Rubble

Gastón R. Gordillo

ISBN 10: 0822356198 / ISBN 13: 9780822356196

Published by Duke University Press, US, 2014

About this Item

At the foot of the Argentine Andes, bulldozers are destroying forests and homes to create soy fields in an area already strewn with rubble from previous waves of destruction and violence. Based on ethnographic research in this region where the mountains give way to the Gran Chaco lowlands, Gastón R. Gordillo shows how geographic space is inseparable from the material, historical, and affective ruptures embodied in debris. His exploration of the significance of rubble encompasses lost cities, derelict train stations, overgrown Jesuit missions and Spanish forts, stranded steamships, mass graves, and razed forests. Examining the effects of these and other forms of debris on the people living on nearby ranches and farms, and in towns, Gordillo emphasizes that for the rural poor, the rubble left in the wake of capitalist and imperialist endeavors is not romanticized ruin but the material manifestation of the violence and dislocation that created it.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780822356196

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Rubble
• Publisher: Duke University Press, US
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822356198
• ISBN 13: 9780822356196
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 445 grams

About this title

Synopsis

At the foot of the Argentine Andes, bulldozers are destroying forests and homes to create soy fields in an area already strewn with rubble from previous waves of destruction and violence. Based on ethnographic research in this region where the mountains give way to the Gran Chaco lowlands, Gastón R. Gordillo shows how geographic space is inseparable from the material, historical, and affective ruptures embodied in debris. His exploration of the significance of rubble encompasses lost cities, derelict train stations, overgrown Jesuit missions and Spanish forts, stranded steamships, mass graves, and razed forests. Examining the effects of these and other forms of debris on the people living on nearby ranches and farms, and in towns, Gordillo emphasizes that for the rural poor, the rubble left in the wake of capitalist and imperialist endeavors is not romanticized ruin but the material manifestation of the violence and dislocation that created it.
 

About the Author

Gastón R. Gordillo is Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Landscapes of Devils: Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco, also published by Duke University Press.