Description
Book SynopsisThis book is the first ethnography of "comunero culture" in an agricultural community in the Coquimbo region of Chile. In this unforgiving environment of limited resources and cyclical drought, the comunidades agrícolas make use of indivisible communal land, democratic decision-making, cooperative relations of production and resource conservation, and diverse economic activities closely linked to changing environmental conditions. Based on fieldwork spanning several years, through vivid details of daily life in a peasant community the book brings to light a determined struggle to protect land and livelihood. One particular family's story is told to illustrate the extraordinary resiliency of these communities in response to the sometimes harsh natural, political, and economic development environments in which they are situated. Exploring the ways in which social behavior is shaped by environmental factors and focusing on the strength of cultural expression, this work challenges many conventional ideas about seemingly marginalized people living in marginal lands. Resiliency in Hostile Environments places these issues within the political economy of Chile's 'transition to democracy,' an era of significant interest to students and scholars of post-dictatorship Latin American societies. Although comunero democracy has been revitalized since the return of civilian rule after the Pinochet regime, the failure of some rural assistance programs is often attributed to the government's continued use of the dictatorship's model of economic development. While the state is more attentive to rural poverty in the post-dictatorship era, some programs and policies informed by a discourse of modernization and standardization conflict with local ideals and limit the flexibility of traditional livelihood strategies practiced by community members.
Trade ReviewAlexander's detailed ethnography describes the livelihood strategies and social arrangements that allow communeros to survive in their hostile natural, economic, and political environments….Alexander's work is also a valuable contribution to the growing field of political ecology. His fine description of historical processes, contemporary livelihood systems, and collective resource management systems illustrate the importance of incorporating social and ecological dynamics into a single analysis. * Transforming Anthropology *
Alexander's book is an important contribution to the discussion on the existence and persistence of communal land ownership in a semi-arid ecological environment within a neoliberal economy illustrated through a specific community….Based on two periods of anthropological field research and with a genuine interest for the communities and their peasants, the author succeeds in gathering relevant data that he complements in a convincing way to give the reader a complete and lively picture of the community he is studying. * Journal For Latin American Studies *
Alexander's book is an important contribution to the discussion on the existence and persistence of communal land ownership in a semi-arid ecological environment within a neoliberal market economy illustrated through a specific community…. Based on two periods of anthropological field research and with a genuine interest for the communities and their peasants, the author succeeds in gathering relevant data that he complements in a convincing way to give the reader a complete and lively picture of the community he is studying. * Bulletin of Latin American Research *
