Streets, Bedrooms, and Patios: The Ordinariness of Diversity in Urban Oaxaca: Ethnographic Portraits of the Urban Poor, Transvestites, Discapacitados, and Other Popular Cultures - Softcover

Higgins, Michael James; Coen, Tanya L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292731345 ISBN 13: 9780292731349

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2000

Synopsis

Diversity characterizes the people of Oaxaca, Mexico. Within this city of half a million, residents are rising against traditional barriers of race and class, defining new gender roles, and expanding access for the disabled. In this rich ethnography of the city, Michael Higgins and Tanya Coen explore how these activities fit into the ordinary daily lives of the people of Oaxaca.

Higgins and Coen focus their attention on groups that are often marginalized—the urban poor, transvestite and female prostitutes, discapacitados (the physically challenged), gays and lesbians, and artists and intellectuals. Blending portraits of and comments by group members with their own ethnographic observations, the authors reveal how such issues as racism, sexism, sexuality, spirituality, and class struggle play out in the people's daily lives and in grassroots political activism. By doing so, they translate the abstract concepts of social action and identity formation into the actual lived experiences of real people.

About this title

About the Author

Michael James Higgins is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado.

From Library Journal

Higgins (anthropology, Univ. of Northern Colorado) and Coen (an anthropologist and codirector of Zacalero Creative Cultural Productions, San Francisco) present portraits of several cultural and social groups in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. This metropolitan area of 500,000 people contains a wide variety of residents. The authors interviewed the urban poor, transvestite and female prostitutes, the disabled, gays and lesbians, and AIDS activists in order to demonstrate the diversity of customs in this Mexican metropolis. They contrast these ondas, or "lifestyles," with one another and those of the average Mexican. The text mixes excerpts from interviews with anthropological analysis. The ethnographic detail and complex terminology make this book most appropriate for academic libraries.DGwen Gregory, New Mexico State Univ., Las Cruces
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0292731345
• ISBN 13: 9780292731349
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336