The spectacular city
Article description
Since the Bolivian revolution in 1952, migrants have poured into the city of Cochabamba, seeking opportunity and relief from rural poverty. They have settled in barrios on the citys outskirts only to find that the rights most Bolivian citizens enjoy--basic rights of property and safety, especially protection from crime--are not available to them. In this ethnography, Daniel M. Goldstein considers the significance of and similarities between two kinds of spectacles--street festivals and the vigilante lynching of criminals--as they are performed in the Cochabamba barrio of Villa Pagador. By examining folkloric festivals and vigilante violence within the same analytical framework, Goldstein shows how marginalized urban migrants, shut out of and neglected by the state, use performance to assert their national belonging and to express their grievances against the inadequacies of the states official legal order. During the period of Goldsteins fieldwork in Villa Pagador in the mid-1990s, residents attempted to lynch several thieves. Since that time, there have been hundreds of lynchings in the poor barrios surrounding Cochabomba.
Specifications
| Author | Goldstein, D.M. |
| ISBN/EAN | 9780822333708 |
Article description
Since the Bolivian revolution in 1952, migrants have poured into the city of Cochabamba, seeking opportunity and relief from rural poverty. They have settled in barrios on the citys outskirts only to find that the rights most Bolivian citizens enjoy--basic rights of property and safety, especially protection from crime--are not available to them. In this ethnography, Daniel M. Goldstein considers the significance of and similarities between two kinds of spectacles--street festivals and the vigilante lynching of criminals--as they are performed in the Cochabamba barrio of Villa Pagador. By examining folkloric festivals and vigilante violence within the same analytical framework, Goldstein shows how marginalized urban migrants, shut out of and neglected by the state, use performance to assert their national belonging and to express their grievances against the inadequacies of the states official legal order. During the period of Goldsteins fieldwork in Villa Pagador in the mid-1990s, residents attempted to lynch several thieves. Since that time, there have been hundreds of lynchings in the poor barrios surrounding Cochabomba.
Specifications
| Author | Goldstein, D.M. |
| ISBN/EAN | 9780822333708 |