "Political Incorporation and Re-Incorporation: Simultaneity in the Dominican Migrant Experience," in Cordero-Guzmán et al, op. cit., pp. 87-108]

*    *    *

Please note: All readings for the course are available for photocopying in the Reserve Room of Scott Library, or are available to download through J-STOR.   The two books that we will read in their entirety are Marc Edelman,  Peasants Against Globalization:  Rural Social Movements in Costa Rica, (Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 1999); Judith Adler Hellman,  The World of Mexican Migrants, (New York, The New Press, 2008).  Both will be available for purchase at the book store although they are both also available as e-books. 

We will also read a substantial part of  Héctor Cordero-Guzmán, Robert C. Smith and Ramón Grosfoguel, eds.  Migration, Transnationalization and Race in a Changing New York, (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 1999), is not available as an e-book although the first 77 pages can be found online at:
https://encrypted.google.com/books?id=Vn6iFhpyd9kC&printsec
=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false.

For anyone with a particular interest in Mexican movements some follow-up bibliographical suggestions for the future are below:

[Recommended on Mexican social movements :  Judith Adler  Hellman,  "Mexican Popular Movements, Clientelism, and the Process of Democratization," in Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry E. Vanden, and Glen David Kuecker, eds., Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Resistance, Power and Democracy, (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), pp. 61-76;  Sally Covington, "Urban Popular Movements in Mexico:  Grassroots Action for Change,"  Bildner Center U.S.-Mexico Studies Working Paper, 1991;    Joe Foweraker, "Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico," and Alan Knight, "Historical Continuities in Social Movements," Teresa Carrillo, "Women and Independent Unionism in the Garment Industry," all  in Joe Foweraker and Ann L. Craig, eds., Popular Movements and Political Change in Mexico (Boulder:  Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990), pp. 3-22;  78-102; and  213-233;