Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico PDF Download

Author: Thomas Weaver
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607321726
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico details the impact of neoliberal practice on the production and exchange of basic resources in working-class communities in Mexico. Using anthropological investigations and a market-driven approach, contributors explain how uneven policies have undermined constitutional protections and working-class interests since the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Detailed ethnographic fieldwork shows how foreign investment, privatization, deregulation, and elimination of welfare benefits have devastated national industries and natural resources and threatened agriculture, driving the campesinos and working class deeper into poverty. Focusing on specific commodity chains and the changes to production and marketing under neoliberalism, the contributors highlight the detrimental impacts of policies by telling the stories of those most affected by these changes. They detail the complex interplay of local and global forces, from the politically mediated systems of demand found at the local level to the increasingly powerful municipal and state governments and the global trade and banking institutions. Sharing a common theoretical perspective and method throughout the chapters, Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico is a multi-sited ethnography that makes a significant contribution to studies of neoliberal ideology in practice.

Author: Gerardo Otero
Publisher: Univ of TX + ORM
ISBN: 147731699X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
This “remarkable, comprehensive” study of neoliberal agribusiness and the obesity epidemic “is critical reading for food studies scholars” (Contemporary Sociology). Obesity rates are rising across the United States and beyond. While some claim that people simply eat too much “energy-dense” food while exercising too little, The Neoliberal Diet argues that the issue is larger than individual lifestyle choices. Since the 1980s, the shift toward neoliberal regulation has enabled agribusiness multinationals to thrive by selling a combination of meat and highly processed foods loaded with refined flour and sugars—a diet that originated in the United States. Drawing on extensive empirical data, Gerardo Otero identifies the socioeconomic and political forces that created this diet, which has been exported around the globe at the expense of people’s health. Otero shows how state-level actions, particularly subsidies for big farms and agribusiness, have ensured the dominance of processed foods and made fresh foods inaccessible to many. Comparing agrifood performance across several nations, including the NAFTA region, and correlating food access to class inequality, he convincingly demonstrates the structural character of food production and the effect of inequality on individual food choices. Resolving the global obesity crisis, Otero concludes, lies not in blaming individuals but in creating state-level programs to reduce inequality and make healthier food accessible to all.

Author: Peter Watt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1848138881
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Mexico is a country in crisis. Capitalizing on weakened public institutions, widespread unemployment, a state of lawlessness and the strengthening of links between Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, narcotrafficking in the country has flourished during the post-1982 neoliberal era. In fact, it has become one of Mexico's biggest source of revenue, as well as its most violent, with over 12,000 drug-related executions in 2011 alone. In response, Mexican president Felipe Calderón, armed with millions of dollars in US military aid, has launched a crackdown, ostensibly to combat organised crime. Despite this, human rights violations have increased, as has the murder rate, making Ciudad Juárez on the northern border the most dangerous city on the planet. Meanwhile, the supply of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine has continued to grow. In this insightful and controversial book, Watt and Zepeda throw new light on the situation, contending that the 'war on drugs' in Mexico is in fact the pretext for a US-backed strategy to bolster unpopular neoliberal policies, a weak yet authoritarian government and a radically unfair status quo.

Author: Carlos Eduardo Martins
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004415548
Category : Social Science
Languages : es
Pages : 375

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Book Description
The Marxist Theory of Dependency (TMD) managed to articulate the insertion of peripheral societies into the international market with the capital accumulation processes of each country. It has become an essential theory for the understanding of our societies. Since Ruy Mauro Marini laid out its foundations, many transformations have occurred in global capitalism and in our societies, leaving us the challenge of updating it against a more complex context. The real test of theory is its adequacy as an instrument of understanding contemporary reality. The TMD has been enriched and renewed from this work of Carlos Eduardo Martins. It considers capitalism from the perspective of anti-capitalism, dependence from the standpoint of emancipation and reality through a vision for its revolutionary transformation. Emir Sader - CLACSO General Secretary (2006-2012) This book is a revised edition of a work first published in 2011 as Globalização, dependência e neoliberalismo na América Latina by Boitempo Editorial, São Paulo, Brazil. La teoría marxista de la dependencia (TMD) logró articular la inserción de las sociedades periféricas en el mercado internacional con los procesos de acumulación de capital de cada país. Se ha convertido en una teoría esencial para la comprensión de nuestras sociedades. Desde que Ruy Mauro Marini expuso sus fundamentos, muchas transformaciones ocurrieron en el capitalismo global y en nuestras sociedades, poniendo el desafío de actualización en condiciones más complejas La prueba real de la teoría es su adecuación como instrumento de comprensión de la realidad contemporánea. La TMD sale enriquecida y renovada de esta obra de Carlos Eduardo Martins dedicada a pensar el capitalismo bajo la perspectiva del anticapitalismo, la dependencia en la óptica de la emancipación y la realidad en la perspectiva de su transformación revolucionaria. Emir Sader - Secretario General CLACSO (2006-2012)

Author: Elizabeth Fitting
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822349566
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Argues that maize biodiversity in central and southern Mexico is threatened as much by rural out-migration as by the flow of genes from genetically modified to local corn varieties.

Author: Steven Topik
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822337669
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
DIVClaims that the history of commodities in Latin America (or anywhere) cannot be understood without considering their global context, often from a long-term perspective./div

Author: Dan Sinykin
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198852703
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This volume studies how the economic crisis of the 1970s and the rise of neoliberalism established the conditions for a contemporary American literary form: the neoliberal apocalypse. It reveals how contemporary American cultural and literary narratives have been shaped by the widespread tendency to see our present as apocalyptic.

Author: Manfred B. Steger
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191609765
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Anchored in the principles of the free-market economics, 'neoliberalism' has been associated with such different political leaders as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Augusto Pinochet, and Junichiro Koizumi. In its heyday during the late 1990s, neoliberalism emerged as the world's dominant economic paradigm stretching from the Anglo-American heartlands of capitalism to the former communist bloc all the way to the developing regions of the global South. At the dawn of the new century, however, neoliberalism has been discredited as the global economy, built on its principles, has been shaken to its core by a financial calamity not seen since the dark years of the 1930s. So is neoliberalism doomed or will it regain its former glory? Will reform-minded G-20 leaders embark on a genuine new course or try to claw their way back to the neoliberal glory days of the Roaring Nineties? Is there a viable alternative to neoliberalism? Exploring the origins, core claims, and considerable variations of neoliberalism, this Very Short Introduction offers a concise and accessible introduction to one of the most debated 'isms' of our time. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author: Chris Hesketh
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820352845
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Introduction -- Geographical politics and the politics of geography -- Latin America and the production of the global economy -- From passive revolution to silent revolution: the politics of state, space, and class formation in modern Mexico -- The changing state of resistance: defending place and producing space in Oaxaca -- The clash of spatializations: class power and the production of Chiapas -- Conclusion

Author: María L. Cruz-Torres
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477328041
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
A rich, long-term ethnography of women seafood traders in Mexico. The "shrimp ladies," locally known as changueras in southern Sinaloa, Mexico, sell seafood in open-air markets, forming an extralegal but key part of the economy built around this "pink gold.” Over time, they struggled to evolve from marginalized peddlers to local icons depicted in popular culture, even as they continue to work at an open-air street market. Pink Gold documents the shrimp traders' resilience and resourcefulness, from their early conflicts with the city, state, and federal authorities and forming a union, to carving out a physical space for a seafood market, and even engaging in conflicts with the Mexican military. Drawing from her two decades of fieldwork, María L. Cruz-Torres explores the inspiring narrative of this overlooked group of women involving grassroots politics, trans-border and familial networking, debt and informal economic practices, personal sacrifices, and simple courage. She argues that, amid intense economic competition, their success relies on group solidarity that creates interlocking networks of mutual trust, or confianza, that in turn enable them to cross social and political boundaries that would typically be closed to them. Ultimately, Pink Gold offers fresh insights into issues of gender and labor, urban public space, the street economy, commodities, and globalization.