Peruvian Street Lives
Culture, Power, and Economy Among Market Women of Cuzco

Linda J. Seligmann (Author)

9780252071676

Paperback / softback, published 17 March 2004

264 pages, 25 black & white photographs
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.399 kg

For more than twenty years, Linda J. Seligmann walked the streets of Peru in city and countryside alike, talking to the women who work in the informal and open-air markets in Cuzco's Andean highlands. Her combination of ethnographic analysis, insightful and human vignettes, and superb photographs offers a humane yet incisive portrait of the women's lives against the backdrop of globalization and other powerful forces.

In Peruvian Street Lives, Seligmann argues that the sometimes invisible and informal economic, social, and political networks market women establish may appear disorderly and chaotic, but in fact often 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. At the same time, Seligmann shows how market women eke out a living, combat discrimination, and transgress racial and gender ideologies within the rich and expressive cultural traditions they have developed.

Contents
Acknowledgements 
 
vii
Introduction 
 
1
1. Market Spaces and Market Places 
 
19
2. Dried Goods, Soup, and Fried Eggs: Exchange Relations 
 
42
3. Bitter Salt: Household Structures and Gender Ideologies 
 
54
4. Straw Hats: The World of Wholesalers 
 
71
5.. Harpies and the Empty, Dirty, Overpriced Bread Basket: Regulating the Market Chain 
 
87
6. Sharks: Loan and Credit Arrangements 
 
104
7. Talking Brew, Butchering Patience: Conversations in the Marketplace 
 
119
8. Race Recipes: Alliances and Animosity 
 
148
9. Angels and Saints: Popular Religiosity 
 
161
10. Two-Way Streets: Political Action 
 
196
Conclusion: What's in Store? 
 
223
References Cited 
 
229
Index 
 
237