Anthro 2A Midterm 2

Jim Crow: What is it?

A racial project of legalized discrimination and segregation that lasted from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century

Jim Crow: Who did it affect?

Black communities

Vagrancy Laws: What were they?

A type of Black Code. They enforced labor by criminalizing unemployment.

Vagrancy Laws: What did they do?

This allowed for practices like debt bondage (peonage), where fines could be paid by a company, forcing the arrested Black person to work off the debt in places like lumber camps.

Forms of Jim Crow Violence

• Carceral Regime (Chain Gangs and Convict Leasing)

• Lynching

• Debt Bondage (peonage)

How is Jim Crow a part of Hurston's Mules and Men?

Jim Crow provided the violent, oppressive backdrop to the workers' lives in the lumber and turpentine camps.

Many workers were held by debt peonage or were fugitives from law enforcement. The folklore itself was an act of dissident political culture and resistance against this system.

Labor Exclusions that impacted Black workers: Why did they exclude agriculture and domestic workers?

Federal labor legislation in the 1930s (like the NLRA and FLSA) excluded protections and rights (such as minimum wage and unionizing) for agriculture workers and domestic workers.

This was done to maintain a cheap, easily exploited labor supply in the South, which disproportionately affected Black workers.

Zora Neale Hurston: Who is she?

Writer and anthropologist

Zora Neale Hurston: Where did she grow up?

Eatonville, Florida

Zora Neale Hurston: Who was her mentor at university?

anthropologist Franz Boas at Barnard College

How would you characterize Hurston's work in relation to the racial science we read about during the first unit of our class (i.e. cranial measurements)?

Hurston's work challenged and rejected the ideas of biological racial science (like cranial measurements).

She focused on documenting the complexity and richness of Black folk culture, using the tools of anthropology to assert cultural relativism and combat notions of racial inferiority.

What was Hurston's primary focus in terms of anthropological research?

Her primary focus was the anthropological study and collection of Black folk culture and folklore.

Hurston: What did she want to collect

She aimed to explore "that which the soul lives by”

Hurston: From whom did she want to collect from?

From  Black communities in the South, particularly rural laborers, like the men and women in the lumber and turpentine camps (the "Negro farthest down"

Conifer Industry: What are the 3 steps of pine extraction mentioned in class?

1. Wounding (or hacking the tree to start the sap flow)

2. Collection (gathering the resin)

3. Refinement (processing the collected material)

Conifer Industry: How did the conifer industry rely on exploitative labor, prison systems, and violence to extract pine as part of their business?

The industry relied on debt bondage (peonage), often fueled by Vagrancy Laws that funneled Black men into forced labor in the camps.

The work was enforced with violence by white overseers, and the industry also relied on the unremunerated domestic labor of Black women.

How did Hurston depict pine in the ethnographic films she recorded and that we saw in lecture?

The pine industry provided the dangerous setting for the workers' lives, labor, and cultural production.

The visuals emphasize the rough, extractive process of wounding the trees and the difficult social spaces of the workers' quarters

Mules and Men: Hurston begins Mules and Men by stating that: "It was only when I was in college, away from my native surroundings, that I could see myself like somebody else and stand off and look at my garment"—what does she mean by this?

She means that she needed the academic distance and the tools of anthropology ("the spy-glass") to analyze and appreciate her own folk culture ("her garment") which she previously took for granted or couldn't see clearly while living it.

Mules and Men: Where did Hurston first go to collect materials?

She first went to her native village, Eatonville, Florida.

Mules and Men: Why places in particular and what did people share with her?

She chose it because it was familiar ground, and she knew she could get material without danger. People shared stories on the store porch about figures like Ole Massa, John, and Brer Rabbit.

Mules and Men: Where did she go with them?

She went to social places like the local toe-party and later went with the men to the jook joints and the swamp areas.

Where did Hurston eventually go to collect "data"

She eventually went to the rough labor camps of Polk County, specifically the Everglades Cypress Lumber Company in Loughman, Florida

What methods did Hurston use to collect research material? Hurston used traditional ethnographic methods including:

1. Participant-Observation (e.g., joining the dances and singing the John Henry song).

2. Interviews/Elicitation (e.g., prompting them to tell stories or holding a "lying contest").

3. Building Rapport (e.g., claiming to be a bootlegger).

Mules and Men: Did people at the labor camp trust her? Why not?

Initially, no, they did not trust her. They were suspicious because her shiny gray Chevrolet and appearance made them think she was a detective or revenue officer.

Mules and Men: What did Hurston do/say to become friendly and trusted by them?

To gain trust, she told them she was a fugitive bootlegger hiding from the law. She later cemented her inclusion by singing "John Henry"

What is a folk tale?

A folk tale is a story, usually passed down orally, that may not be literally true but conveys social truths and dynamics.

How does Hurston present folk tales in Mules and Men?

Hurston presented them in context, capturing the stories exactly as told within the conversational flow, often as an act of resistance or amusement.

Mules and Men: What is Hurston's research positionality in the written work of Mules and Men? Is she in the background of the text or front and center and why?

She is front and center in the text.

Her positionality is that of an insider-outsider (a native who left for academia and returned).

She inserts herself to detail the struggles of collecting the material and to use her own subjective experience to interpret the culture, challenging the idea of objective distance.

Mules and Men: Who are Brer Rabbit and John da Conquer, how do they show up in Mules and Men? What kind of characters are they?

Characters: They are trickster heroes. John (or Jack) is the primary folk hero who constantly outwits Ole Massa.

Role: They show up in tales of slavery and everyday life. They are symbolic figures for marginalized people who must use cleverness and deception to achieve a form of equality or freedom.

Mules and Men: What role does "lying" (or folk tales and stories) play in workers' lives?

"Lying" is an act of cultural creation, bonding, and resistance.

Mules and Men: Why do they tell these stories?

They tell stories to assert their humanity and to comment on the power dynamics of exploitation and oppression.

Mules and Men: Why would they tell them at the height of Jim Crow?

They told these tales during Jim Crow because it was an expression of a "dissident political culture" that could criticize power indirectly and sustain their inner life.

Mules and Men: How did Hurston depict women's roles at the camp?

She depicted women's roles as complex: both subject to oppression and possessing a significant degree of freedom and authority.

The harsh conditions often leveled the field, allowing women to live outside traditional constraints and boldly assert their power.

Mules and Men: Who is Big Sweet and what role did she play in Hurston's life while Hurston was at the camp?

Big Sweet was a powerful, fearless, and loyal woman in the camp, described as "a whole woman and half uh man"

She played the critical role of protector, saving Hurston from a violent knife attack

Mules and Men: What kind of stories does Big Sweet tell (according to the PBS article?)

Big Sweet told stories about friendship and loyalty, like the Mocking Birds carrying sand to hell to save their friend.

Ethnographic Research: Anthro research relies on ethnographic collection. What methods does ethnographic research rely on?

Ethnographic research primarily relies on immersion in the field using methods such as Participant-Observation, Interviews, and writing detailed Fieldnotes.

What is ethnographic writing?

Ethnographic writing is an interpretation of a culture or social group based on the researcher's direct experience (fieldwork).

Is Mules and Men ethnographic writing?

Yes, Mules and Men is ethnographic writing, as it documents Black folk culture based on Hurston's fieldwork in Florida

Ethnographic Research: What is objectivity?

Objectivity is the ideal that research should be neutral and disconnected from the subject to achieve unbiased truth.

Ethnographic Research: How does Hurston embrace or reject objectivity?

Hurston complicates/rejects traditional objectivity by putting her subjective experience front and center, showing that her identity and personal relationships shaped the data she collected.

Ethnographic Research: How is science in relation to society?

Science and society are fundamentally linked. Society influences what is studied, how it is studied, and how scientific knowledge becomes meaningful and used to explain or justify social structures (ex. racial science justified Jim Crow).

A Better Life, Weitz: What is the social and historical context for the film?

The film was released during a period of escalating tensions around migration (following the large 2006 immigration protests).

A Better Life, Weitz: What was happening politically?

Politically, it coincided with states passing anti-immigrant legislation like Arizona's SB 1070 (racial profiling), and the Obama administration's intense deportation efforts.

A Better Life, Weitz: How is authenticity portrayed in the film and why do you think it is so important for telling the story of family separation and deportation?

Portrayal: Authenticity is portrayed through place-based filming in L.A. neighborhoods, use of a real detention location (former prison), and consulting with community groups.

Importance: This realism was necessary for the film's melodrama to feel true and urgent, aiming to stir a sympathetic audience into action against family separation.

A Better Life, Weitz: Is seeking authenticity also result in negative depictions or reinforce stereotypes?

Negative Result: Yes. This search for realism resulted in the Carceral-Ethnographic Extractive practice, where the filmmaker used images from the LAPD gang archive (like the student seeing their kin on a map), reinforcing the criminalization of Latinx youth.

A Better Life, Weitz: What does the film tell us about the American Dream and labor, specifically residential gardening in the case of Carlos and Luis?

The film shows that the pursuit of the American Dream through hard work (Carlos buying his own gardening truck) is ultimately overruled by racial and legal precarity. Carlos's labor and honest effort are not enough to protect him from deportation; his undocumented status makes him disposable by the state.

A Better Life, Weitz: How can you relate the film to Zarate's notion of furtive breath in his article of the same name?

The film largely depicts the foreclosure of life/breath. The moment that relates to Furtive Breath is when the son, Luis, protects his father by lying to the police that Carlos is "working" (an act of love/survival), representing a small, fugitive act of life persisting despite the threat of state violence

A Better Life, Weitz: How might the legal vulnerability depicted in the film be related to risk and vulnerability in Zarate's article The Residential Gardeners of COVID-19?

In both cases, legal vulnerability (undocumented status, working without a license) is the foundational risk that amplifies all other threats. In the film, it exposes Carlos to deportation (legal violence). In the COVID-19 article, it exposes gardeners to disease and health risk as they shoulder all burdens to stay employed.

Furtive Breath, Zarate: What does the author say about doing research when you are intimately connected to the site and people you are working alongside?

When intimately connected, research becomes complex, emotional, and costly, often involving personal grief and loss.

It requires bringing one's embodied knowledge into the research, similar to how Hurston approached her own culture

What is Furtive Breath?

Furtive Breath (or breathing fugitively) is a practice of resistance that creates life despite loss and foreclosure.

Furtive Breath: What is its relation to property and the suburban lawns gardeners tend?

It takes place on other people's private property, challenging the absolute logic of ownership by asserting a communal presence and life beyond the owners' control.

Furtive Breath: What is the relation between labor, exploitation on one hand and beauty and life on the other hand?

The beauty and life of the suburban garden are literally subsidized by the exploitation and extraction of life/labor from the gardener

Furtive breath: What does Zarate attempt to explain through this relationship about people's lives and resistance?

Zárate uses this relationship to show that despite being subjected to exploitation, gardeners are active agents creating "making breath" and mutual aid to sustain their own lives and community

Furtive Breath: What does the ZZ plant symbolize in the article?

The ZZ plant (Zamioculcas zamiifolia) symbolizes the lingering presence of loss and the emotional toll of the industry. It is a guide connecting the author to the memory of his deceased cousins.

Furtive Breath: What role does grief and loss play in research for Zarate?

Grief and loss are central and guiding forces in the research. They compel Zárate to seek and record how life persists and resists under conditions designed for premature death and forgetfulness, especially by honoring the labor and lives of those who are gone.

Furtive Breath: Why does the author turn to the poem by Ross Gay and how might it be related to the loss and grief the author describes of their own position as researcher?

He uses Ross Gay's poem about Eric Garner (a gardener killed by police) to anchor the struggle for breath in the context of racialized violence. It directly relates to Zárate's grief by framing the death of his cousin as an example of a valuable life foreclosed, yet whose work still leaves a legacy that "mak[es] it easier/for us to breathe"

Furtive Breath: How does the author describe life despite loss?

The author describes life despite loss through the practice of furtive breath and mutual aid. This is achieved by continuing to build community, remember the dead, and practice small acts of resistance (like taking limes) that persist against the forces of racial capitalism and premature death.

OC Gardeners of COVID-19: What is Mow, Blow, and Go?

Mow, Blow, and Go is a term describing residential gardening as a quick, cheap service.

OC Gardeners of COVID-19: What does it say about workers?

It reinforces the invisibility and disposability of the workers by reducing their complex, skilled labor to a simple, fleeting act

OC Gardeners of COVID-19: What is the method of the article? What method to collect data was used?

The method is ethnographic research. Data was collected using participant-observation (Zárate joining the crews to pick up clippings) and semi-structured interviews.

OC Gardeners of COVID-19: What was the decision the author made in using their data to write their article? Did the author just depict all the crews? Or was there some other method used?

The author did not depict all the crews separately. They created a single, composite crew (Xicamiti Landscape) using a technique called patchwork ethnography (or ethnographically fictive narrative).

This protected the anonymity of the vulnerable workers and allowed the narrative to capture the collective experience of the industry

Essential Workers Are gardeners essential?

Yes, they were categorized as essential workers. This meant they often faced the brunt of COVID-19 exposure and negative health outcomes.

Racial Suffocation What is it?

It is the process of systemic labor exploitation, rooted in racism, that targets Latinx gardeners by exposing them to risk and reducing their "life-time". It is grounded in the suburban garden.

Racial Capitalism What is it?

It is a system where racialized subjects are extracted and subjected to a shortened life as a way to expand the wealth and life of dominant groups.

Making Breath: What does it mean and where does it take place?

Making Breath is the act of creating life and vitality (a form of resistance and mutual aid) in a suffocating environment. It takes place on other people's property (e.g., pruning, cultivating fruit trees) and between the workers themselves

How does nurturing plants during the pandemic take gardeners' life?

Life Extraction: Nurturing plants required the gardeners to face COVID-19 exposure in vehicles, pollutants (leaf blowers), and long commutes, consuming their time and health (their "life-time") for the homeowner's comfort.

How do the ethnographic subjects (the workers) describe risk?

Risk Description: Workers described risk by saying they were "suffocated together" (estamos ahogandonos juntos) and that the homeowner's desire for nice lawns cost their health.

Example of the lemon tree:

The lemon tree example shows an act of mutual aid and "thiefing". By taking the fallen fruit, the workers converted the client's private property into a resource for communal health and medicine.

Ya Mero Compa (Jesus Cortez): Can you name three different pieces of artwork that are your favorite? Why do you like those three pieces?

• A Gardener’s Bulliten Board (1-800-dial-a-beaner)

  • Dark humor; dehumanization of day-laborers

• The House of Chava (Gardener with the Boot)

  • “No sick day for Gardeners” treated as royalty during their day off

• Theft Prevention (Nephew dressed as Superhero defending tools)

  • Connects back to A Better Life of them getting their truck stolen

• Nuestro señor de los Jardines 

  • Religious iconology depicts his brother “crucified” chained by labor

Why does Cortez depict residential gardeners the way he does?

Cortez depicts gardeners to give them visibility and dignity, asserting their full humanity against the stereotype of "Mow, Blow, and Go"

Why a focus on play and family?

The focus on play and family is crucial to show that their lives are not solely defined by exploitation or labor. It emphasizes the importance of kinship and the existence of life, joy, and sociality created and maintained outside the workplace.

Is there something that connects Cortez's work to Zarate's work?

Yes. Both Cortez's art and Zárate's ethnography are focused on challenging the invisibility of the Latinx gardener. Cortez's themes of dignity and kinship align with Zárate's concepts of Furtive Breath and Making Breath, showing how life and resistance persist for the workers despite racial exploitation