Description
Book SynopsisThis study analyzes a popular festival and vigilante lynching, examining them as a form of political spectacle performed by improverished people who want to gain access to the potential benefits of citizenship in a modern city.
Trade Review“
The Spectacular City is a highly original contribution to the ethnography of law, violence, and the state. Goldstein explores the connections between localism and violence both as situated action and as genres of performance, resulting in a nuanced analysis of politics between state and nonstate forms.”—Carol Greenhouse, coeditor of
Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change“Fascinating and rich in ethnographic detail,
The Spectacular City is particularly important at this moment because it examines the increase in common crime that has accompanied the consolidation of neoliberal capitalism in Latin America. Although it is widely appreciated that crime has gotten worse, there are very few anthropological studies that explore this phenomenon at the local level.”—Lesley Gill, author of
The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the AmericasTable of ContentsAbout the Series ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Becoming Visible in Neoliberal Bolivia 1
1. Ethnography, Governmentality, and Urban Life 29
2. Urbanism, Modernity, and Migration to Cochabamba 53
3. Villa Sebastian Pagador and the Politics of Community 90
4. Performing National Culture in the Fiesta de San Miguel 134
5. Spectacular Violence and Citizen Security 179
Conclusion: Theaters of Memory and the Violence of Citizenship 215
Notes 225
References 239
Index 265
