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Cooperation and Community

Economy and Society in Oaxaca

Jeffrey H Cohen author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Texas Press

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Cooperation and Community cover

Examines the ways in which people practice traditional co-operative and reciprocal relationships

This book examines the ways in which the people of an Oaxacan village practice traditional cooperative and reciprocal relationships.

In the villages and small towns of Oaxaca, Mexico, as in much of rural Latin America, cooperation among neighbors is essential for personal and community survival. It can take many forms, from godparenting to sponsoring fiestas, holding civic offices, or exchanging agricultural or other kinds of labor. This book examines the ways in which the people of Santa Ana del Valle practice these traditional cooperative and reciprocal relationships and also invent new relationships to respond to global forces of social and economic change at work within their community.

Based on fieldwork he conducted in this Zapotec-speaking community between 1992 and 1996, Jeffrey Cohen describes continuities in the Santañeros' practices of cooperation, as well as changes resulting from transnational migration, tourism, increasing educational opportunities, and improved communications. His nuanced portrayal of the benefits and burdens of cooperation is buttressed by the words of many villagers who explain why and how they participate-or not-in reciprocal family and community networks. This rich ethnographic material offers a working definition of community created in and through cooperative relationships.

"This is a clearly argued, well-documented ethnography of social cooperation in the face of economic and social change in [a] Zapotec town." --John M. Watanabe, author of Maya Saints and Souls in a Changing World

ISBN: 9780292712218

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 454g

224 pages