When the Enron filed the biggest bankruptcy petition in the history of the United States, if not the world, the immediate response by most politicians and financiers was that this scandal was a "failure of regulatory institutions" that can be corrected and may possibly even be a purely North American problem. However, an in-depth exploration of what happened, as undertaken in this volume, reveals that the widespread corruptions at corporate level have their roots in the transformations of socio-political conditions in the wake of an extreme fetishization of the neo-liberal market model.

Carlos Salinas's government drew praise from many academic commentators and foreign governments for its boldness in embarking on neoliberal economic reforms that tackled some of the shibboleths of the Mexican revolutionary tradition and for its supposedly astute political management of change. This book offers a more critical understanding of the economic, social, and political dimensions of Salinismo. Although Gledhill focuses on its impact on the rural sector in the state of MichoacA!n, he shows that the problems of the region affect the United States as well as Mexico because reform is being implemented within the framework of a longer-term process of transnationalization of class relations and global capitalist restructuring. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and anthropological theory, the book takes a close look at the responses of a regional society to economic change and the political strategies of the Salinas regime. Surveying the local impact of changing agricultural policies, ejido reform, and the U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act, Gledhill distinguishes the positions of different social groups and highlights the larger processes in which the entire region is now caught up. Examining the linkages between rural Mexico and the agribusiness farms and factories of California, he underlines the political and social implications of these evolving relationships on both sides of the border, focusing on questions of hegemony and the role of transnational migrant communities. Only by examining the fractured social worlds of contemporary capitalism and the nature of the politics of exclusion, he concludes, can we assess the true social costs of neoliberal reform.

Shows how the study of the micro-dynamics of power in everyday life, coupled with sensitivity to interactions between local and global processes, offers critical insights into such issues as state terror and ethnic violence, the emancipatory potential of social movements and the politics of rights, gender and culture.

In a post-colonial world, the contributions of anthropologists living outside North America and Western Europe can no longer be treated as marginal. World Anthropologies in Practice demonstrates how global dialogues enable us to draw on local knowledge as well as differences of perspective to help overcome anthropology's eternal struggle against ethnocentrism and to strengthen the subject's relevance to the contemporary world.Based on contributions to the ASA-sponsored IUAES World Anthropology Congress in Manchester, UK, this truly global book brings together a wide range of international scholars who might otherwise not talk to each other. Featuring articles from leading figures in the field such as Yolanda Moses, Winnie Lem, Carmen Rial, Miriam Grossi, and Cristina Amescua, the volume covers topics as diverse as the mobility of Brazilian football players, toilets in South Africa, trade unions in Nepal and South Africa, peace-building in southern Thailand, museological approaches in China, the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, immigration and race in the United States, and many more. Edited by John Gledhill, the text offers a much-needed insight into the way in which anthropology is developing worldwide and makes a tremendous contribution to the discussion of 'world anthropologies'. An important, timely work for students and researchers.

In a post-colonial world, the contributions of anthropologists living outside North America and Western Europe can no longer be treated as marginal. World Anthropologies in Practice demonstrates how global dialogues enable us to draw on local knowledge as well as differences of perspective to help overcome anthropology's eternal struggle against ethnocentrism and to strengthen the subject's relevance to the contemporary world.Based on contributions to the ASA-sponsored IUAES World Anthropology Congress in Manchester, UK, this truly global book brings together a wide range of international scholars who might otherwise not talk to each other. Featuring articles from leading figures in the field such as Yolanda Moses, Winnie Lem, Carmen Rial, Miriam Grossi, and Cristina Amescua, the volume covers topics as diverse as the mobility of Brazilian football players, toilets in South Africa, trade unions in Nepal and South Africa, peace-building in southern Thailand, museological approaches in China, the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami, immigration and race in the United States, and many more. Edited by John Gledhill, the text offers a much-needed insight into the way in which anthropology is developing worldwide and makes a tremendous contribution to the discussion of 'world anthropologies'. An important, timely work for students and researchers.

Bringing together historically and ethnographically grounded studies of the social and political life of Brazil and Mexico, this collection of essays revitalizes resistance as an area of study. Resistance studies boomed in the 1980s and then was subject to a wave of critique in the 1990s. Covering the colonial period to the present day, the case studies in this collection suggest that, even if much of that critique was justified, resistance remains a useful analytic rubric. The collection has three sections, each of which is preceded by a short introduction. A section focused on religious institutions and movements is bracketed by one featuring historical studies from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries and another gathering more contemporary, ethnographically-based studies. Introducing the collection, the anthropologist John Gledhill traces the debates about resistance studies. In the conclusion, Alan Knight provides a historian's perspective on the broader implications of the contributors' findings. Contributors. Helga Baitenmann, Marcus J. M. de Carvalho, Guillermo de la Pena, John Gledhill, Matthew Gutmann, Maria Gabriela Hita, Alan Knight, Ilka Boaventura Leite, Jean Meyer, John Monteiro, Luis Nicolau Pares, Patricia R. Pessar, Patience A. Schell, Robert Slenes, Juan Pedro Viqueira, Margarita Zarate

Transnational Actors in War and Peace provides a comparative examination of a range of transnational actors who have been key to the conduct of war and peace promotion, and of how they interact with states and each other. It explores the identities, organization, strategies and influence of transnational actors involved in contentious politics, armed conflict, and peacemaking. While the study of transnational politics has been a rapidly growing field, to date, the disparate actors have not been analyzed alongside each other, making it difficult to develop a common theoretical framework or determine their influence on international security. This book brings together a diverse set of scholars focused on a range of transnational actors, such as: foreign fighters, terrorists, private military security companies, religious groups, diasporas, NGOs, and women's peace groups. Malet and Anderson provide the standard for future study of transnational actors in this work intended for those interested in security studies, international relations, conflict resolution, and global governance.

When viewed from the perspective of those who suffer the consequences of repressive approaches to public security, it is often difficult to distinguish state agents from criminals. The mistreatment by police and soldiers examined in this book reflects a new kind of stigmatization. The New War on the Poor links the experiences of labour migrants crossing Latin America's international borders, indigenous Mexicans defending their territories against capitalist mega-projects, drug wars and paramilitary violence, Afro-Brazilians living on the urban periphery of Salvador, and farmers and business people tired of paying protection to criminal mafias. John Gledhill looks at how and why governments are failing to provide security to disadvantaged citizens while all too often painting them as a menace to the rest of society simply for being poor.