winner of the 2021 Ellen Koskoff Edited Volume Prize Decentering the Nation: Music, Mexicanidad, and Globalization considers how neoliberal capitalism has upset the symbolic economy of "Mexican" cultural discourse, and how this phenomenon touches on a broader crisis of representation affecting the nation-state in globalization. This book argues that, while mexicanidad emerged in the early twentieth century as a cultural trope about national origins, culture, and history, it was, nonetheless a trope steeped in 'otherization' and used by nation-states (Mexico and the United States) to legitimize narratives of cultural and socioeconomic development stemming out of nationalist political projects that are now under strain. Using music as a phenomenological platform of inquiry, contributors to this book focus on a critique of mexicanidad in terms of the cultural processes through which people contest ideas about race, gender, and sexuality; reframe ideas of memory, history, and belonging; and negotiate the experiences of dislocation that affect them. The volume urges readers to find points of resonance in its chapters, and thus, interrogate the asymmetrical ways in which power traverses their own historical experience. In light of the crisis in representation that currently affects the nation-state as a political unit in globalization, such resonance is critical to make culture an arena of social collusion, where alliances can restore the fiber of civil society and contest the pressures that have made disenfranchisement one of the most alarming features characterizing the complex relationships between the state and the neoliberal corporate system that seeks to regulate it. Scholars of history, international relations, cultural anthropology, Latin American studies, queer and gender studies, music, and cultural studies will find this book particularly useful.

In Sounds of Crossing Alex E. Chavez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the sounds and poetics of huapango arribeno, a musical genre originating from north-central Mexico. Following the resonance of huapango's improvisational performance within the lives of audiences, musicians, and himself-from New Year's festivities in the highlands of Guanajuato, Mexico, to backyard get-togethers along the back roads of central Texas-Chavez shows how Mexicans living on both sides of the border use expressive culture to construct meaningful communities amid the United States' often vitriolic immigration politics. Through Chavez's writing, we gain an intimate look at the experience of migration and how huapango carries the voices of those in Mexico, those undertaking the dangerous trek across the border, and those living in the United States. Illuminating how huapango arribeno's performance refigures the sociopolitical and economic terms of migration through aesthetic means, Chavez adds fresh and compelling insights into the ways transnational music-making is at the center of everyday Mexican migrant life.

In Sounds of Crossing Alex E. Chavez explores the contemporary politics of Mexican migrant cultural expression manifest in the sounds and poetics of huapango arribeno, a musical genre originating from north-central Mexico. Following the resonance of huapango's improvisational performance within the lives of audiences, musicians, and himself-from New Year's festivities in the highlands of Guanajuato, Mexico, to backyard get-togethers along the back roads of central Texas-Chavez shows how Mexicans living on both sides of the border use expressive culture to construct meaningful communities amid the United States' often vitriolic immigration politics. Through Chavez's writing, we gain an intimate look at the experience of migration and how huapango carries the voices of those in Mexico, those undertaking the dangerous trek across the border, and those living in the United States. Illuminating how huapango arribeno's performance refigures the sociopolitical and economic terms of migration through aesthetic means, Chavez adds fresh and compelling insights into the ways transnational music-making is at the center of everyday Mexican migrant life.

The contributors in Ethnographic Refusals, Unruly Latinidades highlight the value of "radical inclusion" in their research and call for a critical self-reflexivity that marshals the power of bearing witness to move from rhetoric to praxis in support of these methodologies within anthropological perspectives. The essays in this collection do not offer simple solutions to histories of colonialism, patriarchy, and misogyny through which gender binaries and racial hierarches have been imposed and reproduced, but rather provide a crucial opportunity for reflection on and continued reimagination of the contours of Latinidad. These scholars deploy Latinx strategically as part of ongoing dialogues, understanding that their terminologies are inherently imprecise, contested, and constantly shifting. Each chapter explores how Latinx ethnographers and interlocutors work together in contexts of refusal--ever mindful of how power shapes these encounters and the analyses that emerge from them--as well as the extraordinary possibilities offered by ethnography and its role in ongoing social transformation.