Mexican Memoir: A Personal Account of Anthropology and Radical Politics in Oaxaca

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Ensconced in the tight kinship network of a local household in Oaxaca, Mexico, the author embarked on a challenging study of a radical ethnic political movement, COCEI. An anthropologist who married a Zapotec Women, the author chronicles his fieldwork in this memoir. His research is interwoven with his personal experiences, addressing the political and ethical dilemmas of contemporary ethnography. Campbell's informants are internationally known politicians, poets, and painters who live in Juchitn, a large city controlled by indigenous activists. While adopting aspects of the postmodern critique of ethnography, the author proposes and illustrates a collaborative form of research based on partisan political commitment. Through a candid and intimate account, he portrays his informants and research site, and his direct involvement in Zapotec society. The book is both a highly readable ethnography of Southern Mexico and a contribution to debates about current anthropology.

Reviews

"Readers will enjoy the author's clear and colorful writing and the intimate portraits of the people and places he studied in an unusual political context in Mexico. The narrative flows smoothly through an evocative, non-technical style, and the characters in the book are presented as complex real people rather than ideal types or abstract models."-John Monaghan Associate Professor, Department of History Western Michigan University
"The [strength] of this text [is] its personal treatment of the fieldwork in an unusual political situation in Mexico..."-John K. Chance Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology Arizona State University
.,."in its richness of descriptive writing, it makes Isthmus society, culture, and politics more accessible and interesting to a wide audience."-Bulletin of Latin American Research
...in its richness of descriptive writing, it makes Isthmus society, culture, and politics more accessible and interesting to a wide audience.-Bulletin of Latin American Research
..."in its richness of descriptive writing, it makes Isthmus society, culture, and politics more accessible and interesting to a wide audience."-Bulletin of Latin American Research

Author Bio

Howard Campbell is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas-El Paso.