Holmes 2013 Flashcards
Seth M Holmes
Cultural and medical anthropologist and physician, focuses on social hierarchies, health inequalities and the ways in which asymmetries are naturalized normalized and resisted
Participant observation for Seth Holmes
living in a labor camp, created a deeper understanding of the complexities of immigration etc
Seth Holmes ethnographic fieldwork
multi-sited fieldwork approach, ‘follow the people’ to engage with an ethnography that takes seriously the interconnectedness inherent in the contemporary world
How do we evaluate anthropology? Rigorous? Reliable, Reproducible, valid? (Seth Holmes)
first, read the ethnography then think about whether the analysis makes sense or not. Subjectivity and positionality
Ethnographic writing
his own positionality, the context and methods of his observations and analysis are presented interwoven in the ethnography
Why did holmes chose to work with the Triqui people from San Migel
Only recently had began migrating to the US, reputation of being violent, and lived and worked in unhealthy environments in Washington state and California
What did Holmes do in Washington?
Lived and worked alongside migrant workers on a berry farm. traveled with them to California to find work.
What does Holmes emphasize about past individualism in migration studies?
structural context and how structural forces constrain and inflect individual choice and direct the options available to people.
Were Holmes’s Triqui companions experiencing their migration as voluntary?
They expressed that they were forced to migrate in order for themselves and their families to survive.
how does mainstream media focus on boarder deaths?
individual risk behaviors, migrant workers are seen as deserving of their fates, as they are understood as crossing the boarder for their own economic gain.
Seth argues that staying in San Miguel
means putting your life at risk, slowly and
surely. involves a slow, communal death by the unequal, “free” market
What does Holmes want anthropologists and global public health professionals to do
reframe death, suffering, and risk to incorperate analyses of soci,poli and econ structures. Focus on the legal and poli apparatuses that produce labour migration in the first place.
What does Holmes argue about NAFTA and CAFTA
policies that shore up inequalities. the Mexican government was forced
to erase tariffs, including that on corn, the primary crop produced by
indigenous families in southern Mexico. However, NAFTA and other
free trade policies do not ban government subsidies. Thus the U.S. gov-
ernment was allowed to increase corn subsidies year after year, effec-
tively enacting an inverse tariff against Mexican corn
