The working people of the United States-Mexico border in the region of northeastern Sonora, 1886-1986.
Item
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Title
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The working people of the United States-Mexico border in the region of northeastern Sonora, 1886-1986.
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Identifier
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AAI8914758
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identifier
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8914758
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Creator
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Heyman, Josiah McConnell.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Eric R. Wolf
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Date
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1988
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Anthropology, Cultural | History, Latin American | Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations
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Abstract
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Other disciplines have studied working classes as aggregate populations of labor. Anthropology contributes the ethnography of particular persons and their relationships under the power of wage labor. This dissertation develops tools appropriate to an anthropology of working classes. The subject is the industrial working population of the U.S.-Mexico border. The current border working class is set in the context of a century of industries in the region of northeastern Sonora. This spans the formation of an industrial working class in the mines, their uprooting during the Depression and repatriation years, migration to the border city and to U.S. labor sites, and the recent emergence of a border working class in maquiladora assembly plants. The historical sequence also involves the effects on Mexican lives from changes and restrictions in U.S. border policies. The ethnographic study concentrates on a small group of interlocked life histories including male and female, and older and younger generations. Methods developed or applied for the anthropological study of working classes include the analysis of bilateral kinship data to demonstrate branching along lines of labor markets and other institutional resources such as U.S. legal immigration; the tracing of alternative paths taken at key historical breaks in family histories as data for the wage structuring of life-patterns; and the study of material culture in the industrial, consuming context in order to delineate of gender-tied bodies of knowledge and the history of households and the division of labor. The ethnography of Agua Prieta working people includes an analysis of their involvement with multiple power domains, including the U.S. border structure, labor and factories, and Mexican party politics. A conclusion is drawn which provides a hypothesis for a comparative anthropology of working classes: wage labor individualizes choices among alternative life courses and propels labor market-seeking options at key historical junctures.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
