Technology And Culture In Twentieth Century Mexico

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Technology and Culture in Twentieth-century Mexico

Author : Araceli Tinajero
Publisher : University Alabama Press
ISBN 13 : 9780817317966
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (179 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology and Culture in Twentieth-century Mexico by : Araceli Tinajero

Download or read book Technology and Culture in Twentieth-century Mexico written by Araceli Tinajero and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology and Culture in Twentieth-Century Mexico offers a novel approach to Mexican studies by considering the complex relationship between technology, politics, society, and culture. While it is widely accepted by scholars that substantial changes in technology occurred in Mexico during the last century, very little has been written on these issues, perhaps because of a propensity to associate Mexico with tradition and folklore rather than technology, progress, and modernity. This diverse collection of chapters--written by historians, literary scholars, social scientists, and cultural critics--tells this long-neglected story of technological change. Contributors examine themes ranging from the introduction of new forms of travel (automobiles, buses, trains, and subways) to innovations in media (radio, film, and the Internet) to the relationships between technology, literature, art, and architecture. Covering the twentieth century and beyond, Technology and Culture in Twentieth-Century Mexico, edited by Araceli Tinajero and J. Brian Freeman, illustrates the invention, use, and adaptation of technology, as well as the diverse ways that technology itself is both shaped by and shapes culture. This interdisciplinary book points to new directions in the study of Mexico and makes an important contribution to Latin American Studies and the history of technology. Contributors: Claudia Agostoni / Sandra Aguilar-Rodríguez / Edward R. Burian /Antoni Castells-Talens / J. Brian Freeman / Celeste González de Bustamante / Guillermo Guajardo / Joanne Hershfield / Anna Indych-López /Lynda Klich / Viviane Mahieux / Carlos Monsiváis / John Mraz /Ricardo Pérez Montfort / José Manuel Ramos Rodríguez /Paolo Riguzzi / Erja Vettenranta / Juan Villoro / David M. J. Wood /Naief Yehya /

Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico

Author : Edward Beatty
Publisher : University of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520284909
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico by : Edward Beatty

Download or read book Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico written by Edward Beatty and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, Mexican citizens quickly adopted new technologies imported from abroad to sew cloth, manufacture glass bottles, refine minerals, and provide many goods and services. Rapid technological change supported economic growth and also brought cultural change and social dislocation. Drawing on three detailed case studies—the sewing machine, a glass bottle–blowing factory, and the cyanide process for gold and silver refining—Edward Beatty explores a central paradox of economic growth in nineteenth-century Mexico: while Mexicans made significant efforts to integrate new machines and products, difficulties in assimilating the skills required to use emerging technologies resulted in a persistent dependence on international expertise.

Made in Mexico

Author : Susan M. Gauss
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271074450
Total Pages : 189 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Made in Mexico by : Susan M. Gauss

Download or read book Made in Mexico written by Susan M. Gauss and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The experiment with neoliberal market-oriented economic policy in Latin America, popularly known as the Washington Consensus, has run its course. With left-wing and populist regimes now in power in many countries, there is much debate about what direction economic policy should be taking, and there are those who believe that state-led development might be worth trying again. Susan Gauss’s study of the process by which Mexico transformed from a largely agrarian society into an urban, industrialized one in the two decades following the end of the Revolution is especially timely and may have lessons to offer to policy makers today. The image of a strong, centralized corporatist state led by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) from the 1940s conceals what was actually a prolonged, messy process of debate and negotiation among the postrevolutionary state, labor, and regionally based industrial elites to define the nationalist project. Made in Mexico focuses on the distinctive nature of what happened in the four regions studied in detail: Guadalajara, Mexico City, Monterrey, and Puebla. It shows how industrialism enabled recalcitrant elites to maintain a regionally grounded preserve of local authority outside of formal ruling-party institutions, balancing the tensions among centralization, consolidation of growth, and Mexico’s deep legacies of regional authority.

Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico

Author : Wil G. Pansters
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804784477
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico by : Wil G. Pansters

Download or read book Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico written by Wil G. Pansters and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexico is currently undergoing a crisis of violence and insecurity that poses serious threats to democratic transition and rule of law. This is the first book to put these developments in the context of post-revolutionary state-making in Mexico and to show that violence in Mexico is not the result of state failure, but of state-making. While most accounts of politics and the state in recent decades have emphasized processes of transition, institutional conflict resolution, and neo-liberal reform, this volume lays out the increasingly important role of violence and coercion by a range of state and non-state armed actors. Moreover, by going beyond the immediate concerns of contemporary Mexico, this volume pushes us to rethink longterm processes of state-making and recast influential interpretations of the so-called golden years of PRI rule. Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico demonstrates that received wisdom has long prevented the concerted and systematic study of violence and coercion in state-making, not only during the last decades, but throughout the post-revolutionary period. The Mexican state was built much more on violence and coercion than has been acknowledged—until now.

The Mexican Revolution on the World Stage

Author : Adela Pineda Franco
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438475624
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mexican Revolution on the World Stage by : Adela Pineda Franco

Download or read book The Mexican Revolution on the World Stage written by Adela Pineda Franco and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major social revolution of the twentieth century, the Mexican Revolution was visually documented in technologically novel ways and to an unprecedented degree during its initial armed phase (1910–21) and the subsequent years of reconstruction (1921–40). Offering a sweeping and compelling new account of this iconic revolution, The Mexican Revolution on the World Stage reveals its profound impact on both global cinema and intellectual thought in and beyond Mexico. Focusing on the period from 1940 to 1970, Adela Pineda Franco examines a group of North American, European, and Latin American filmmakers and intellectuals who mined this extensive visual archive to produce politically engaged cinematic works that also reflect and respond to their own sociohistorical contexts. The author weaves together multilayered analysis of individual films, the history of their production and reception, and broader intellectual developments to illuminate the complex relationship between culture and revolution at the onset of World War II, during the Cold War, and amid the anti-systemic movements agitating Latin America in the 1960s. Ambitious in scope, this book charts an innovative transnational history of not only the visual representation but also the very idea of revolution.

Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico

Author : Edward Beatty
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520960556
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico by : Edward Beatty

Download or read book Technology and the Search for Progress in Modern Mexico written by Edward Beatty and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, Mexican citizens quickly adopted new technologies imported from abroad to sew cloth, manufacture glass bottles, refine minerals, and provide many goods and services. Rapid technological change supported economic growth and also brought cultural change and social dislocation. Drawing on three detailed case studies—the sewing machine, a glass bottle–blowing factory, and the cyanide process for gold and silver refining—Edward Beatty explores a central paradox of economic growth in nineteenth-century Mexico: while Mexicans made significant efforts to integrate new machines and products, difficulties in assimilating the skills required to use emerging technologies resulted in a persistent dependence on international expertise.

History of Technology Volume 34

Author : Ian Inkster
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350085618
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis History of Technology Volume 34 by : Ian Inkster

Download or read book History of Technology Volume 34 written by Ian Inkster and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite having undergone major advances in recent years, the history of technology in Latin America is still an understudied topic. This is the first English-language volume to bring together a variety of critical perspectives on the history of technology in Latin America from the early-19th century through to the present day. This special issue, assembled by guest editor David Pretel, brings together a range of experts to explore a plethora of topics in Latin America's technological history. Papers include a study of rural telephony in in 20th-century Latin America; the rise of the 'Techno-class' in modern Brazil; an analysis of the rise and fall of three Caribbean commodities; the history of educational technology in Latin America, and science and technology in Cold War Chile. Special Issue: Technology in Latin American History Edited by David Pretel (Colegio de Mexico, Mexico) and Helge Wendt (Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, Germany)

Iconic Mexico [2 volumes]

Author : Eric Zolov
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 786 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis Iconic Mexico [2 volumes] by : Eric Zolov

Download or read book Iconic Mexico [2 volumes] written by Eric Zolov and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-08-26 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Going far beyond basic historical information, this two-volume work examines the deep roots of Mexican culture and their meaning to modern Mexico. In this book, readers will find rich, in-depth treatments by renowned as well as up-and-coming scholars on the most iconic people, places, social movements, and cultural manifestations—including food, dress, film, and music—that have given shape and meaning to modern Mexico and its people. Presenting authoritative information written by scholars in a format that is easily accessible to general audiences, this book serves as a useful and thorough reference tool for all readers. This work combines extensive historical treatment accompanied by illuminating and fresh analysis that will appeal to readers of all levels, from those just exploring the concept of "Mexico" to those already familiar with Mexico and Latin America. Each entry functions as a portal into Mexican history, culture, and politics, while also showing how cultural phenomena have transformed over the years and continue to resonate into today.

The Architecture and Cities of Northern Mexico from Independence to the Present

Author : Edward Burian
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292771908
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis The Architecture and Cities of Northern Mexico from Independence to the Present by : Edward Burian

Download or read book The Architecture and Cities of Northern Mexico from Independence to the Present written by Edward Burian and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The states of Northern Mexico—Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja California Norte and Sur—have architecture, urbanism, and landscape design that offer numerous lessons in how to build well, but this constructed environment is largely undervalued or unknown. To make this architecture better known to a wide professional, academic, and public audience, this book presents the first comprehensive overview in either English or Spanish of the architecture, urban landscapes, and cities of Northern Mexico from the country's emergence as a modern nation in 1821 to the present day. Profusely illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, maps, and analytical drawings of urban cores of major cities, The Architecture and Cities of Northern Mexico systematically examines significant works of architecture in large cities and small towns in each state, from the earliest buildings in the urban core to the newest at the periphery. Edward R. Burian describes the most memorable works of architecture in each city in greater detail in terms of their spatial organization, materials, and sensory experience. He also includes a concise geographical and historical summary of the region that provides a useful background for the discussions of the works of architecture. Burian concludes the book with a brief commentary on lessons learned and possible futures for the architectural culture of the region, as well as the first comprehensive biographical listing of the architects practicing in Northern Mexico during the past two centuries.

Vision, Technology, and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature

Author : Stephen C. Tobin
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031311566
Total Pages : 207 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (313 download)

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Book Synopsis Vision, Technology, and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature by : Stephen C. Tobin

Download or read book Vision, Technology, and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature written by Stephen C. Tobin and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-07-06 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vision, Technology and Subjectivity in Mexican Cyberpunk Literature interrogates an array of cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk science fiction novels and short stories from Mexico whose themes engage directly with visual technologies and the subjectivities they help produce – all published during and influenced by the country’s neoliberal era. This book argues that television, computers, and smartphones and the literary narratives that treat them all correspond to separate-yet-overlapping scopic regimes within the country today. Amidst the shifts occurring in the country’s field of vision during this period, the authors of these cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk narratives imagine how these devices contribute to producing specular subjects—or subjects who are constituted in large measure by their use and interaction with visual technologies. In doing so, they repeatedly recur to the posthuman figure of the cyborg in order to articulate these changes; Stephen C. Tobin therefore contends that the literary cyborg becomes a discursive site for working through the problematics of sight in Mexico during the globalized era. In all, these “specular fictions” represent an exceptional tendency within literary expression—especially within the cyberpunk genre—that grapples with themes and issues regarding the nature of vision being increasingly mediated by technology.

Technocratic Visions

Author : J. Justin Castro
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN 13 : 0822989204
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis Technocratic Visions by : J. Justin Castro

Download or read book Technocratic Visions written by J. Justin Castro and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technocratic Visions examines the context and societal consequences of technologies, technocratic governance, and development in Mexico, home of the first professional engineering school in the Americas. Contributors focus on the influential role of engineers, especially civil engineers, but also mining engineers, military engineers, architects, and other infrastructural and mechanical technicians. During the mid-nineteenth century, a period of immense upheaval and change domestically and globally, troubled governments attempted to expand and modernize Mexico’s engineering programs while resisting foreign invasion and adapting new Western technologies to existing precolonial and colonial foundations. The Mexican Revolution in 1910 greatly expanded technocratic practices as state agents attempted to control popular unrest and unify disparate communities via science, education, and infrastructure. Within this backdrop of political unrest, Technocratic Visions describes engineering sites as places both praised and protested, where personal, local, national, and global interests combined into new forms of societal creation; and as places that became centers of contests over representation, health, identity, and power. With an eye on contextualizing current problems stemming from Mexico’s historical development, this volume reveals how these transformations were uniquely Mexican and thoroughly global.

Childhood and Modernity in Cold War Mexico City

Author : Eileen Ford
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350040045
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Childhood and Modernity in Cold War Mexico City by : Eileen Ford

Download or read book Childhood and Modernity in Cold War Mexico City written by Eileen Ford and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Childhood and Modernity in Cold War Mexico City traces the transformations that occurred between 1934 and 1968 in Mexico through the lens of childhood. Countering the dominance of Western European and North American views of childhood, Eileen Ford puts the experiences of children in Latin America into their historical, political, and cultural contexts. Drawing on diverse primary sources ranging from oral histories to photojournalism, Ford reconstructs the emergent and varying meanings of childhood in Mexico City during a period of changing global attitudes towards childhood, and changing power relations in Mexico at multiple scales, from the family to the state. She analyses children's presence on the silver screen, in radio, and in print media to examine the way that children were constructed within public discourse, identifying the forces that would converge in the 1968 student movement. This book demonstrates children's importance within Mexican society as Mexico transitioned from a socialist-inspired revolutionary government to one that embraced industrial capitalism in the Cold War era. It is a fascinating study of an extremely important, burgeoning population group in Mexico that has previously been excluded from histories of Mexico's bid for modernity. Childhood and Modernity in Cold War Mexico City will be essential reading for students and scholars of Latin American history and the Cold War.

Radio in Revolution

Author : J. Justin Castro
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803288727
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Radio in Revolution by : J. Justin Castro

Download or read book Radio in Revolution written by J. Justin Castro and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before the Arab Spring and its use of social media demonstrated the potent intersection between technology and revolution, the Mexican Revolution employed wireless technology in the form of radiotelegraphy and radio broadcasting to alter the course of the revolution and influence how political leaders reconstituted the government. Radio in Revolution, an innovative study of early radio technologies and the Mexican Revolution, examines the foundational relationship between electronic wireless technologies, single-party rule, and authoritarian practices in Mexican media. J. Justin Castro bridges the Porfiriato and the Mexican Revolution, discussing the technological continuities and change that set the stage for Lázaro Cárdenas's famous radio decree calling for the expropriation of foreign oil companies. Not only did the nascent development of radio technology represent a major component in government plans for nation and state building, its interplay with state power in Mexico also transformed it into a crucial component of public communication services, national cohesion, military operations, and intelligence gathering. Castro argues that the revolution had far-reaching ramifications for the development of radio and politics in Mexico and reveals how continued security concerns prompted the revolutionary victors to view radio as a threat even while they embraced it as an essential component of maintaining control.

The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830-1930

Author : Idurre Alonso
Publisher : Getty Publications
ISBN 13 : 1606066943
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830-1930 by : Idurre Alonso

Download or read book The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830-1930 written by Idurre Alonso and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the unprecedented growth of several cities in Latin America from 1830 to 1930, observing how sociopolitical changes and upheavals created the conditions for the birth of the metropolis. In the century between 1830 and 1930, following independence from Spain and Portugal, major cities in Latin America experienced large-scale growth, with the development of a new urban bourgeois elite interested in projects of modernization and rapid industrialization. At the same time, the lower classes were eradicated from old city districts and deported to the outskirts. The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930 surveys this expansion, focusing on six capital cities—Havana, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, and Lima—as it examines sociopolitical histories, town planning, art and architecture, photography, and film in relation to the metropolis. Drawing from the Getty Research Institute’s vast collection of books, prints, and photographs from this period, largely unpublished until now, this volume reveals the cities’ changes through urban panoramas, plans depicting new neighborhoods, and photographs of novel transportation systems, public amenities, civic spaces, and more. It illustrates the transformation of colonial cities into the monumental modern metropolises that, by the end of the 1920s, provided fertile ground for the emergence of today’s Latin American megalopolis.

Electrifying Mexico

Author : Diana Montaño
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1477323473
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (773 download)

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Book Synopsis Electrifying Mexico by : Diana Montaño

Download or read book Electrifying Mexico written by Diana Montaño and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2022 Alfred B. Thomas Book Award, Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS) 2022 Bolton-Johnson Prize, Conference on Latin American History (CLAH) 2022 Best Book in Non-North American Urban History, Urban History Association (Co-winner) 2023 Honorable Mention, Best Book in the Humanities, Latin American Studies Association Mexico Section Many visitors to Mexico City’s 1886 Electricity Exposition were amazed by their experience of the event, which included magnetic devices, electronic printers, and a banquet of light. It was both technological spectacle and political messaging, for speeches at the event lauded President Porfirio Díaz and bound such progress to his vision of a modern order. Diana J. Montaño explores the role of electricity in Mexico’s economic and political evolution, as the coal-deficient country pioneered large-scale hydroelectricity and sought to face the world as a scientifically enlightened “empire of peace.” She is especially concerned with electrification at the social level. Ordinary electricity users were also agents and sites of change. Montaño documents inventions and adaptations that served local needs while fostering new ideas of time and space, body and self, the national and the foreign. Electricity also colored issues of gender, race, and class in ways specific to Mexico. Complicating historical discourses in which Latin Americans merely use technologies developed elsewhere, Electrifying Mexico emphasizes a particular national culture of scientific progress and its contributions to a uniquely Mexican modernist political subjectivity.

Workers and Welfare

Author : Michelle L. Dion
Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN 13 : 0822973634
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis Workers and Welfare by : Michelle L. Dion

Download or read book Workers and Welfare written by Michelle L. Dion and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2010-02-28 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the revolutionary period of 1910-1920, Mexico developed a number of social protection programs to support workers in public and private sectors and to establish safeguards for the poor and the aged. These included pensions, healthcare, and worker's compensation. The new welfare programs were the product of a complex interrelationship of corporate, labor, and political actors. In this unique dynamic, cross-class coalitions maintained both an authoritarian regime and social protection system for some seventy years, despite the ebb and flow of political and economic tides. By focusing on organized labor, and its powerful role in effecting institutional change, Workers and Welfare chronicles the development and evolution of Mexican social insurance institutions in the twentieth century. Beginning with the antecedents of social insurance and the adoption of pension programs for central government workers in 1925, Dion's analysis shows how the labor movement, up until the 1990s, was instrumental in expanding welfare programs, but has since become largely ineffective. Despite stepped-up efforts, labor has seen the retrenchment of many benefits. Meanwhile, Dion cites the debt crisis, neoliberal reform, and resulting changes in the labor market as all contributing to a rise in poverty. Today, Mexican welfare programs emphasize poverty alleviation, in a marked shift away from social insurance benefits for the working class.

Jungle Laboratories

Author : Gabriela Soto Laveaga
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822391961
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Jungle Laboratories by : Gabriela Soto Laveaga

Download or read book Jungle Laboratories written by Gabriela Soto Laveaga and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-23 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1940s chemists discovered that barbasco, a wild yam indigenous to Mexico, could be used to mass-produce synthetic steroid hormones. Barbasco spurred the development of new drugs, including cortisone and the first viable oral contraceptives, and positioned Mexico as a major player in the global pharmaceutical industry. Yet few people today are aware of Mexico’s role in achieving these advances in modern medicine. In Jungle Laboratories, Gabriela Soto Laveaga reconstructs the story of how rural yam pickers, international pharmaceutical companies, and the Mexican state collaborated and collided over the barbasco. By so doing, she sheds important light on a crucial period in Mexican history and challenges us to reconsider who can produce science. Soto Laveaga traces the political, economic, and scientific development of the global barbasco industry from its emergence in the 1940s, through its appropriation by a populist Mexican state in 1970, to its obsolescence in the mid-1990s. She focuses primarily on the rural southern region of Tuxtepec, Oaxaca, where the yam grew most freely and where scientists relied on local, indigenous knowledge to cultivate and harvest the plant. Rural Mexicans, at first unaware of the pharmaceutical and financial value of barbasco, later acquired and deployed scientific knowledge to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies, lobby the Mexican government, and ultimately transform how urban Mexicans perceived them. By illuminating how the yam made its way from the jungles of Mexico, to domestic and foreign scientific laboratories where it was transformed into pills, to the medicine cabinets of millions of women across the globe, Jungle Laboratories urges us to recognize the ways that Mexican peasants attained social and political legitimacy in the twentieth century, and positions Latin America as a major producer of scientific knowledge.