Research Catalog

Title

Peruvian street lives : culture, power, and economy among market women of Cuzco / Linda J. Seligmann.

Author

Seligmann, Linda J., 1954-

Publication

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, ©2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 249 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

"For more than twenty years Linda J. Seligmann has walked the streets of Peru in city and countryside alike, talking to the women who work in the informal and open-air markets of the Andean highlands of Cuzco. In this readable ethnography, composed of vignettes and accompanied by a superb series of photographs, Selignmann offers a humane yet incisive portrayal of their lives. In Peruvian Street Lives, Seligmann leads us through the complex, informal networks that market women have established. Despite how disorderly and chaotic these networks appear, she argues that they often paradoxically keep dysfunctional economies and corrupt bureaucracies from utterly destroying the ability of citizens to survive from day to day. Seligmann asks why the constructive efforts of market women to make a living provoke such negative social perceptions from some members of Peruvian society, who see them as symbols and actual catalysts of social disorder, domestically and publicly. The book traces the impact on market women and market activities of distant yet enormously powerful forces, such as economic globalization. At the same time it shows how market women eke out a living, combat discrimination, and creatively transgress existing racial and gender ideologies, within the rich and expressive cultural traditions they have developed."--Back cover.

Series Statement

Interpretations of culture in the new millennium

Uniform Title

Interpretations of culture in the new millennium.

Subject

• Women > Peru > Cuzco > Social conditions
• Women > Peru > Cuzco > Economic conditions
• Peddling > Peru > Cuzco
• Poor women > Peru > Cuzco
• Markets > Peru > Cuzco
• Women merchants > Peru > Cuzco
• Peddlers > Peru > Cuzco
• 15.85 history of America
• Peddlers
• Markets
• Peddling
• Poor women
• Women > Economic conditions
• Women merchants
• Women > Social conditions
• Marktfrau
• Soziale Situation
• Soziale Stellung
• Market vendors
• Women
• Socio-economical aspects
• Peru > Cuzco
• Cuzco
• Cuzco

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-235) and index.

Contents

Market spaces and market places -- Dried goods, soup, and fried eggs : exchange relations -- Bitter salt : household structures and gender ideologies -- Straw hats : the world of wholesalers -- Harpies and the empty, dirty, overpriced bread basket : regulating the market chain -- Sharks : loan and credit arrangements -- Talking brew, butchering patience : conversations in the marketplace -- Race recipes : alliances and animosity -- Angels and saints : popular religiosity among market women -- Two-way streets : political action -- Conclusion : what's in store?

ISBN

• 0252029011
• 9780252029011
• 0252071670
• 9780252071676

LCCN

• 2003014290
• 40010319520

OCLC

• ocm52514361
• 52514361
• SCSB-1330055

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library