New York State Latin American History Workshop

Upcoming Workshops

Fall 2007 New York State Latin American History Workshop
Sunday, 14 October 2007, 9:30am to 3:30pm
Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY

The New York State Latin American History Workshop will meet on Sunday, 14 October 2007, at Ithaca College, 9:30am-3:30pm (exact agenda to be distributed soon). We have two great papers to be presented, and are seeking commenters for each, as well as a dynamic audience for discussion. If you would like to attend, and especially if you would be interested in preparing a comment on one of the papers, please RSVP to Jonathan Ablard (jablard@ithaca.edu).

* Nancy Appelbaum, "Codazzi in Casanare: The Production and Representation of Geographic and Ethnographic Knowledge about Colombia’s Eastern Plains in the 1850s."

Please contact Nancy Appelbaum, nappel@binghamton.edu for a copy of this paper

This paper focuses on the interaction of elite explorers with local people in the mid-nineteenth century to produce knowledge about the Colombian frontier region known as the Eastern Plains, or Llanos orientales. The context for this discussion was elite Colombian efforts to integrate the plains frontier into an emerging nation-state and national economy. The Chorographic Commission’s labors helped to solidify the Eastern Plains in the Colombian imaginary as a specific kind of place: a barbaric frontier region in need of “civilization.” Codazzi repeatedly described the plains as an “immense solitude,” a harsh and largely empty “desert.” At the same time, these same texts, maps, and illustrations produced by the Chorographic Commission also portrayed the plains as teeming with diverse life, culture, and history. The results of the Chorographic Commission’s work remind us that even though nineteenth-century ethnography and geography emerged to serve the interests of imperialism and nation-state building, they did not do so unproblematically, providing one of many examples of how practitioners of science—particularly natural science, ethnography, and geography--contributed to nation-state formation in nineteenth-century Latin America.

* Karin Rosemblatt, "Other Americas: Transnationalism, Scholarship, and the Culture of Poverty in Mexico and the United States"

 Read the paper...

The essay presents a history of the culture of poverty concept formulated by Oscar Lewis while working in Mexico as a way of probing connections between Mexico and the United States and their relationship to national narratives and policy debates. Lewis's initial formulation drew on his training as an anthropologist in the United States, his extensive dialogue with Mexican intellectuals, and his fieldwork in Mexico. Over the years, Lewis and others reformulated the notion in response to intense public controversies in Mexico and Puerto Rico; the vehement U.S. discussions surrounding the War on Poverty and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Report on the Negro Family; and larger events such as the Cuban Revolution, the U.S. civil rights movement, decolonization, the Vietnam War, and second-wave feminism. The essay argues that discussions of the culture of poverty concept affirmed the similarity, or at least comparability, of Mexico and the United States. At the same time, they reaffirmed essential differences. Race and its relationship to class and poverty were central to the comparisons.

*Please contact Jonathon Ablard, jablard@ithaca.edu for a copy of the papers.