Description
Book SynopsisOffers a mixture of reflexive theoretical essays and interpretative case studies that embrace the challenge of writing a social and cultural history of Latin America that is not divorced from politics and broader arenas of power.
Trade Review“Cutting edge in its approaches, vibrant in its debates, and relevant in its concerns to both current historiography and current politics, this book should be required reading for all serious students and scholars of Latin America.”—Peter Winn, author of
Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean“The magnificence of this volume lies in Viotti da Costa’s plea for political engagement and intellectual integrity, as well as in the superb scholarship that rises to her challenge. This book will inspire a new generation of scholars and teachers of Latin American history to reengage their work and lives in the new politics and political issues bubbling up around the edges of the neoliberal order of global capitalism.”—Brooke Larson, author of
Cochabamba, 1550–1900: Colonialism and Agrarian Transformation in BoliviaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
I. The Politics of Writing Latin American History
Reclaiming “the Political” at the Turn of the Millennium / Gilbert M. Joseph
New Publics, New Politics, New Histories: From Economic Reductionism to Cultural Reductionism--in Search of Dialectics / Emilia Viotti da Costa
Between Tragedy and Promise: The Politics of Writing Latin American History in the Late Twentieth Century / Steve J. Stern
II. The Contestation of Historical Narratives and Memory
The Decline of the Progressive Planter and the Rise of Subaltern Agency: Shifting Narratives of Slave Emancipation in Brazil / Barbara Weinstein
A Past to Do Justice to the Present: Collective Memory, Historical Representation, and Rule in Bahia’s Cacao Area / Mary Ann Mahony
Revolutionary Nationalism and Local Memories in El Salvador / Jeffrey L. Gould
III. Articulating the Political: The Intersection of Class, Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Generation
The Flight from the Fields Reconsidered: Gender Ideologies and Women’s Labor After Slavery in Jamaica / Diana Paton
A More Onerous Citizenship: Illness, Race, and Nation in Republican Guatemala / Greg Grandin
Nationalism, Race, and the Politics of Imperialism: Workers and North American Capital in the Chilean Copper Industry / Thomas Miller Klubock
Good Wives, Bad Girls, and Unfaithful Men: Sexual Negotiation and Labor Struggle in Chile’s Agrarian Reform, 1964–73 / Heidi Tinsman
IV. Historians and the Making of History
Bearing Witness in Hard Times: Ethnography and
Testimonio in a Postrevolutionary Age / Florencia E. Mallon
Afterword: A Final Reflection on the Political / Daniel James
Contributors
Index
