Clinical globalization: A case study of privately-sponsored HIV research in Mexico

This essay describes the struggle of an indigenous rights activist to obtain ethnic status and political representation for the Waata, former hunter-gatherers who belong to the Oromo-speaking people of East and Northeast Africa. It discusses how this leader is trying to positively redefine the label of 'caste' attributed to the Waata by scholars to explain the ambivalent position occupied by the group in traditional Oromo society. The essay examines how this social activist used a dance ritual which is performed annually by the Waata to commemorate their myth of origin as a way to gain political and moral legitimacy for his campaign. As Abner Cohen's studies suggest, there exists an intrinsic link between cultural performances and political processes in contexts of socio-economic change. The essay explores these interrelated themes of culture, politics and social change through the case of the Waata.     

传统社会中资源型城市的商业发展——以清代运城为中心的研究

关于传统社会中资源型城市的商业发展,学术界关注较少。然而,资源型城市及其商业发展不会因为学术界对其关注的多寡而改变其在历史上的客观存在。运用传统文献及运城池神庙的碑铭资料,以清代盐务专城——运城的商业发展为研究对象,对传统社会中资源型城市商业发展的特点进行梳理和考察具有重要的现实意义。     

Responding to the Mental Health and Grief Concerns of Homeless HIV-Infected Gay Men

Summary

Aging, homeless HIV-infected gay men confront multiple bereavement and mental health issues. Needs assessment interviews with this population in the streets of New York City facilitate the initial review and provision of clinically and culturally appropriate service delivery strategies for these disenfranchised gay men to access bereavement support and mental health care systems.     

The Self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and the Limits of United Nations Advocacy in Guerrero,Mexico (1998-2000)

This essay examines the visit to Mexico in February 2000 by Erica-Irene Daes, then chairperson of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations. I use the occasion of this visit to analyze the relationship between a regional indigenous organization in the state of Guerrero, the Mexican national state, and the United Nations within the larger context of the development of international law. I argue that the persistence today of a centuries-old bias in international law that privileges the "nation-state" and a related individualistic bias in the conception of human rights make UN support for indigenous self-determination highly equivocal. I begin with an examination of the Consejo Guerrerense and how its experience helps to illustrate the issues confronted by the indigenous rights movement in Mexico today. Then I provide background to place this movement and the United Nations in the context of the development of international and human rights law. The discourse of international human rights and the ways in which these rights are defined and advocated by the UN has serious limitations for Indians in Mexico. This is a cautionary tale about the real possibilities for social change in our global world.     

Dining with the Devil: Identity Formations in Juarez,Mexico

This article analyzes popular narratives surrounding the theme of drug lords in the Mexican border city of Juarez and their multifaceted social, ideological, and material effects. This analysis takes into consideration the historical context of eruptions of violence that Juarez has endured in the last few years. Complex formations of the Mexican identity are now being reformulated in hierarchical, gendered, and racialized identities, which project the very strong and powerful social frictions currently emerging from complex socioeconomic factors resulting in mass poverty and migration. These elements are evinced in the narco-narratives within their violent contexts. However, violence in Juarez must not be interpreted as upsurges outside the control of the state, but rather as byproducts of conflict within it (see Das and Poole 2004). Thus, on the border, Juarez becomes a central site, not a periphery, in which economic and political forces materialize in the middle of complex social dynamics.     

Observations on the 1994 Mexican National Elections

On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. Over a period of fifteen years NAFTA will eliminate trade barriers between Mexico, Canada, and the United States. As the economics and politics of the three countries become increasingly interdependent, it is important for social workers in the United States to become better informed about developments in Mexico and Canada which affect the welfare of Mexicans and Canadians and which have implications for social welfare policy and programming in the United States. This report, by a ''United Statesian''1 social worker who participated in the efforts of Alianza Cívica/Observatión '94 to monitor the 1994 Mexican national elections, describes the political context of those elections; the training and credentialing of an ''international visitor;'' election day activities in Tecalapa, Guerrero; and the author's reflections on the electoral process and subsequent events in Mexico.     

The Social Is Political

Feminist political economy has recognized that women's work in global production is a central site for gender analysis and a major issue for re-conceptualizing globalization in a gender equitable manner. But such research has yet to generate appropriate policy proposals that can form the basis for international campaigns to achieve changes in the governance and functioning of the global economy that would contribute to gender equity. This article argues that a more informed and differentiated analysis is necessary to translate feminist economic analysis into effective political action. It does this by demonstrating the relationship between the 'economic' and the 'social' through the analysis of changing state provision of social reproduction. It then outlines some potential feminist policy initiatives that arise from this kind of approach.     

The Three Malinches: betrayal and the death of an urban popular movement

I examine the death of an urban popular movement in Guadalajara, Mexico, through the experiences of three women who were active in the movement's local-level leadership. Betrayal emerges as a central theme in their accounts. Gender and betrayal have provided a longstanding subtext in Mexico's political history. La Malinche, who was the indigenous translator and lover of the conquistador Hernando Cortés, epitomizes this historical trope. She is to this day disparaged by Mexicans as a sell-out, a betrayer of the nation. In much the same way, the women whose stories inform this account of the death of a social movement are Malinches, readily cast by themselves and others, including First World academicians, as sell-outs.Yet contemporary feminist revisionings of La Malinche explore the ways in which she was also betrayed. Exploring the manylayered relationship between gender and betrayal can contribute to understanding not only the demise of an urban popular movement, but also the larger political and theoretical economies in which scholars and activists are differently involved,positioned, and connected.     

Attack of the Butterfly Spirits: The Impact of Movement Framing by Community Garden Preservation Activists

This study of the community garden preservation movement on the Lower East Side of New York examines the role of movement framing by activists in their struggle to save hundreds of gardens from destruction. In repeated confrontations with the Giuliani administration, gardeners successfully de-routinized the process of urban redevelopment by portraying the loss of a garden as an unimaginable violation against themselves, and the city. This process of re-framing urban development helped activists to compensate for their disempowered political status, and was instrumental in forcing the Giuliani administration to negotiate to save the gardens. Focusing on framing by movement activists demonstrates the purposive and strategic character of neighborhood identity. Emphasizing the strategy of neighborhood identities is a useful corrective to the many studies of community movements that emphasize their emergence from a relational, presumably non-strategic, local reality.     

Repossessing Border Space: Security Practice in North American Border Art

Abstract

This paper discusses how the visual arts engage in representing border crossing experiences and, more specifically, how art interrupts border security practices and their rituals. After introducing the history of North American border art and different approaches to issues of border crossing, the paper will concentrate on specific works. It argues that the selected works of art perform interventions that confront the public with the borderlands as a place of violence and death. At the same time, artists are shown to employ different artistic strategies of symbolically re-possessing the borderlands for undocumented migrants who – when crossing it – experienced it as an existential obstacle.