When I Wear My Alligator Boots

When I Wear My Alligator Boots PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520957180
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
When I Wear My Alligator Boots examines how the lives of dispossessed men and women are affected by the rise of narcotrafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. In particular, the book explores a crucial tension at the heart of the "war on drugs": despite the violence and suffering brought on by drug cartels, for the rural poor in Mexico’s north, narcotrafficking offers one of the few paths to upward mobility and is a powerful source of cultural meanings and local prestige. In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the "patron saint" of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry.

When I Wear My Alligator Boots

When I Wear My Alligator Boots PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520957180
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
When I Wear My Alligator Boots examines how the lives of dispossessed men and women are affected by the rise of narcotrafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. In particular, the book explores a crucial tension at the heart of the "war on drugs": despite the violence and suffering brought on by drug cartels, for the rural poor in Mexico’s north, narcotrafficking offers one of the few paths to upward mobility and is a powerful source of cultural meanings and local prestige. In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the "patron saint" of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry.

When I Wear My Alligator Boots

When I Wear My Alligator Boots PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520276787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
"This book tells the story of the poor, often indigenous workers living in the borderlands who are recruited to work in the lowest echelons of the drug trade, as burreros (mules) and narcotraficantes (traffickers). Shayleh Muehlmann spent over a year researching in a small community in the borderlands. This book brings her stories to a wider public, narrating the experiences of a group of indigenous fishermen in northern Mexico who have become involved in the drug trade, and exploring how the narco-economy has provided a reprieve for men and women attempting to survive while their primary form of livelihood, fishing, has been criminalized by the state because of its alleged negative environmental impact. The book examines the rise of narcotrafficking as one of the economic alternatives sought by local people and how this work is seen by many as a way of resisting forms of domination imposed on them by both the Mexican and U.S. governments. Muehlmann explores a tension at the heart of the "war on drugs." For many men and women living in poverty, the narco-economy represents an alternative to the exploitation and alienation they experience trying to work in the borderland's legal economy which has been increasingly dominated by the presence of U.S.-owned maquiladoras (assembly plants) and ravaged by environmental degradation. Despite the lawlessness and violence of the cartels and the ruinous consequences this process has had for some of the most vulnerable people involved, narco-trafficking represents one of the few promises of upward mobility for the indigenous poor in Mexico's north. "--Provided by publisher.

When I Wear My Alligator Boots

When I Wear My Alligator Boots PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520276779
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
"This book tells the story of the poor, often indigenous workers living in the borderlands who are recruited to work in the lowest echelons of the drug trade, as burreros (mules) and narcotraficantes (traffickers). Shayleh Muehlmann spent over a year researching in a small community in the borderlands. This book brings her stories to a wider public, narrating the experiences of a group of indigenous fishermen in northern Mexico who have become involved in the drug trade, and exploring how the narco-economy has provided a reprieve for men and women attempting to survive while their primary form of livelihood, fishing, has been criminalized by the state because of its alleged negative environmental impact. The book examines the rise of narcotrafficking as one of the economic alternatives sought by local people and how this work is seen by many as a way of resisting forms of domination imposed on them by both the Mexican and U.S. governments. Muehlmann explores a tension at the heart of the "war on drugs." For many men and women living in poverty, the narco-economy represents an alternative to the exploitation and alienation they experience trying to work in the borderland's legal economy which has been increasingly dominated by the presence of U.S.-owned maquiladoras (assembly plants) and ravaged by environmental degradation. Despite the lawlessness and violence of the cartels and the ruinous consequences this process has had for some of the most vulnerable people involved, narco-trafficking represents one of the few promises of upward mobility for the indigenous poor in Mexico's north. "--Provided by publisher.

Coastal Lives

Coastal Lives PDF Author: Maximilian Viatori
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816539294
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Peru’s fisheries are in crisis as overfishing and ecological changes produce dramatic fluctuations in fish stocks. To address this crisis, government officials have claimed that fishers need to become responsible producers who create economic advantages by taking better care of the ocean ecologies they exploit. In Coastal Lives, Maximilian Viatori and Héctor Bombiella argue that this has not made Peru’s fisheries more sustainable. Through a fine-grained ethnographic and historical account of Lima’s fisheries, the authors reveal that new government regimes of entrepreneurial agency have placed overwhelming burdens on the city’s impoverished artisanal fishers to demonstrate that they are responsible producers and have created failures that can be used to justify closing these fishers’ traditional use areas and to deny their historically sanctioned rights. The result is a critical examination of how neoliberalized visions of nature and individual responsibility work to normalize the dispossessions that have enabled ongoing capital accumulation at the cost of growing social dislocations and ecological degradation. The authors’ innovative approach to the politics of constructing and degrading coastal lives will interest a wide range of scholars in cultural anthropology, environmental humanities, and Latin American studies, as well as policymakers and anyone concerned with inequality, global food systems, and multispecies ecologies.

Where the River Ends

Where the River Ends PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822354454
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Living in the northwest of Mexico, the Cucapá people have relied on fishing as a means of subsistence for generations, but in the last several decades, that practice has been curtailed by water scarcity and government restrictions. The Colorado River once met the Gulf of California near the village where Shaylih Muehlmann conducted ethnographic research, but now, as a result of a treaty, 90 percent of the water from the Colorado is diverted before it reaches Mexico. The remaining water is increasingly directed to the manufacturing industry in Tijuana and Mexicali. Since 1993, the Mexican government has denied the Cucapá people fishing rights on environmental grounds. While the Cucapá have continued to fish in the Gulf of California, federal inspectors and the Mexican military are pressuring them to stop. The government maintains that the Cucapá are not sufficiently "indigenous" to warrant preferred fishing rights. Like many indigenous people in Mexico, most Cucapá people no longer speak their indigenous language; they are highly integrated into nonindigenous social networks. Where the River Ends is a moving look at how the Cucapá people have experienced and responded to the diversion of the Colorado River and the Mexican state's attempts to regulate the environmental crisis that followed.

Anthropology and Egalitarianism

Anthropology and Egalitarianism PDF Author: Eric Gable
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253004845
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Anthropology and Egalitarianism is an artful and accessible introduction to key themes in cultural anthropology. Writing in a deeply personal style and using material from his fieldwork in three dramatically different locales -- Indonesia, West Africa, and Monticello, the historic home of Thomas Jefferson -- Eric Gable shows why the ethnographic encounter is the core of the discipline's method and the basis of its unique contribution to understanding the human condition. Gable weaves together vignettes from the field and discussion of major works as he explores the development of the idea of culture through the experience of cultural contrast, anthropology's fraught relationship to racism and colonialism, and other enduring themes.

The Texanist

The Texanist PDF Author: David Courtney
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477312978
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

Being Single in India

Being Single in India PDF Author: Sarah Lamb
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520389425
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Today, the majority of the world's population lives in a country with falling marriage rates, a phenomenon with profound impacts on women, gender, and sexuality. In this exceptionally crafted ethnography, Sarah Lamb probes the gendered trend of single women in India, examining what makes living outside of marriage for women increasingly possible and yet incredibly challenging. Featuring the stories of never-married women as young as 35 and as old as 92, this book offers a remarkable portrait of a way of life experienced by women across class and caste divides. For women in India, complex social-cultural and political-economic contexts are foundational to their lives and decisions, and remaining unmarried is often an unintended consequence of other pressing life priorities. Arguing that never-married women are able to illuminate their society's broader social-cultural values, Lamb offers a new and startling look at prevailing systems in India today. "This pathbreaking book offers a vital analysis of the rising but unrecognized category of single women in a marriage-minded society such as India. Through beautifully rendered and diverse stories, Sarah Lamb challenges conventional wisdom." -MARCIA C. INHORN, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University "For fans of Lamb's evocative narratives on Bengali widows, her new book provides another rich look at the negative space of marriage: the rare demographic of single women in Bengal across class and caste." -SRIMATI BASU, author of The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India "This lively ethnographic account makes several key contributions to feminist anthropological appraisals of marriage as an institution. Lamb renders a compelling, detailed, and sensitive portrait of compulsory heterosexuality and patriliny as seen from the margins." -LUCINDA RAMBERG, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University.

Life and Death on Mt. Everest

Life and Death on Mt. Everest PDF Author: Sherry B. Ortner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211779
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The Sherpas were dead, two more victims of an attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Members of a French climbing expedition, sensitive perhaps about leaving the bodies where they could not be recovered, rolled them off a steep mountain face. One body, however, crashed to a stop near Sherpas on a separate expedition far below. They stared at the frozen corpse, stunned. They said nothing, but an American climber observing the scene interpreted their thoughts: Nobody would throw the body of a white climber off Mt. Everest. For more than a century, climbers from around the world have journ-eyed to test themselves on Everest's treacherous slopes, enlisting the expert aid of the Sherpas who live in the area. Drawing on years of field research in the Himalayas, renowned anthropologist Sherry Ortner presents a compelling account of the evolving relationship between the mountaineers and the Sherpas, a relationship of mutual dependence and cultural conflict played out in an environment of mortal risk. Ortner explores this relationship partly through gripping accounts of expeditions--often in the climbers' own words--ranging from nineteenth-century forays by the British through the historic ascent of Hillary and Tenzing to the disasters described in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. She reveals the climbers, or "sahibs," to use the Sherpas' phrase, as countercultural romantics, seeking to transcend the vulgarity and materialism of modernity through the rigor and beauty of mountaineering. She shows how climbers' behavior toward the Sherpas has ranged from kindness to cruelty, from cultural sensitivity to derision. Ortner traces the political and economic factors that led the Sherpas to join expeditions and examines the impact of climbing on their traditional culture, religion, and identity. She examines Sherpas' attitude toward death, the implications of the shared masculinity of Sherpas and sahibs, and the relationship between Sherpas and the increasing number of women climbers. Ortner also tackles debates about whether the Sherpas have been "spoiled" by mountaineering and whether climbing itself has been spoiled by commercialism.

Pretty Good Joke Book

Pretty Good Joke Book PDF Author: Garrison Keillor
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Over 2,200 Jokes from America’s favorite live radio show A treasury of hilarity from Garrison Keillor and the cast of public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion. A guy walks into a bar. Eight Canada Geese walk into a bar. A termite jumps up on the bar and asks, “Where is the bar tender?” Drum roll. The Sixth Edition of the perennially popular Pretty Good Joke Book is everything the first five were and more. More puns, one-liners, light bulb jokes, knock-knock jokes, and third-grader jokes (have you heard the one about Elvis Parsley?). More religion jokes, political jokes, lawyer jokes, blonde jokes, and jokes in questionable taste (Why did the urologist lose his license? He got in trouble with his peers). More jokes about chickens, relationships, and senior moments (the nice thing about Alzheimer’s is you can enjoy the same jokes again and again). It all started back in 1996, when A Prairie Home Companion fans laughed themselves silly during the first Joke Show. The broadcast was such a hit that it became an almost-annual gagfest. Then fans wanted to read the jokes, share them, and pass them around, and the first Pretty Good Joke Book was born. With over 200 new and updated jokes, the latest edition promises countless giggles, chortles, and guffaws anyone—fans of the radio show or not—will enjoy.