Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.-Mexico Border (Inter-America Series)

From poets to sociologists, many people who write about life on the U.S.-Mexico border use terms such as "border crossing" and "hybridity" which suggest that a unified culture—neither Mexican nor American, but an amalgamation of both—has arisen in the borderlands. But talking to people who actually live on either side of the border reveals no single commonly shared sense of identity, as Pablo Vila demonstrated in his book Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors, and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier. Instead, people living near the border, like people everywhere, base their sense of identity on a constellation of interacting factors that includes regional identity, but also nationality, ethnicity, and race.In this book, Vila continues the exploration of identities he began in Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders by looking at how religion, gender, and class also affect people's identifications of self and "others" among Mexican nationals, Mexican immigrants, Mexican Americans, Anglos, and African Americans in the Cuidad Juárez-El Paso area. Among the many fascinating issues he raises are how the perception that "all Mexicans are Catholic" affects Mexican Protestants and Pentecostals; how the discourse about proper gender roles may feed the violence against women that has made Juárez the "women's murder capital of the world"; and why class consciousness is paradoxically absent in a region with great disparities of wealth. His research underscores the complexity of the process of social identification and confirms that the idealized notion of "hybridity" is only partially adequate to define people's identity on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.-Mexico Border (INTER-AMERICA SERIES)

Politics & Social Sciences

Vila, Pablo

Social Sciences

University of Texas Press

From poets to sociologists, many people who write about life on the U.S.-Mexico border use terms such as "border crossing" and "hybridity" which suggest that a unified culture—neither Mexican nor American, but an amalgamation of both—has arisen in the borderlands. But talking to people who actually live on either side of the border reveals no single commonly shared sense of identity, as Pablo Vila demonstrated in his book Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors, and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier. Instead, people living near the border, like people everywhere, base their sense of identity on a constellation of interacting factors that includes regional identity, but also nationality, ethnicity, and race.
In this book, Vila continues the exploration of identities he began in Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders by looking at how religion, gender, and class also affect people's identifications of self and "others" among Mexican nationals, Mexican immigrants, Mexican Americans, Anglos, and African Americans in the Cuidad Juárez-El Paso area. Among the many fascinating issues he raises are how the perception that "all Mexicans are Catholic" affects Mexican Protestants and Pentecostals; how the discourse about proper gender roles may feed the violence against women that has made Juárez the "women's murder capital of the world"; and why class consciousness is paradoxically absent in a region with great disparities of wealth. His research underscores the complexity of the process of social identification and confirms that the idealized notion of "hybridity" is only partially adequate to define people's identity on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Along the U.S.-Mexico frontier, where border crossings are a daily occurrence for many people, reinforcing borders is also a common activity. Not only does the U.S. Border Patrol strive to "hold the line" against illegal immigrants, but many residents on both sides of the border seek to define and bound themselves apart from groups they perceive as "others."
This pathfinding ethnography charts the social categories, metaphors, and narratives that inhabitants of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez use to define their group identity and distinguish themselves from "others." Pablo Vila draws on over 200 group interviews with more than 900 area residents to describe how Mexican nationals, Mexican immigrants, Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Anglos make sense of themselves and perceive their differences from others. This research uncovers the regionalism by which many northern Mexicans construct their sense of identity, the nationalism that often divides Mexican Americans from Mexican nationals, and the role of ethnicity in setting boundaries among Anglos, Mexicans, and African Americans. Vila also looks at how gender, age, religion, and class intertwine with these factors. He concludes with fascinating excerpts from re-interviews with several informants, who modified their views of other groups when confronted by the author with the narrative character of their identities.

Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders : Social Categories, Metaphors and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier

Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors and Narrative Identities on the U.S. - Mexico Frontier (Inter-America)

Ethnography At The Border (Volume 13) (Cultural Studies of the Americas)

For cultural theorists, "the border" has proven a fluid and hybrid space profitably explored for new ideas about identity, gender, and ethnicity. But for those who occupy this region, the border is not merely a metaphor, but a lived experience, yielding immediate, often pressing ambiguities, problems, and perils. Focusing on a particular area of the U.S.-Mexico border, Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, Ethnography at the Border brings out the complexity of the border experience through the voices of the diverse people who inhabit the region. In a series of ethnographic essays that investigate specific aspects of border existence, the contributors provide rich and detailed insights into such topics as life in illegal subdivisions, called colonias, in Texas; the experience of actually crossing the bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez; the impact of Operation Blockade on illegal crossings; the controversy surrounding El Paso Border Patrol's proposal for a border wall in Sunland Park; the paradoxes of making "American products" using Mexican workers; and the relevance of grassroots efforts, environmental problems, and the multiple meanings of "Mexican." The final chapter offers a critique of the all too metaphorical border often depicted by cultural studies. Painstakingly conveying how the border looks and feels to those on both sides, Ethnography at the Border transmutes statistics on migration, labor markets, and economic trends--as well as conceptualizations of cross-cultural identities--into the experience, the observations, and the troubling lessons of border life.

History

Americas

Univ. of Minnesota Press

For cultural theorists, "the border" has proven a fluid and hybrid space profitably explored for new ideas about identity, gender, and ethnicity. But for those who occupy this region, the border is not merely a metaphor, but a lived experience, yielding immediate, often pressing ambiguities, problems, and perils. Focusing on a particular area of the U.S.-Mexico border, Ciudad Juarez-El Paso, Ethnography at the Border brings out the complexity of the border experience through the voices of the diverse people who inhabit the region. In a series of ethnographic essays that investigate specific aspects of border existence, the contributors provide rich and detailed insights into such topics as life in illegal subdivisions, called colonias, in Texas; the experience of actually crossing the bridge between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez; the impact of Operation Blockade on illegal crossings; the controversy surrounding El Paso Border Patrol's proposal for a border wall in Sunland Park; the paradoxes of making "American products" using Mexican workers; and the relevance of grassroots efforts, environmental problems, and the multiple meanings of "Mexican." The final chapter offers a critique of the all too metaphorical border often depicted by cultural studies. Painstakingly conveying how the border looks and feels to those on both sides, Ethnography at the Border transmutes statistics on migration, labor markets, and economic trends--as well as conceptualizations of cross-cultural identities--into the experience, the observations, and the troubling lessons of border life.

Troubling Gender: Youth and Cumbia in Argentina's Music Scene

Product Description How cumbia villera and Argentine popular culture reshape and reflect the changes in gender relations among the country's underclass youth. About the Author Pablo Vila is Professor of Sociology at Temple University. His speciality is the study of processes of social and cultural identification. He researches those processes at two locales, the U.S.-Mexico border and Argentine popular music. He is the author of seven books, including Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.-Mexico Border.Pablo Semán is a researcher at CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) in Argentina and El Colegio de México in México. He specializes in mass culture, popular music, and the interpenetration of popular literature and religious tradition. His most recent books are Bajo Continuo: Exploraciones descentradas sobre cultura popular y masiva and (with Daniel Míguez) Entre santos cumbias y piquetes.Eloísa Martín is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. She is the editor ofCurrent Sociology and has published extensively on popular culture and popular religion in a number of international journals.María Julia Carozzi is tenured Professor of Anthropology in the Institute of Higher Social Studies at the National University of San Martin (Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martín) and tenured researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research in Argentina (CONICET [Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas]). She is the coeditor (with César Ceriani Cernadas) of Ciencias sociales y religión en América Latina: Perspectivas en debate.

Seman, Pablo

Martin, Eloisa

Carozzi, Maria Julia

Temple University Press

Cumbia villeraoliterally, cumbia from the shantytownsois a musical genre quite popular with Argentine youth who frequent urban dance halls. Its songs are known for their highly sexualized lyricsoabout girls dancing provocatively or experiencing erotic pleasure. The songs exhibit the tensions at play in the different ways people relate to this musical genre. In Troubling Gender, noted sociologists Pablo Vila and Pablo Seman scrutinize the music's lyrics and the singers' and dancers' performances. At the same time, the authors conduct in depth-interviews to examine the ways males construct and appropriate cumbia's lyrics, and how females identify, appropriate, and playfully and critically manipulate the same misogynistic songs. Addressing the relationship between this form of music and the wider social, political, and economic changes that influence the lives of urban youth, Troubling Gender argues that the music both reflects and influences the ways in which women's and men's roles are changing in Argentine society.

Este libro reúne algunas de las reflexiones, lecturas y experiencias que vinculan a distintos y distintas colegas, pertenecientes a distintas generaciones, con Elizabeth Jelin y su obra. Sus páginas traman una variedad de perspectivas y contrapuntos que evocan su influencia a lo largo de más de seis décadas en los modos de pensar y de llevar adelante el trabajo de investigación en ciencias sociales. El resultado es un ensamble narrativo que se mueve entre tonos más íntimos y personales y apreciaciones sobre los aportes y contribuciones de su obra. Recupera los distintos modos de hacer investigación de Jelin, de afrontar y configurar sus objetos, de desplegar sus maneras de abordarlos. 
Los artículos aquí reunidos se presentan como una suerte de catálogo del oficio entendido a su modo heterodoxo; dibuja los rasgos de la ontología, la epistemología y la metodología que la autora compone en sus diferentes trabajos. Ensayan una serie de entradas a sus aportes a las ciencias sociales y a nuestras lecturas sobre esos aportes, identificados en algunos de los ejes transversales a los núcleos problemáticos de su producción: las dimensiones entrelazadas de diferencia y desigualdad, el lugar de los actores sociales en la producción de conocimiento, las temporalidades y escalas en la heterogeneidad de los objetos, las tensiones entre la acción y la norma, la densa experiencia en la construcción institucional y la formación de nuevas generaciones de investigadorxs. 
Lxs lectores encontrarán en este volumen guías para acceder a la producción y trayectoria intelectual de E. Jelin. Sin embargo, el libro también está destinado a quienes pueden tener interés en conocer de cerca, de modo menos formal, el trabajo de las ciencias sociales. En él se encontrará una parte de su historia presente, una parte de sus aportes a temas y problemas nodales que configuran nuestra realidad en común.

Pensamientos y afectos en la obra de Elizabeth Jelin (Spanish Edition)

Biographies & Memoirs

Caggiano, Sergio

Smulovit, Catalina

Cerrutti, Marcela

Acuña, Carlos

Kessler, Gabriel

de Oliveira, Orlandina

Faur, Eleonor

Professionals & Academics

Miño y Dávila editores

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vila, Pablo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Vila, Pablo

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Vila, Pablo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.-Mexico Border (INTER-AMERICA SERIES)

Border Identifications: Narratives of Religion, Gender, and Class on the U.S.-Mexico Border (Inter-America Series)

Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders : Social Categories, Metaphors and Narrative Identities on the U.S.-Mexico Frontier

Crossing Borders, Reinforcing Borders: Social Categories, Metaphors and Narrative Identities on the U.S. - Mexico Frontier (Inter-America)

Ethnography At The Border (Volume 13) (Cultural Studies of the Americas)

Ethnography At The Border (Volume 13) (Cultural Studies of the Americas)

Troubling Gender: Youth and Cumbia in Argentina's Music Scene

Troubling Gender: Youth and Cumbia in Argentina's Music Scene

Pensamientos y afectos en la obra de Elizabeth Jelin (Spanish Edition)