Suchergebnisse

Violence -- Alcohol -- Maquiladoras

"Honduras is violent." Adrienne Pine situates this oft-repeated claim at the center of her vivid and nuanced chronicle of Honduran subjectivity. Through an examination of three major subject areas--violence, alcohol, and the export-processing (maquiladora) industry--Pine explores the daily relationships and routines of urban Hondurans. She views their lives in the context of the vast economic footprint on and ideological domination of the region by the United States, powerfully elucidating the extent of Honduras's dependence. She provides a historically situated ethnographic analysis of this fra

While limited in numbers, unionized workers at the two psychiatric hospitals in Honduras have had an important impact in the evolving struggle to improve conditions in their facilities and their country. In the 57 years since the union was formed, its members have modified their strategies in response to major political changes, including the implementation of neoliberal policies led by international financial institutions, and the 2009 coup. The union has fought to achieve better conditions for workers and patients while facing serious challenges, including a context of institutional psychiatry that has dramatically failed to meet the mental health care needs of the Honduran population over the past century and neoliberal policies that have increased structural vulnerability, trauma, and the incidence of associated embodied manifestations—including mental illness—among Hondurans while increasing stigma against the mentally ill and drastically weakened the infrastructure and quality of health care through defunding and privatization. Aunque limitados en número, los trabajadores sindicalizados en los dos hospitales psiquiátricos de Honduras han tenido un impacto importante en la lucha progresiva por mejorar las condiciones en las instalaciones y su país. En los 57 años transcurridos desde la formación del sindicato, sus miembros han modificado sus estrategias en respuesta a los principales cambios políticos, incluyendo la implementación de políticas neoliberales liderada por instituciones financieras internacionales, y el golpe de estado de 2009. La lucha militante del sindicato por mejorar las condiciones para los trabajadores y los pacientes ha enfrentado serios desafíos. Estos incluyen un contexto de psiquiatría institucional que ha fracasado dramáticamente, probándose incapaz de satisfacer las necesidades de atención de salud mental de la población hondureña durante el siglo pasado, así como las políticas neoliberales que han aumentado la vulnerabilidad estructural, el trauma y la incidencia de manifestaciones somáticas asociadas (como las enfermedades mentales) entre los hondureños. Al mismo tiempo el neoliberalismo ha aumentado el estigma contra los enfermos mentales, mientras que la infraestructura y la calidad de la atención a la salud se han debilitado drásticamente a raíz de la desfinanciación y la privatización.

In the late teens, the rise of racist, xenophobic nationalism in the United States and around the world has been frequently labeled fascist in popular discourse, and is being increasingly discussed as fascism by scholars as well. In this article, drawing on case studies from Honduras and the United States, I argue that—despite Orwell's warning that the term has lost its meaning—anthropologists can still productively engage fascism as an analytical category. An anthropological engagement of contemporary fascism must help to elucidate the strong links between neoliberal capitalism and today's global militarized nationalism. It also requires that anthropologists reframe our work as strategy, from a position of somatic (not pragmatic) solidarity with structurally vulnerable people everywhere.

This article examines the Haitian-Honduran comparison of both nations' polices and structures, and the socio-economic and political interconnections therein. The author commences with an investigative report on U.S. owned textiles and clothing manufactures, i.e. Gap; the economic zone and free-trade initiatives; and the heavy laden debt incurred over a century ago, inter-laced with neoliberal policies, particularly through the IMF. Next, the article analyzes the political repression, and socio-cultural stratification of both nations' elite hailing from the Middle East, and the investment and benefits disparities and prejudices. Then the author examines how Hondurans and Haitians responded to this disenfranchisement; highlighting aspects from each society's history, particularly among the military regimes and maquiladora industry; and through observing foreign involvement and/or intervention, either as direct-aid, or deployment of troops. However, the author also finds that there is some dissimilarity between both nations, particularly in the degree of integration in the political sphere. In conclusion the author summarizes these nations' past histories, economic and development patterns, and political interpretations in looking towards their respective futures, mapping a course to achieve the democracy that each has been denied for so long. References. M. Diem