Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Identity and Development Politics in Latin America

by Monica DeHart

Overview

Indigenous groups are not often recognized as driving forces in the push for economic development. However, in development efforts across Latin America, governments and corporations have begun to see ethnic cultural difference as an advantage. Ethnic Entrepreneurs explores how diverse groups historically seen as obstacles to development have become valuable to state and regional development initiatives.

From collaboration between a Maya organization and Walmart to a UN-sponsored program that recruits diasporic Latinos, states and corporations are pursuing strategies that complement regional neoliberal shifts. This book examines how ethnic difference is produced through development policy, breaking down the micropolitics of identity and development. It uncovers surprising convergences between ethnic community businesses and corporate social responsibility practices and illuminates how formulations of ethnic difference influence not only changing cultural identifications, but also the political and moral projects that shape Latin America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804773782
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	02/02/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Monica DeHart is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Puget Sound.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

List of Abbreviations xiii

1 Emergent Ethnic Landscapes 1

2 Pop or Fried Chicken: Redefining Development and Ethnicity 26

3 Remapping and Remitting Development 50

4 "Hermano Entrepreneur!" Constructing a Latino Diaspora across the Digital Divide 71

5 Welcome to Walmart!Corn and the New Community Business Model 94

6 Accounting for Development: Debates over Knowledge and Authority 120

7 Conclusions 140

Notes 149

References 165

Index 187

Editorial Reviews

"Ethnic Entrepreneurs represents a key contribution to studies of development and to the anthropological canon. DeHart successfully illuminates the myriad ways in which state power is being reformulated through diverse development actors."

Journal of Anthropological Research - Nicole Coffey Kellett

"Ethnic Entrepreneurs provides an innovative analysis of how the flexibility of ethnic difference is mobilized as a resource both by indigenous, Latino, and Latin American subjects as well as by development institutions and organizations. By highlighting how the contradictions and assumptions behind categories such as indigenous, Latino, Latin American, migrant, and immigrant are related to global practices of corporate marketing and corporate responsibility, DeHart helps us rethink the links between community and corporation. This book offers an ethnographically rich window on global processes of ethnic identity and entrepreneurship."

Lynn Stephen

"Once the very idea of the Ethnic Entrepreneur would have been an oxymoron. Local knowledge, kinship, and communal ties were seen as primary obstacles to modernization. Now, in Latin America, ethnic subjects are widely regarded as essential agents of development. In exploring the shifts that have made this transformation possible, Monica DeHart provides an enlightening account of the ways in which ethnic identity, market forces, and development strategy are reshaping each other in neoliberal times."

Jean Comaroff

"Ethnic Entrepreneurs represents a key contribution to studies of development and to the anthropological canon. DeHart successfully illuminates the myriad ways in which state power is being reformulated through diverse development actors."—Nicole Coffey Kellett, Journal of Anthropological Research


"Ethnic Entrepreneurs provides an innovative analysis of how the flexibility of ethnic difference is mobilized as a resource both by indigenous, Latino, and Latin American subjects as well as by development institutions and organizations. By highlighting how the contradictions and assumptions behind categories such as indigenous, Latino, Latin American, migrant, and immigrant are related to global practices of corporate marketing and corporate responsibility, DeHart helps us rethink the links between community and corporation. This book offers an ethnographically rich window on global processes of ethnic identity and entrepreneurship."—Lynn Stephen, University of Oregon


"Once the very idea of the Ethnic Entrepreneur would have been an oxymoron. Local knowledge, kinship, and communal ties were seen as primary obstacles to modernization. Now, in Latin America, ethnic subjects are widely regarded as essential agents of development. In exploring the shifts that have made this transformation possible, Monica DeHart provides an enlightening account of the ways in which ethnic identity, market forces, and development strategy are reshaping each other in neoliberal times."—Jean Comaroff, University of Chicago

From the Publisher