Voices from the Global Margin

"Voices from the Global Margin is a sensitive, well-written piece of work that offers a vivid view of the power, beauty, and hardship of life in the Andes today... The stories in it are rich, sometimes poignant ones that involve the bloody war between Shining Path guerrillas and government troops, migrant odysseys to Lima and even the United States, and the challenges of making a living in conditions of extreme poverty. Perhaps the greatest strength of this book is that it gives a human face to the realities of poverty and violence across the Third World." -- Orin Starn, Duke University, author of Ishi's Brain: In Search of America's Last Wild" Indian

A senior anthropologist investigates how forces such as modernization, globalization, poverty, and Shining Path terrorism have radically altered the lifeways of peasants in the Peruvian Andes.

2007 — LASA Peru Flora Tristán Book Prize from the Peru Section – Latin American Studies Association

Voices from the Global Margin looks behind the generalities of debates about globalization to explore the personal impact of global forces on the Peruvian poor. In this highly readable ethnography, William Mitchell draws on the narratives of people he has known for forty years, offering deep insight into how they have coped with extreme poverty and rapid population growth—and their creation of new lives and customs in the process. In their own passionate words they describe their struggles to make ends meet, many abandoning rural homes for marginal wages in Lima and the United States. They chronicle their terror during the Shining Path guerrilla war and the government's violent military response. Mitchell's long experience as an anthropologist living with the people he writes about allows him to put the stories in context, helping readers understand the impact of the larger world on individuals and their communities. His book reckons up the human costs of the global economy, urging us to work toward a more just world.