Peruvian Street Lives: Culture, Power, and Economy among Market Women of Cuzco / Edition 1

by Linda J. Seligmann

Overview

For more than twenty years, Linda J. Seligmann walked the streets of Peru in city and countryside alike, talking to the women who work in the informal and open-air markets in Cuzco's Andean highlands. Her combination of ethnographic analysis, insightful and human vignettes, and superb photographs offers a humane yet incisive portrait of the women's lives against the backdrop of globalization and other powerful forces.

In Peruvian Street Lives, Seligmann argues that the sometimes invisible and informal economic, social, and political networks market women establish may appear disorderly and chaotic, but in fact often keep dysfunctional economies and corrupt bureaucracies from utterly destroying the ability of citizens to survive from day to day. Seligmann asks why the constructive efforts of market women to make a living provoke such negative social perceptions from some members of Peruvian society, who see them as symbols and actual catalysts of social disorder. At the same time, Seligmann shows how market women eke out a living, combat discrimination, and transgress racial and gender ideologies within the rich and expressive cultural traditions they have developed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252071676
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	03/17/2004
Series:	Interp Culture New Millennium
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Linda J. Seligmann is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at George Mason University. Her books include Broken Links, Enduring Ties: American Adoption across Race, Class, and Nation and Peruvian Street Lives: Culture, Power, and Economy among Market Women of Cuzco.

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgements   vii
Introduction   1
1. Market Spaces and Market Places   19
2. Dried Goods, Soup, and Fried Eggs: Exchange Relations   42
3. Bitter Salt: Household Structures and Gender Ideologies   54
4. Straw Hats: The World of Wholesalers   71
5.. Harpies and the Empty, Dirty, Overpriced Bread Basket: Regulating the Market Chain   87
6. Sharks: Loan and Credit Arrangements   104
7. Talking Brew, Butchering Patience: Conversations in the Marketplace   119
8. Race Recipes: Alliances and Animosity   148
9. Angels and Saints: Popular Religiosity   161
10. Two-Way Streets: Political Action   196
Conclusion: What's in Store?   223
References Cited   229
Index   237

Editorial Reviews

Cited as one of two Leeds Honor Books for 2006 by the Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology (SUNTA).

"[A] fascinating book. . . . Seligmann not only offers an incisive analysis of Cuzco's market culture but she also demonstrates the power of ethnographic fieldwork that is engaged, participatory, reflexive, and empathetic."—American Ethnologist

"Peruvian Street Lives captures the lives, the daily rhythms, passions, and politics of the women who crowd Cuzco's markets and streets. Seligmann breaks through surface understandings and misperceptions of these women and their work and offers us a rich stew, a close view of their everyday challenges and the cultural logic of the Andean marketplace. I look forward to using this book in teaching."—Florence Babb, University of Iowa

From the Publisher