Suchergebnisse

Resistance and self-destruction in apartheid America.
The American debate on inner-city poverty has veered towards personal value judgements loaded with racial connotations and suffused with puritan thinking. Reacting to the accusatory-style of discourses justifying the persistence of urban poverty by holding the victim responsible, liberal intellectuals commit the opposite error of glorifying the poor with the status of "spotless victim". This type of analysis consequently glosses over the destructive power of American-style apartheid, ignoring the mecha-nisms that generate and reproduce the daily suffering of inner-city dwellers. Analyzing data gathered over four years of participant observation in an East-Harlem Puertorican community of crack-dealers, the author sets out the details of everyclay violence as well as the humiliating experiences of those seeking to participate in the legal job market. The dealers, drug-addicts and criminals frequented by the author manifest their opposition and resistance to exploitation and social exclusion by celebrating "Street culture", thereby becoming the direct agents of their own and their community's destruction. The underground economy and drug-dealing thus offer an economic and cultural alternative to those excluded from the "American dream". The author focuses his analysis on violence connected with the dynamics of class, race and gender relations in a context marked by a shrinking public sector and a restructuring of industrial capital. An approach which looks at the problem of relations between individual actions, and historical, political and economic structural constraints reveals that urban apartheid in the United States reproduces the logic of the American dream.

Ethnische Mobilisierung
Der Artikel untersucht das Verhältnis von Klasse und ethnischem Bewußtsein anhand des Vergleichs dreier ethnischer Mobilisierungen an der Karibik-Küste Mittelamerikas : die in den zwanziger Jahren aus dem Westen gekommenen Indianer, die Amerindianer Guaymi in den sechziger Jahren und die Amerindianer Miskitu in den Achtzigern. Der Autor bestreitet die herkömmliche, politische Trennung der Wirtschaft in materielle und kulturelle Gegebenheiten. Sich auf den Unterdriickungsaspekt konzentrierend, zeigt er auf, inwiefern ethnische Zugehörigkeit in ganz materielle, soziale Prozesse integral eingebunden ist, ohne jedoch den wirtschaftlichen Kräften untergeordnet zu sein. Die an den drei Beispielen sichtbar werdende "kombinierte Unterdriickung" mischt auf Symbolik beruhende Herrschaft und wirtschaftliche Ausbeutung ineinander; sie übersteigt dabei die Summe ihrer Teile und driickt sich in radikaler, politischer Mobilisierung aus.

Une nuit dans une shooting gallery
Ce travail ethnographique explore de façon détaillée les pratiques des toxicomanes vivant dans les rues les plus dangereuses de New York, depuis l'achat de la drogue sous toutes ses formes jusqu'au plaisir final procuré par l'injection ou la fumée. Le récit ne porte que sur une nuit, mais il est constamment enrichi de l'expérience de cinq années d'enquête de terrain et d'observation participante parmi les dealers. L'abondance et la précision des observations et la restitution fidèle des propos échangés au cours de cette nuit permettent de rendre manifestes les contradictions structurales des grands centres urbains américains et le coût humain de l'extrême marginalisation sociale, avec son cortège de souffrances. De plus sa position de chercheur blanc, forçant les barrières d'un monde inaccessible pour ceux qui n'appartiennent pas à la même communauté de race, de classe, et au même univers de la drogue, permet à l'auteur de faire l'expérience de la polarisation des relations ethniques aux Etats-Unis. Le vide créé, pour les communautés de l'innercity, par l'effondrement des secteurs de services public et privé a été comblé par une économie souterraine de la drogue pleine de dynamisme. Cette industrie illégale a donné naissance à une "culture de la rue", culture de résistance et "idéologie d'opposition" qui paradoxalement constitue une véritable force pour cette communauté qui s'auto-détruit.

The concern with ethics in North American cultural anthropology discourages political economy research on unequal power relations and other `dangerous' subjects. US anthropologists define ethics in narrow, largely methodological terms - informed consent, respect for traditional institutions, responsibility to future researchers, legal approval by host nations, and so on. The responsibility of the researcher to uphold `human rights' or to document political repression and suffering is not merely dismissed by mainstream anthropology as a partisan issue outside the realm of scholarship, but is actually condemned as ethically problematic. The growing postmodernist deconstructivist approach within US anthropology allows ethnographers to obey their discipline's narrow ethical dictates through a reflexive investigation of the hermeneutics of signs and symbols devoid of political economic social context. Drawing on his fieldwork experiences in Central America, the author argues that anthropologists have a historical responsibility to address larger moral issues because their discipline's traditional research subjects - exotic others in remote Third World settings - are violently being incorporated into the world economy in a traumatic manner that often includes starvation, political repression, or even genocide. Meanwhile, in the name of ethics, North American anthropologists continue to ignore or avoid the human tragedies engulfing their `research subjects'.

A discussion of ethics in North American cultural anthropology. US anthropologists are criticized for their narrow & methodological definition of ethics. Personal fieldwork experiences are drawn on to document this critique, including a Nicaraguan Miskitu uprising, a peasant massacre in El Salvador, & a study of ethnic relations between the United Fruit Co & banana workers in Costa Rica. It is argued that anthropologists have a historical responsibility to confront larger moral issues because of the remoteness of the Third World settings, in which their studies typically take place. Increasingly, research Ss are treated in repressive & genocidal manners by their own government or outside interests: North American anthropologists must confront these human tragedies, considering them in practical & theoretical terms. 25 References. S. G. Yates

Based on a chapter in the forthcoming book entitled, "The Nicaraguan revolution: five years later," edited by Thomas Walter.

The subversive role of ethnic minorities (EMs) in the Nicaraguan revolution (1981-1985) is discussed, especially regarding the adverse consequences of US intervention. A brief history, from the 1600s through the twentieth century, traces the source of conflicts between EMs to the military power of the nationalistic Miskitu group. During the recent revolution, the Sandinistas encountered heavy opposition on the Atlantic coast, where the EMs are predominant. Accusations of human rights violations (which destroyed the revolution's international image) & the inability to incorporate EMs into the revolutionary process have helped prevent the Sandinistas from achieving full participation. Realization of their cultural insensitivity came too late for Sandinista leaders who, in the midst of war, were forced to maintain a military defense. US aid to the EM, in an attempt to subvert the revolution, has simply prolonged the state of war. D. Graves.