NAFTA and the Milking of Dairy Farmers in Central Mexico

McDonald, James H.

doi:10.1525/cag.1995.-.51-52.13

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Integrating biophysical materiality, social structure, and socially constructed meaning into one analytical frame enables a valuable analysis of agrarian culture in a holistic perspective (Crane ). While anthropologists have long been exhorted to “study up” chains of power (Nader ), in agricultural anthropology this has most often been directed at the political economy of industrial agricultural (Bonanno and Constance ; Broadway ; Constance ; Durrenberger ; Snell ; Thu ), agricultural policy (McDonald ), or encounters with nongovernmental organizations in the development sector (Markowitz ; Shepard ). Anthropological research has rarely been conducted on the institutional contexts of agricultural research scientists themselves, with a few notable exceptions (DeLind and Bingen ; Gupta ; Nazarea‐Sandoval and Rhoades ; Soleri and Smith ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing Science and Technology Studies into Agricultural Anthropology: Technology Development as Cultural Encounter between Farmers and Researchers

Crane¹

2014

Culture Agric Food & Envi

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The "farmer-back-to-farmer" model of agricultural development, pioneered by Robert Rhoades and Robert Booth, urged technologists to use farmers' knowledge and practices as both the starting point for technological innovations as well as the ultimate measure of the value of innovation. This approach was premised upon close ethnographic study of farmers' livelihoods, especially how technical agricultural practices interacted with household dynamics, community structures, and cultural values. However, the original "farmer-back-to-farmer" approach left the "expert" practice of science and technology as an implicitly practical and apolitical space rather than as a subject of ethnographic study. The increasing and diverse articulation of farmers' livelihood practices with the professional practices of agricultural scientists demands theoretical tools that bring them all into the same frame of analysis. This article proposes that the integration of agricultural anthropology and science and technology studies provides a well-balanced toolkit for analyzing participatory technology development as a space of cultural encounter. [participation, technology, development, science and technology studies, Mali] bs_bs_banner Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment Vol. 36, Issue 1 pp. 45-55, ISSN 2153-9553, eISSN 2153-9561.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bringing Science and Technology Studies into Agricultural Anthropology: Technology Development as Cultural Encounter between Farmers and Researchers

Crane¹

2014

Culture Agric Food & Envi

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The Narcoeconomy and Small-town, Rural Mexico

McDonald

2005

Human Organization

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Little ethnographic research has been conducted on how the illegal drug trade has affected and transformed rural communities in Mexico and the rest of Mesoamerica. It is a topic that is dif?cult and potentially dangerous to explore, at least directly; thus it is not surprising that relatively few researchers have openly studied it. For those of us working on rural development problems, it means that our analyses are silent on a critical dimension of the local economy. This paper describes the effects of drug traf?cking on a small, rural town in Mexico’s central highlands in which a highly interpenetrated legal-illegal economy has emerged. A series of ethnographic vignettes provide the entry point for exploring how the narcoeconomy manifested itself both materially and in the imaginations of local people. An ordinary town, in fact, had extraordinary inequalities: opulent houses; the subversion of traditional forms of leisure; a new urban-oriented consumer culture; and new farmer entrepreneurs. All were underwritten by narco-activities. The paper closes by considering the broader implications of the narcoeconomy by expanding on themes of globalization and poverty, migration, gender, and violence that run through the descriptive vignettes.

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NAFTA and the Milking of Dairy Farmers in Central Mexico

Cited by 2 publications

References 1 publication

Bringing Science and Technology Studies into Agricultural Anthropology: Technology Development as Cultural Encounter between Farmers and Researchers

Bringing Science and Technology Studies into Agricultural Anthropology: Technology Development as Cultural Encounter between Farmers and Researchers

The Narcoeconomy and Small-town, Rural Mexico

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