Suchergebnisse

The mobilization of militant Indigenous politics is one of the most important stories in Latin American studies today. In this critical work, Kenneth J. Mijeski and Scott H. Beck examine the rise and decline of Ecuador's leading Indigenous party, Pachakutik, as it tried to transform the state into a participative democracy. Using in-depth interviews with political activists, as well as a powerful statistical analysis of election results, the authors show that the political election game failed to advance the causes of Ecuador's poor or the movement's own Indigenous supporters.

AbstractIndigenous peoples of Ecuador have organized and mobilized over the past thirty years, partly to reshape their identities after centuries of domination. This research is a preliminary effort to explore the contemporary complexity of that identity. Best viewed as a quantitative case study, this analysis uses responses from seventy-six indigenous college students to a self-administered questionnaire. The authors found that indigenous students with greater "acculturation experiences" with mestizo culture were more strident in rejecting elements of that culture than were their colleagues who had had fewer encounters with mestizo elements of Ecuadorian society. While the tendency to identify oneself ethnically by rejecting the dominant culture represents only one dimension of ethnic identity (maintaining distinctiveness), the authors consider the findings important for future research on the dynamics of the process of ethnic identification.

Much has been written in recent years about changes in family and household structure in the United States. Analyses based on census data or other cross sections indicate that fewer adults live in families, especially the nuclear family of husband, wife, and minor children. Analyses based on cross sections also indicate the relative rarity of extended households, especially three-generation families. In this descriptive analysis, data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Mature Women are used to compare cross-section and 15-year estimates of the incidence of various types of extended households. Black and white women are analyzed separately and the estimates for the proportion of middle-aged women living in extended households are presented by marital status. Results show large differences between single-year and 15-year estimates of the incidence of extension. Overall, between one-fourth and one-third of white middle-aged women lived in extended households for some time over the 15-year period, and approximately two-thirds of black women experienced this household form for at least part of their middle years. We conclude that, contrary to popular and academic perceptions, extended families are a relatively common form of living arrangement for adults in this country, if only for short periods of time. This may be one indicator of the prevalence of the modified-extended family in the United States.