Challenges
to Motherhood: The Moral Economy of Oaxacan Ceramic Production
and the Politics of Reproduction
Ramona L. Pérez
Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University
In less than two decades, female ceramic artisans of Santa María
Atzompa, Oaxaca, Mexico (Atzompeñas), have become integral political
and economic actors in their community as a result of a dialectic that
has allowed a redefinition of motherhood and a renegotiation of traditional
maternal responsibility to family and community. They have been able
to accomplish this by invoking a responsibility toward reproduction
that moves beyond the biological and places emphasis on the social
and economic as their production has moved from household craft to
the work of global artisans. In recent years, a threat to their autonomy
and power has developed from the exceedingly high levels of lead in
the green glaze that dominates their ceramic production. This threat
is currently being mediated through a discourse rooted in a contradictory
political and moral economy that views the obtained power and status
of women as having more value than the current health and, in many
cases, the lives of their children and families.
KEY WORDS: Craft production; Global artisan; Lead poisoning; Moral economy;
Motherhood; Oaxaca; Tourism; Women and work
The Provenance and
Concentrated Production of Hohokam Red-on-buff Pottery: Implications
for an Ancient Arizona
David R. Abbott, Joshua Watts, and Andrew D. Lack
School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University
Recent advancements in determining the production sources of prehistoric
Hohokam pottery from the Phoenix basin, Arizona, have shown that ceramic
manufacture was highly concentrated during the Sedentary period (ca.
AD 950–1100).
For example, nearly all of the bowls and small jars consumed in the lower
Salt River valley were decorated red-on-buff pots imported from the middle
Gila River valley to the south. An analysis of the sand temper in the
buff wares showed that many, if not most, of these red-painted vessels
were made in one locality along the Gila River, thereby supporting the
idea that a reliable and efficient mechanism for commodity exchange
was extant at that time, possibly in the form of periodic marketplaces
associated with ritual ballgames. The pottery results imply a level of
dependence on ballgame-related transactions that had not been recognized
before, indicating their central importance to the Hohokam Sedentary
period economy.
KEY WORDS: Ballcourts; Ceramic provenance; Hohokam; Marketplaces; Phoenix
basin; Red-on-buff pottery; Sand temper; Sedentary period
Interpreting
Instant Messaging: Context and Meaning in Computer-Mediated
Communication
David Jacobson
Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University
Little attention
has been paid to knowledge as a context of computer-mediated communication
(CMC) and to differences in meaning attributed to the same message when
located in different contexts. Drawing on concepts in anthropological
usage and on those used in other disciplines, especially the constructs
of “common
ground” and “relational
cultures,” this paper addresses
that gap. It examines in instant messaging, a particular mode of computer-mediated
communication, how individuals with different kinds of knowledge interpret
online interaction.
KEY WORDS: Common ground; Computer-mediated communication; Context;
Instant message (IM); Online interaction; Relational culture
The
Agency of Immigrant Entrepreneurs
Caroline B. Brettell and Kristoffer E. Alstatt
Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University
Through an analysis of interview data and biographies of entrepreneurship,
we demonstrate in this article the diverse paths to immigrant self-employment
across a range of immigrant populations. We address the utilization of
ethnic and occupational niches for establishing businesses and the resources
that immigrant entrepreneurs draw upon as they move into self employment.
By drawing on the concept of biographical embeddedness and by emphasizing
the agency of individual actors and their motivational and experiential
resources, this article moves the analysis of immigrant entrepreneurs
beyond the “disadvantage
hypothesis” that has characterized much of the previous work on
this subject.
KEY WORDS: Agency; Biographical embeddedness; Entrepreneurship; Ethnic niche;
Immigrants; Occupational niche
BOOK
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