Wk 1 Latin American

The Monroe Doctrine

• Aimed at the collective security of American states aganist European incursion, the US declared Latin American countries as within it’s ‘sphere of influence’

  • created a justificationi for mutual defense treaties, economic aid programs, and pan-American conferences

• instistititutionalized in 1948 with the Organizationi of American States

Roosevelt Corollary and “Big Stick” ideology

• he was infamous for his use of the phrase '“speak softly and carry a big stick - you will go far”

• he states: that the US can intervene in the internal affairs of Latin Americda resulting countries from “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society”

Manifest Destiny

the belief that US settlers were destined to expand westeard contributed to US annexation of Mexican and Spanish territories

Operation Condor

coordination between right-wing dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil (later Perul and Ecuador), with the financial support and collaboration of the US to suppress leftist political activities in Latin America through coups, assassinations, intelligence operations and disappearances

Guatemala Civil War

1960-1996 esimated 140,00-200,000 dead/missing in genocide aganist Indigenous people and peasants

Donroe Doctrine/Trump Corollary

this ___ is an expansion of the Monroe Doctrine

who had the skull wall in 1965

Smithsonian institution of Phyiscal Anthropology

• race scientists collected skulls to assert inferiority of ancient Indigenous peoples

what happened during Cold War period

US interventions in Guatemala and Cuba lead to anticommunism as foundational aspect of US policy in the region

The University-Government-Foundation Nexus

discipline of Latin Amerian studies solidifies with passing of Title VI of the National Defense Education Act (1985), funding language and area studies programs

ethnography

a methodology that organized in anthropology but is now used by scholars across many social sciences

ethnolographic research

a form of descriptive, longitudinal research in which the researcher immerses themselves in the community being studied, often through participant observation.

emic perspective

an understanding of issues that reflects how people in the community views those issues

etic perspective

local issues that is shaped by social scientific theory and by the ethnographer’s own interpretationslearning process and interpretation is critical to drawing meaning out of the messiness of real life

ethnographic fieldwork

involves living among and interacting with people at a field site, the place where an ethnographer conducts their research

autoethnography

people who use their personal experiences to inform their understanding of a topic or issue

engaged ethnography

when ethnographers work in partnership with community organizations to develop their research questions and objectives and to collect data, ensuring that the research conducted is of interest to the community and when possible, helps to address community concerns or needs

participant observation

involves participating in the day-to-day living of people the ethnographer is studying, making observations, and asking questions when appropriate about the ethnographer is observing

photovoice

providing research participants with cameras so they can document and reflect on their own lives in conversation with the ethnographer

anonymity

ensuring that names or other identifying traits are not documented in the ethographic writing that is a product of research

cultural relativism

• a practice of nonjudgment that comes from the ethnographer’s understanding that any group or community’s values, beliefs, and norms of a different group

• an approach that seeks to identify the ways that certain cultural beliefs and practices work alongside systems of privilege and oppression, benefiting some people and harming others

thick description

use of vivid and detailed writing to portray the setting of the book may be like

polyvocality

a practice of having many different research participants voices represented in ethnographic writing

reflexivity

describing the convention in which the ethnographer selectively discloses aspects of who they are as a person and a researcher to convey to readers the ways the ethnographer's various identities impacted their fieldwork experience, the questions they asked, people's responses, and even the ethnographer's analysis and interpretation of data.By varying reflexively, the ethnographer documents their own positionality with respect to the community and the phenomena they study. This practice acknowledges the impossibility of an objective perspective and instead leverages the knowledge-building potential of subjectivity~ in every case, what the ethnographer sees, bears, witnesses about, and understands is necessarily influenced by who they are.