Search

This special issue is meant to discuss the following issues: how can we collectively produce meaning? Whom should we research for/with? What should be the aims of our research? We are particularly interested in tackling the ways in which collaborative ethnographies are being constructed, from different perspectives, and how the multiple decisions affecting them are taken. With the aim of contextualizing the ethnographic experiences discussed in this volume, in this presentation we frame the historical emergence of collaborative ethnography and sum up the main contributions done by Anthropology. Then, we point out the main contents of the articles included in this issue, which is made up of six papers proceeding from ongoing researches, all of them collaborative, engaged and even activist in some cases, undertaken together with different actors in diverse scenarios. Our interlocutors have been Mexican women emigrated to New York, young Indigenous graduated at the Intercultural University of Veracruz, neighbors from marginalized neighborhoods in Lisbon, social movements and platforms for the right to housing in Spain. A great variety of contexts, perspectives and knowledge(s) emerge from this review: even though ethnography is central for all of them, it is accompanied by a plurality of knowledge(s) and practices -- ranging from radio series to ethnomusicology -- paving the way to diverse strategies of knowledge production -- story telling, collective workshops, conversations. A set of core-issues is emerging overall, and we hope it may contribute to the discussion on the tensions, dilemmas and potentialities of collaborative and engaged ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a proposal for the anthropological analysis of the cargo system, including both indigenous and non indigenous communities. From the understanding of the cargo system as an essentially heterogeneous institution, the paper suggest as main hypothesis that this institution is the origin of other mechanisms in the interaction of the members of the communities. First, the community institutions promote the participation of the largest number of people. Second, interactions' scenes are constantly created and recreated by the community members. Third, the roles' rotation, as a product of a tacit agreement into community members, is fundamental to assure social participation. The proposal is structured in three parts. First, the composition of the cargo system as a continuum which explains the differences between individual and collective behaviour. Second, the idea of community as a fundamental concept to understand the cargo system. As a conclusion, the idea of communitarian project becomes the common characteristic of all the communities -native or no native- in the Mesoamerican area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rarámuri are people who live in the Tarahumara Mountains, North of Mexico. They held in the diversity of their dance one of their most genuine forms of expression and communication. Their dance is oriented towards divine worship but also towards human relationship. This paper is based on a field work conducted during eleven months between 2001 and 2005 in several Rarámuri communities at the Highland and the Lowland Tarahumara region. The paper focuses the attention on the yúmari/tutuburi, festive ritual, as well as its meaning as a dance. The paper first describes the historical framework of the Rarámuri, second it explains the festival process, with particular attention to the yúmari/tutuburi dance. Finally, the paper explores the functional and structural aspect of the whole ritual. The main target is to outline the importance of this cultural process for being considered a Rarámuri in today's context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show the difficulties and methodological and conceptual challenges that contemporary migration pose to social sciences. In this sense, we present the case study of Zapotec migrants from Teotitlan del Valle, a community whose boundaries seem imprecise and deterritorialized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the meaning of me' vinik, a common expression of grief among the Tzotzil in the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. The pain is associated to other diseases registered in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Mexican Traditional Medicine, such as the "latido" (beat). The analysis of me' vinik shows how food practices provide metaphors to describe the difficulties of the everyday life, and specially the problems related to modernity. These metaphors sustain a broad concept of poverty such as material deprivation and inadequate nutrition caused by emotional trauma. Underling the idea of me' vinik there is a reaction to the salubrity of life in a time considered as ach' kuxlejal (the new way of living). This affliction is reinforced as an expression of the rapid and profound changes in the indigenous communities of the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper correlates the practices of agricultural work in the coffee and sugar cane plantations with the lifestyle of workers, with a particular focus on the impact for older people in the central part of Veracruz, Mexico. Research shows that while coffee and sugar cane generate different lifestyles, they do not generate substantial differences in quality of life. However, they involve a different approach to life projects and life style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a (re)construction of the point of view of public transport drivers that in Mexico are derogatorily called "chafiretes". "Chafiretes" are a typical figure in Latin American cities. By taking their point of view I aim to explain part of the passion they feel for their profession. I consider this passion to be a key element in understanding a certain urban way of life. In this investigation, I assume an inside perspective on what these drivers have to say about their work, and at the same time I explore the collective origins for why these drivers experience value in their jobs and maintain a loyalty to all what transport means as an institution. This involves learning their specific social needs, their universe and their problems, so as to get closer to the infrastructure in which they move -that is, their locality in the social spaces of their neighborhood and city-. This perspective looks to establish a contrast between the different testimonies of the drivers and explains how this negative image is frequently selfconstructed by themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduced by the missionaries during the times of conquest, the Dance of Matachines is today a deeply rooted custom among the Raramuri people, inhabitants of the Tarahumara Mountains, in the Southwest of the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Since the beginning of the 17th Century to the present time, this modality of dance has experienced numerous changes in its forms and its senses, and it maintains a very wide diversity in the different Raramuri communities. This paper is focus on the festive context where the Dance of Matachines take place, and also on the structure and general functions performed by the dance. These aspects will lead to the cultural and historical trail of the dance, as well as the tradition reinvented aspects that it holds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mexican-US border represents an illustrative example of the globalization processes due to the installation of assembly plants known as maquiladoras since the late sixties. This lead to massive employment of women and with it to a slow configuration of a female proletarianization in all of Mexico, which showed a strong correlation between the transnationalization of production process and the participation of working women. This article examine the convergence between maquiladoras, jobs and female employment as a complex relation that researchers have been trying to portray for almost four decades. With this in mind this paper reviews some of the main and well known academic and institutional analysis for the last few years in Mexico. This review should help to understand the complexity of female employment studies and the need to recognize these women as a distinct gender in the working world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]