R-3 Repository :: Browsing by Author "Marcus, George E."

Browsing by Author "Marcus, George E."

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A rational transition: Economic experts and the construction of post-communist Slovenia
(1998) Bajuk, Tatiana; Marcus, George E.
Based on research conducted over a twenty-four month period in Ljubljana, Slovenia, this dissertation provides an ethnographic study of the role of economists in charting Slovenia's transition process. The project argues that economics as a science is not homogeneous across cultures but that its history and implementation are contingent upon the position of its producers. It examines the practices of economists and the roots of their cultural authority which allows them to occupy influential positions beyond the technical confines of a community of specialized knowledge. The chapters trace the relationship between the history of economics as a discipline and the events that led to Slovenia's process of independence. They focus particularly on the emergence of depoliticized economic discourse as a legitimate critical strategy and track the way that this continued neutralization informed Slovenia's broader processes of change. Finally, this study questions the naturalness of the concept of transition presumed by the depoliticization of economic discourse through an analysis of discourses that contest or subvert it.
Absence to presence: The life history of Sylvia [Bataille] Lacan (France)
(1995) Hunt, Jamer Kennedy; Marcus, George E.
Sylvia (Bataille) Lacan (1908-1993) was a french film actress who was married to the philosopher Georges Bataille and to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Despite this fact, she is virtually absent from the critical accounts of her two husbands' work. This is an account of her life and the forces that have functioned to keep her out of the historical record. In addition, I address the ways in which her two husbands' work contributes to that occlusion. I write the life of Sylvia (Bataille) Lacan in a variety of different frames and genres. In the section on theories of gender and exchange, I trace the genealogy of the concept of the "exchange of women." Starting with Marcel Mauss and moving onto Claude Levi-Strauss, Georges Bataille, and Jacques Lacan, I argue, following Gayle Rubin, that those theorists could only have relegated women to the status of exchanged object by reifying women into abstractions, divorced from the power and agency that they do have. In the section on the cultural context of Sylvia (Bataille) Lacan's life, I show that a variety of cultural forces were competing to define the appropriate roles for women after World War II. I contend that in Surrealist art, for example, many of the artists encouraged other female painters and writers, while in their own work they relied upon stereotypical, infantilizing, and objectifying depictions of women. In the section on film theory, I closely examine Une Partie de campagne, a Jean Renoir film in which Sylvia Bataille starred. I map out the ways in which the film structures the spectator's gaze, configuring it as masculine, so that the tumultuous love scene at the film's climax is drained of its possible reading as a scene of rape. I include a biographical chapter in which I piece together the rare fragments of text that do attest to Sylvia (Bataille) Lacan's life. Finally, I conclude with an interview that I conducted with her about her life and the influence she had on her husbands.
As on a darkling plain: Searching out the critique of Hindu ethnicism in modern India
(2000) Reddy, Deepa Sankaran; Marcus, George E.
Critics and analysts of religious politics in India have described Hindu nationalism variously over the years: as fascist, fundamentalist, right-wing, jingoist, extremist, and ethnicist. The already large corpus of writing on the ideology and activities of the Hindu nationalists continues still to describe the serious threat of communal thinking to the secular/liberal character of the modern Indian state. What is missing from this discourse, however, is an interrogation of the very concepts on which both critiques of communal politics and defenses of secular-liberalism are based. What does it mean to understand 'fundamentalism' as the cultural 'other' of such liberal virtues as secularism and tolerance? What are the implications of constituting ethnicist movements not merely as obstacles, but as threats to the project of modernity? This dissertation examines first the dominant phraseology of such Indian intellectual critiques, arguing that narratives of ethnicism and extremism are created not only from within, by ethno-nationalist ideologues, but also from without, paradoxically by the very liberal discourses that describe communal threats to secular modernity. Second, by tracing the evolution of feminist activism in Hyderabad, I trace also the processes by which liberal discourses of difference and diversity come to structure activist praxis, making ethnicity the dominant descriptor of social reality, and instituting a 'culture of ethnicism' that implicates both activist-intellectual and ethnicist. Working thus within the frameworks of secular liberalism, and bound by a pre-constituted opposition to political expressions of religiosity, the Indian activist/intellectual community does not have the tools by which to understand the phenomenon of Hindu ethnicism. Finally, this dissertation suggests that Hindu religious ethnicism needs to be seen essentially as a challenge to the prevailing secular order that separates religious belief from the modern, the rational, the scientific, regarding it (at worst) as a pre-modern affliction, or (at best) as an individual, private expression of identity. Hindu ethnicist belief represents a rationality unto itself, I argue: a (religious) critique of the liberal logic of secularism; a religious ideology of tolerance and governance; a rationality of and for modernity that we can afford to ignore only at our own ultimate peril.
Broken storylines: How the economics of flexibility is affecting international migration discourse
(2005) Drevet, Tarra; Marcus, George E.
This dissertation is about shifts in narrative conventions. During the nineteenth century, at the height of industrial capitalism, certain rhetorical conventions were established in migration discourse, which were borrowed from neoclassical economics. Europeans who emigrated to the colonies sought a better life, the prospect of land, and better opportunities. Others who faced religious or political persecution experienced immigration as a condition of exile. In both cases, however, the migrants' reasons for coming and going were borrowed from neoclassical economics. More recently, the rhetoric of 'intentionality' and 'place' can be seen as shifting in stories told by international labor migrants. As the demands of temporary work contracts rapidly change, the where, when, and why of international migration becomes problematic in comparison with the rhetoric of neoclassical liberalism. This dissertation argues that the economics of flexibility and the flexible organization of work hinders the production of future-oriented narratives that inscribe economic rationalism, planning, and individual intention. 'Broken storylines' are examined in three sites: the stories told by temporary labor migrants, the planning structures of multinational corporations (managing the international transfer of employees), and the policies designed by state immigration bureaus (designing visa programs for the entry of skilled laborers). In each case, rational technologies are shown to be short-lasting and/or ineffective. Research was conducted among temporary labor migrants living in Australia and the United States between 2001 and 2005. The theoretical framework for the thesis is borrowed from Max Weber's comparative sociology of economic actions, which stresses the importance of state regulatory mechanisms to the predictability of economic behavior and the construction of substantive rationality. Following the deregulation of state regimes in the 1970s and the 1980s, I argue that a lack of economic stability hampers the production of new ideological narratives by economic institutions. Notably, a deconstructionist approach is adopted whereby historical narratives are viewed as inherently unstable. Tools of analysis are borrowed from literary criticism. The project contributes to the theorization of the relationship between historical narratives and the operations of state market capitalism. It also argues against the claims being made about the rise of a new transnational capitalist class.
Choreographing culture: Dance, folklore, and the politics of identity in Turkey
(1993) Cefkin, Melissa; Marcus, George E.
Processes of transnational restructuring have significant, if complex, effects on local tradition. Turkey has been greatly effected by such transformations in the performative arenas of public culture which mediate between national and transnational spaces. These changes challenge Turks' notions of identity, giving way not only to concerns about the proper and most appropriate form of representation to advance as images of Turks and Turkey, but the need to negotiate among these varying identities (class, political, historical, aesthetic, professional, and gender) themselves. Domains of public culture often thought of as "traditional" such as folk dance and festival support the dynamics of middle-brow positioning vis-a-vis the global arena. Yet, while powerful, arenas of performance are also problematic when engaged as mediations on and representations of cultural identity. Because it exists only in the state of performance, dance poses particular difficulties to the effort to pin down meaning and intent. The practice of folk dance in Turkey, thus, is especially charged with debate. While folk dance is often assumed to present a virtual representation of the authentic spirit of Turkish culture, it is increasingly being conceived of as an arena capable of promoting further entree into global cultures of artistic expertise. Attempts to reformulate the practice of folk dance in terms of these goals have sparked intense debate. Tensions between people, including members of the state and participants, who support one position or the other reflect broader tensions of contemporary Turkish society.
Climate rhetoric: Constructions of climate science in the age of environmentalism
(1998) Lahsen, Myanna Hvid; Marcus, George E.
This doctoral thesis analyzes the scientific and political debate about human-induced climate change, popularly known as "global warming," and describes the shaping influence of larger U.S. social dynamics and political entities (Congress, President, federal policies, NGOs, the right-wing, and industry groups) on the climate debate. Environmental concern and new science funding practices have profoundly altered the social dynamics and distribution of resources and recognition within meteorology. At a time where funding for scientific research is more difficult to come by, new levels of status and resources are available to climate modelers. This conflicts with a traditional hierarchy within the sciences which granted theoretical mathematicians and physicists the greatest levels of prestige. The older hierarchy often ranked climate modelers below higher-status scientists, labeling them as "engineers," "technicians," or "computer-operators." While their new status is contested, climate modelers presently enjoy increased levels of access to status, funding, and influence, because they respond to needs of policy makers and the environmentally concerned public. At the same time, empirical meteorologists and scientists in other fields doing less policy-relevant science have found their access to resources reduced--resulting in resentment among some scientists, particularly when the climate projections are known to be more uncertain and problematic than sometimes suggested. The thesis suggests that status competition among scientists, a tightening national funding situation, and environmental concern, can encourage favorable public claims concerning the reliability of computer-based climate projections. The strongest scientific critics of climate projections tend to be empirical meteorologists and theoretical or defense-related physicists. They object to projections of significant human-induced climate change by pointing to large uncertainties in the science. In addition to resistance to recent changes inside and outside scientific circles, the arguments of "contrarian" scientists--a small subgroup of vociferous critics--reflect competition for access to funding, status, and political influence, and staunch political convictions which converge with the far Right. An older elite of highly influential physicists forms one contrarian subgroup. The thesis discusses manifest differences in historical consciousness, values, and subcultural styles, between this old scientific elite of physicists and emergent scientific elites of environmental scientists.
Delirio: The fantastic, the demonic, and the reel narratives from Nuevo Leon
(2000) Hernandez, Marie Theresa; Marcus, George E.
This dissertation is about the "making of history." It is about the process of how certain events are laboriously imbedded in the story of a region or nation. It is also about how other events or narratives become phantasms that only surface at disparate moments. These phantasms move towards fiction, fetishism, or writing that is authorized by local dogma. In these movements, these narratives establish and maintain the identity and ideology of a place. Delirio focuses on those phantasms that have been pushed to the margin. If the scriptural creates a scientific history, what is the economy of fantastic text? How do allegories of writing and oral narrative that exist in the liminal region of the reel, explain history? The surreal quality of what was told to me, I believe, is related to the lack of structured, documented history regarding certain strategic aspects of Nuevo Leon's history. The traces of lost or occulted narratives erupt without warning. This study is about the de-centering and de-territorializing of the person inside a particular space.
Docile descendants and illegitimate heirs: Privatization of cultural patrimony in Mexico
(2003) Breglia, Lisa Catherine; Marcus, George E.
Archaeological ruins in Mexico, although juridically mandated as national property, are, in practice, sites of multiple, coexisting claims on ownership, custodianship, and inheritance. Focusing on more than a century of interventions by US/Mexican cultural agencies, foreign archaeologists, and private sector interests, I demonstrate how de jure policies and de facto practices of privatization have affected patrimonial claims to and understandings of "ruins" vis-a-vis (1) state policy regarding cultural materials, (2) jurisdiction and access within archaeological zones, and (3) scientific investigation and international cultural tourism. While the neoliberal state contemplates the relinquishment of territorial control over national properties through privatization, my ethnographic and archival evidence clearly supports the claim that for at least a century, the state has merely assumed---through it laws, policies, and institutional management---that sites of monumental cultural patrimony were within its firm grasp all along. In order to demonstrate this claim, I create micro-level spatial genealogies of two archaeological sites Chichen Itza and Chunchucmil) and their several associated living communities (Piste, Chunchucmil, and Kochol). The results of this study show how, at the local level, the overarching concepts of "national cultural patrimony" or "World Heritage" signal only two forms of patrimonial significance, both based on archaeological heritage's privileging of the "ancient" over and above the modern or contemporary. At Chichen Itza, federally employed site custodians understand the site as an inheritable family patrimony. At Chunchucmil, local residents consider the land coterminous with the archaeological heritage site as their patrimonio ejidal, or ejido land-grant heritage. In both cases, Maya people have been historically constructed, by archaeology, the state, as well as the private sector, as docile descendents and illegitimate heirs. The cultivation of Mexican nationalism required Maya people to be "docile descendents" playing a political and cultural role in the appropriate role in the Nation's articulation ancient ruins to Mexican modernity. Under emergent conditions of neoliberalism, they are joined by private sector entrepreneurs in becoming "illegitimate heirs" in their attempts to reterritorialize the nation's patrimony.
The emergence and institutionalization of regimes of transparency and anti-corruption in Poland
(2006) Powell, Michael G.; Marcus, George E.
In the late 1990's, three interrelated spheres of activities and practices emerged in Poland which either had not existed previously or had only at that moment taken on a qualitatively new status as key players or capital in the political environment: anti-corruption NGO's, expertise, and policy; the Law about Access to Public Information; and investigative journalism. These three spheres appeared simultaneously with a greater public consciousness of a widespread corruption problem in Poland. The main question of this dissertation is: Why did these three interrelated spheres come about when they did and not earlier (or even later)? The dissertation answers this question by ethnographically describing the assemblage of anti-corruption practices in Poland and internationally: anti-corruption NGOs, Freedom of Information laws, and investigative journalism. The problematic of corruption represents the key symbol of an ethos, a system of mood and motivation, emergent in Poland's aftermath following its transition, whether incomplete or not, from communism to democracy and capitalism. This dissertation asks: why has corruption become a common obsession of concerted epistemological concern? Why the rather peculiar obsession with this lingering topic? Further, this dissertation queries why a skeptical reason, paranoid style and hyperbolic tropology is stimulated by corruption and how this subject invokes specters of Polish history. First, this dissertation maps out the key organizations, actors, and discourses that comprise the international anti-corruption arena. In the second section, it follows a coalition of anti-corruption NGO's who came together in the late 1990's to introduce and eventually a pass a Freedom of Information (FOI) law in Poland in 2001. The law embodies the analytic belief that more transparency will lessen corruption, as well as representing an emergent norm for democracy in the late 20th century. The third section ties together a number of seemingly disparate elements in an ethnographic description of investigative journalism in Poland. It demonstrates how journalists triangulate their elusive objects of knowledge while these objects simultaneously deny any such involvement. It asks: what are the conditions, styles, forms, and institutions by which they can assert their stories as true?
Emergent Guatemalan-Maya discourses and institutions of "moderinzation": The impact of education upon the representation of the Maya in a globalized world
(2004) Lima Soto, Ricardo E.; Marcus, George E.
The purpose of this study was to collect dispersed components of the emergent Maya "modernizing" discourses which focused on the incorporation of their culture into the society of Guatemala and full participation in national and international arenas. Specifically, I focused on the information contained in the ideology, knowledge, values, and goals as defined or produced by a group of Maya professionals who attended an experimental program, Program for Integral Development of the Mayan Population (PRODIPMA), developed and administered by Rafael Landivar University and sponsored by USAID from 1986 to 1993, in Guatemala. This ethnographic account has charted the movements by which our focal group entered the community with a strong consciousness of their cultural identity. Members of this group are currently pursuing the creation of critical pro-Mayan and intercultural discourses. They are steering the direction of institutional activism towards "modernization" according to national and global definitions. I conducted my research using both archival and fieldwork techniques. Interviewing protocols were designed and applied to university authorities, faculty, tutors, and a representative number of indigenous alumni. The study included a conscious in-depth analysis of both the institutional context and the curricular contents to which all the indigenous students were exposed to. All curricular contents were defined to reach Landivar University's academic standards and social goals. Landivar inheritated a Western tradition consisting of European philosophy, science, and methodologies. As a consequence, URL based the academic program on European and American authors, scientists, and philosophers, converting the PRODIPMA program, epistemologically, into a post-colonizing program for indigenous students. However, Landivar University's commitment toward the emergence of an educated and developed multicultural society is based upon its Jesuit-Catholic ideology which, according to their principles, contributes to Guatemala's development through the empowerment of Mayan communities by means of making available their access to "pertinent" education (linguistic and culturally). Mayan modernity consists of openly gaining entry into universities and important job positions while they take advantage of technology and communications to enhance their values, identity, and languages of their culture. Conversely, the official policies of Guatemala continue to retain the privileged status of the Ladinos. The hegemonic Ladino (Spanish) paradigm is upheld socially, politically, and culturally.
The Ethnographic Subject as Ethnographer: A Neglected Dimension of Anthropological Research
(Rice University, 1980-01) Marcus, George E.; Electronic version made possible with funding from the Rice Historical Society and Thomas R. Williams, Ph.D., class of 2000.
Future in the past: The predicament of contemporary Russian intellectual culture
(1999) Elfimov, Alexei L.; Marcus, George E.
On the basis of field and archival research, conducted during the year of 1995 and the summer of 1996 in Russia, this project offers ethnographic and historical accounts of Russian intellectual culture in the transitional post-perestroika period of the last decade of the 20th century. The author argues that within this period of time a crucial shift has occurred in the intellectual climate of Russian society, which consisted principally in the emergence and rapid spreading of the so called "historical/cultural paradigm" in intellectual thinking. Focusing on the academic milieu and two important social discourses in Russia and the Soviet Union, that of history and that of architecture, the author explains how this particular paradigm came to be and what consequences it brought about. A set of interrelated issues, such as ideological and political moods among the academics, Slavophile and Westernizing trends, and the general state of the academy in Russia are analyzed.
Gorgeous monster: The arts of managing violence in contemporary Bogota
(2006) Rivas, Angela; Marcus, George E.
In the late 20th century, Bogota, capital of Colombia, a country where homicide is the leading cause of death, became a model of governmental intervention aimed at managing violence. My dissertation inquires into this puzzling transformation. It, however, is not intended as another evaluation of the reduction of violence and crime in the Colombian capital. Rather, my work examines the unfolding of municipal initiatives aimed at reducing violence---locally known as coexistence and citizen security policies---and their further framing as a model of governmental intervention for managing violence elsewhere. I examine these initiatives in terms of their crafting and deployment at the local level, the ideas and approaches to violence that lie behind them, and both local and extra-local dynamics that intervene in their further circulation. To put it in the most simplified manner, my dissertation addresses citizen security and peaceful coexistence as ways of managing violence in contemporary Bogota, as they circulate and as they are redefined through a variety of settings including official and private institutions, academic circles, governmental agencies, multilateral organizations and daily urban scenes. My research takes place at a historic moment: the transformation of Bogota from a city frequently described as one of the most violent and chaotic cities in Latin America, to a city increasingly addressed as an exemplary case for other cities in the region in terms of violence reduction, urban governance, and the management of crime and violence. This transformation unfolds in the aftermath of the Cold War and under the shadow of both the war on drugs and, more recently, the war on terrorism. Redefinitions of violence and crime, of security and governance that are attached to these shifts, express themselves in particular ways at the local level. Rather than considering these geopolitical shifts as merely a broader context for my research, I inquire into a local version of them. I look into the creation, adoption, and circulation of a model of governmental intervention aimed at reducing violence, tied to specific settings and yet not restricted to them.
Guardians of the embers: A cultural geography of land use and land tenure among the BaAka Pygmies of Central Africa
(1996) Davies, Evan Tyler; Tyler, Stephen A.; Marcus, George E.
A general geographical and cultural survey of BaAka Pygmy exploitation of the tropical rain forest environment in the Dzanga-Ndoki national park of Central African Republic, and adjacent areas of Cameroon and the Congo is presented. The fabric of BaAka society as it pertains to practices and perceptions of land use, land tenure and relationship to the environment is specifically investigated. The data obtained during the fieldwork stage of this investigation are presented herein as an original narrative ethnography with inclusions of tabular and graphic data. A collection of some contemporary experimental genres used in contemporary ethnographic writings are discussed prior to presentation of the ethnography.
Home as investment: Housing markets and cultures of urban change in Houston
(2005) Espino, Nilson Ariel; Marcus, George E.
The dissertation is an ethnographic study of the conventions and practices of the actors of the US middle-class housing market concerning housing and neighborhood architectural change and management and its perceived relation to the protection of real estate investments. The ethnography takes as its starting point the widespread concern of the middle-class sector of American society with the preservation of residential "property values" and attempts to understand the interaction between more traditional (sociocultural) middle-class landscape "conservatism"---as reflected in a restrictive attitude towards neighborhood change---and the symbolic demands of large-scale housing markets with which homeowners engage for purposes of wealth accumulation and social mobility. The research explores the ways in which middle-class neighborhoods are managed, improved and controlled with the purposes of protecting and improving home values and explores the large-scale urban impacts of these behaviors and ideas. The research also includes a critique of this model of city management insofar as it entails housing discrimination, urban segregation and spatial exclusion for the urban poor. An informal comparison with Latin American urban growth patterns is made. The research takes place in the City of Houston, Texas and involves interviews and participant-observation fieldwork.
Inch Ka Chka and other paradoxical clues into Soviet Armenian society
(1995) Grigorian, Stella; Marcus, George E.
During the twentieth century, Soviet Armenian society has been witness to numerous situations in which national identity has become an expression of cultural paradox. From the 1940's to the 1990's, Armenia has been in a transitory state, oscillating between seemingly contradictory categories of East/West, capitalism/communism, traditional/modern, past/present and death/survival. Despite this state of flux, Armenian self-representations insistently point to a collective identity that defines itself as firmly rooted, fixed in space and enduring in understandings. This project explores stories and histories, especially anecdotes collected in the course of fieldwork in Soviet Armenia conducted over two extended periods from 1987 to 1992. What was sought were mechanisms that lend to culture the malleability to bend and twist without radical rupture, allowing culture to reinvent itself endlessly in the face of social pressures and to allow space for new cultural constructions of meaning. I chart the deeply contradictory symbolic structure of Soviet Armenian society as an instrument by which these reworkings are achieved. In so doing, it becomes clear that contradiction does not lead to cultural paralysis. On the contrary, the articulation of contradiction within a narrative mode allows for mediation of difference in a manner that is non-divisive. Further, I trace the modern history of Armenia to reveal the ways in which Armenians manage the affects of Sovietization, of the Diaspora and repatriation, and of Armenian independence and emergence into a new geo-political matrix. Special attention is given to the Soviet Nationality Policy of the 1920's and 1940's and to the disastrous earthquake of 1988, both of which have led to a renewed sense of nationalism and of peoplehood among the Armenians. In tracing symbolic repertoires, I reveal the transitory character of meanings and their implicational associations as culture repositions itself and renegotiates contradictions in new settings.
Landscape of transformations: Perspectives, perils and possibility from within the new "informational" economy
(2004) Coleman, Nelini-Denise Youngblood; Marcus, George E.
This research is based on fieldwork at a start-up Internet company. The research captures understandings of an emerging ethos of information and the valorization of information technology in the New Economy. The research also captures the notion of the New Economy itself and concludes that it is to be understood as a late-Industrial development within the capitalist circulation sphere. The research explores the organizational dynamics and the corporate culture within the fieldwork environment. In these regards, modalities of disciplinary power, resistance and negotiation within the workplace are identified. In addition, the culture of the "start-up" company is regarded as a foil that contravenes against conventional business practices. The emergence of a new class of professional knowledge workers is also identified. The research concludes that this new class of knowledge workers embraces a constellation of meanings of work that reflect particularized values and ideals. The mediation of technology in everyday life and work, the reconfiguration of power relations in "information society" and the varied interpretations of the Internet medium are also described. The central themes of the research include the promise and possibility offered by the development and innovation of information technology along a changing cultural and economic landscape, as well as the perils associated with such change. At the core of the research reside moods and sensibilities of anxiety and uncertainty along this terrain of transformation. Questions of contradiction, simultaneity and ambiguity are also factored into the understandings and interpretations of the changing landscape of the New "Informational" Economy.
Manly acts: Buenos Aires, 24 March 1996
(1998) Tobin, Jeffrey P.; Marcus, George E.
Ethnographic fieldwork and writing are employed to explore how men in Buenos Aires construct and contest masculinity. The fieldwork is focused on three sites of manly performance: asado (Argentine barbecue), soccer, and tango. Asado serves to construct an Argentine national identity that privileges the masculine over the feminine, but that represents the male as powerless in the face of female flesh. Practices of feminizing male and female flesh are examined in the context of the military dictatorship of 1976-1983. Texts pertaining to asado, animal slaughter, and the dictatorship are used to argue that anal penetration precedes vaginal penetration among Argentine practices of feminization, and that the Argentine phallus is marked by its associations with bovinity. Debates concerning the politics of soccer are examined. Vanguardists assert that soccer is an opiate of the people, while populists assert that soccer stadiums are a transgressive and occasionally progressive space. Intellectuals reason that soccer is somehow homosexual, soccer fans cast aspersions on the sexuality of intellectuals, and fans of opposing clubs accuse one another of either sodomy or effeminacy. An argument is advanced that soccer promotes an oppositional, corporeal, working-class consciousness that refuses bourgeois sexual identities. The assignment of sexual identities is examined in the context of tango-dance. Speculations about the sexual identity of tango-dancers appear in tango performances that represent tango's primal scene as homosocial, in rumors purporting the homosexuality of a prominent tango figure, in homoerotic tango literature, in the manly act of men practicing tango-dance together, and in heteronormative tango choreography. Repeated references to written texts in this ethnography and in the speech of informants in Buenos Aires raise questions about ethnographic methodology and about the disciplinary relationship of Cultural Anthropology to Cultural Studies.
Memory and forgetting among the Nivkhi of Sakhalin Island
(1993) Grant, Bruce M.; Marcus, George E.
On the basis of field and archival research on Sakhalin Island, and in Moscow, Tomsk and St. Petersburg, conducted over a twenty-four month period between 1989 and 1992, this project offers ethnographic and historical accounts of the production of Soviet culture among a Siberian indigenous people, the Nivkhi. Through Nivkh oral accounts, archival documents, as well as Russian and Soviet ethnographic sources, the dissertation charts a dramatic series of policy shifts in the governance of Nivkh life in the twentieth century, shifts which were in effect organized state campaigns of cultural invention and cultural erasure. By highlighting two dominant and often contradictory streams of official state narratives which counterposed Siberian indigenous peoples as being both children of nature and the most authentic of modern proletarians, the dissertation finds a population in late perestroika whose own views of Nivkh culture were largely underwritten by statist interpretations. The project argues for a closer reading of the nature of Soviet cultural construction than is often found in writings on Soviet nationality policies, and of the very hybrid identities which the Soviet period, and now the post-Soviet period, have produced.
Mexican-American low riders: An anthropological approach to popular culture
(1994) Bright, Brenda Jo; Marcus, George E.
Within contemporary anthropology, the tradition of the single site ethnography is being challenged as inadequate to the task of representing the complexity of modern social life. A multi-site ethnography examines the network of complex connections within a system of places and the implications for the formation of group identity through popular cultural practices. Low riding is a popular culture organized around the activities of fashioning and showing baroquely customized automobiles by men and women from 13 to 45 years of age and is considered to be a distinctly "Chicano" (Mexican American) form. Low riding originated largely in the 1960s in Los Angeles, a center of industry, mass media communication, and Mexican American culture in the United States. There low riding practices serve to remap the bounds of mobility to correspond to experienced limits and to express and facilitate preferred forms of sociality. In Houston, Texas, low riding became popular in the late seventies simultaneous with the oil industry boom and regional distribution of Low Rider Magazine. It served as a way for Mexican Americans dispersed throughout the city, many only recent residents, to create a community. In Espanola, New Mexico (also known as "Little L.A."), a largely Hispano town located between the art and tourist centers of Santa Fe and Taos, Chicano low riding is part of the regional intensification of ethnic identity that has been born from the potentially alienating experiences of labor outmigration to California and other areas of the Southwest coupled with increased ethic and recreational tourism in northern New Mexico. Low rider car culture has created an alternate cultural space for performance, participation and interpretation, one that allows for the reworking of the limitations placed upon "minority" cultures in the United States, but one that also indicates how racial discrimination and class identification become divisive to the assertion of cultural identity.

Browsing by Author "Marcus, George E."

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