Reinventing Practice in a Disenchanted World: Bourdieu and Urban Poverty in Oaxaca, Mexico - Softcover

Mahar, Cheleen Ann-Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292728891 ISBN 13: 9780292728899

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2010

Synopsis

Colonia Hermosa, now considered a suburb of Oaxaca, began as a squatter settlement in the 1950s. The original residents came in search of transformation from migrants to urban citizens, struggling from rural poverty for the chance to be part of the global economy in Oaxaca.

Cheleen Ann-Catherine Mahar charts the lives of a group of residents in Colonia Hermosa over a period of thirty years, as Mexico became more closely tied into the structures of global capital, and the residents of Colonia Hermosa struggled to survive. Residents shape their discussions within a larger narrative, and their talk is the language of the heroic individual, so necessary to the ideology and the functioning of capital. However, this logic only tenuously connects to the actual material circumstances of their lives.

Mahar applies the theories of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to her data from Mexico in order to examine the class trajectories of migrant families over more than three decades. Through this investigation, Mahar adds an important intergenerational study to the existing body of literature on Oaxaca, particularly concerning the factors that have reshaped the lives of urban working poor families and have created a working-class fraction of globalized citizenship.

About this title

About the Author

Cheleen Mahar is Professor of Social Anthropology and Chair of International Studies at Pacific University of Oregon.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0292728891
• ISBN 13: 9780292728899
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 195