Volume 62, No. 1, Spring 2003
Going for the Global: The Case of Ecstasy
Michael Agar and Heather Schacht Reisinger
Anthropologists now routinely use global factors to describe and explain meanings and practices uncovered in specific ethnographic sites. In our efforts to explain illicit drug epidemics, we participate in this shift, since changes in a system of illicit drug production and distribution are always a part of the story. In the case study presented here—the increasing use of ecstasy in the late 1990s—we deal with two new problems. First, global and diffuse use of a drug that typically does not bring about clinical dependence makes the selection of a specific ethnographic site less relevant than it has been in past cases. Second, the system for production and delivery lacks the clear organization of such systems in past cases of heroin and cocaine. We conclude with a call, as have many others, for more development of an old anthropological idea, a nonsite-specific global anthropology, one that may also enable more effective participation in many kinds of policy discourse.
Key words: globalization, substance use, ecstasy, ethnographic epistemology, policy
Ethnomedicine in the Urban Environment: Dominican Healers in New York City
Marian Reiff, Bonnie O’Connor, Fredi Kronenberg, Michael Balick, Patricia Lohr, Maria Roble, Adriane Fugh-Berman, and Kimberly D. Johnson
New York City has a large Dominican community that utilizes a variety of traditional healing resources, yet relatively little is known about their ethnomedical concepts and practices. This paper focuses on six Dominican traditional healers who participated in a cross-cultural study on therapies for women’s health problems in New York City. Healers were located through community networks and botanical shops and were interviewed about their backgrounds, healing traditions, and therapeutic techniques. Women patients with prior medical diagnoses were taken to the healers for consultations, and healers were interviewed regarding their diagnostic process and treatment recommendations. The paper describes the healers’ perspectives on their healing traditions, practices, and treatment approaches. In general, healing traditions are transmitted primarily through older female kin, and healers use a multidimensional, holistic approach to health care. In addition to these similarities, the healers also demonstrate variation in training, diagnostic techniques, and treatment approaches—a feature common to oral healing traditions. We discuss the potential contribution of traditional healers to health care in urban settings and the importance of improving understanding by mainstream medical practitioners of the ethnomedical traditions of their patients from immigrant and minority communities.
Key words: immigrant health care, complementary medicine, alternative medicine, folk healers, Latinos, New York City.
Cultural Citizenship and Labor Rights for Oregon Farmworkers: The Case of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Nordoeste (PCUN)
Lynn Stephen
This article uses the story of Oregon’s only farmworker union, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), and worker testimonies to illustrate how cultural citizenship has been created for some farmworkers through grassroots organizing around immigration, cultural, and labor issues. The notion of “cultural citizenship” offers anthropologists a model for understanding how Mexican migrants in the U.S. can be recognized as legitimate political subjects claiming rights for themselves and their children based on their economic and cultural contributions regardless of their official legal status. Cultural citizenship is an alternative concept to “legal citizenship,” which labels undocumented migrants in the U.S. as “illegal aliens,” and is a way of reaffirming the contributions of Mexican migrants outside the framework of U.S. immigration law.
Key words: labor rights, cultural citizenship, farmworkers, Mexican immigrants, Oregon
Labor Control and Resistance of Mexican Immigrant Janitors in Silicon Valley
Christian Zlolniski
Since the 1980s, the forces of national and global restructuring have led to the proliferation of labor subcontracting arrangements in the United States that use immigrant workers to increase labor flexibility and reduce labor costs, particularly in the service sector. A case in point is the building-cleaning industry in Silicon Valley in northern California, which relies on Mexican and other Latino immigrants to clean the offices of major high-tech corporations. In turn, the subcontracting of immigrant workers for low-skilled occupations has opened new opportunities and challenges for management and organized labor. Based on a case study of one of the largest electronics companies in Silicon Valley, this article examines the varied forms of managerial control employed with immigrant workers to increase flexibility in the workplace and the ways janitors resist them. Rather than taking immigrants’ labor flexibility for granted, I argue that we need to examine it as a fluid process that is continuously constructed, negotiated, and contested in the workplace.
Key words: immigrant labor, labor control and resistance, janitors, Mexican workers, Silicon Valleymen, cultural models, blue crab, fisheries management, Chesapeake Bay
Resettlement and the Unnoticed Losers: Impoverishment Disasters among the Gumz in Ethiopia
Yntiso Gebre
Policy makers, funding agencies, and researchers often overlook the implications of resettlement for host populations. Settlers and refugees usually receive aid, research coverage, and policy attention, while the plight of the host people remains largely unnoticed. The 1980s resettlement program in the Metekel lowlands of Ethiopia is a case in point. This program contributed to the impoverishment of the host population—the Gumz—and caused unexpected changes in their survival strategies and customary practices. In this article, I argue that during massive resettlements, the host people, particularly powerless communities, are likely to encounter displacement and impoverishment similar to that of relocatees. Therefore, the analytical categories and models used to understand the situation of settlers can also be employed to examine the experiences of the hosts.
Key words: displacement, resettlement, Gumz (Gumuz), Metekel, Ethiopia
Self-Employment and Poverty Alleviation: Women’s Work in Artisanal Gold Mines
Marieke Heemskerk
Development policy makers increasingly focus on the informal sector as an area to alleviate poverty and promote gender equity. Female self-employment is especially encouraged because higher incomes for women empower them, improve the health of their families, and alleviate poverty in society at large. In this context, development institutions have been urged to increase female participation in artisanal mining. However, knowledge about the gains and costs to women who earn a living in informal, artisanal mines is sparse. This study analyzes women’s self-employment in artisanal gold mines in Suriname, South America. The results suggest that if long-term social and health conditions are considered, work in the informal mining sector is not likely to improve the quality of life in the interior of Suriname. The analysis contributes to informal-sector research by focusing on women and on rural regions, two areas of investigation that have received relatively little attention. The author cautions against development policy that narrowly focuses on economic growth and efficiency, and argues that public policy that anticipates long-term health, cultural, and social outcomes has a better chance of being sustainable.
Key words: artisanal gold mining, gender, informal labor, Maroons, Suriname
Promoting Aboriginal Territoriality Through Interethnic Alliances: The Case of the Cheslatta T’en in Northern British Columbia
Soren C. Larsen
Across rural North America, aboriginal and nonaboriginal people have formed strategic alliances to defend what are perceived to be common resources and attachments to place. Thus far, little is known about how these partnerships have factored into indigenous pursuits of territorial autonomy. This article describes how the Cheslatta T’en, a Dakelh (Carrier) community in north-central British Columbia, established a measure of control over their homeland after forming an alliance with local nonnative residents. Cheslatta leaders used cultural exchanges and social networks generated by the alliance to fashion territorial initiatives that, when taken together, channel popular environmentalism, provincial forestry policies, and ancestral ethnoecology into collective identity, action, and authority. As a result, the band has attained political influence over its traditional lands without participating in the province’s treaty settlement process. Interethnic partnerships in rural areas are particularly relevant to political ecology because they reveal how the common experience of powerlessness can generate new forms of resource management that synthesize diverse constructions of nature. In this way, the paper contributes to the growing empirical work on such alliances and to emerging frameworks for a political ecology of social movements. It also adds to the ethnographic literature on the colonial encounter in British Columbia by highlighting the role of interethnic collaboration in contemporary rural resource management projects.
Key words: First Nations, human territoriality, place attachment, political ecology, rural development, British Columbia
