“Little Globalizations”

A lot of globalization literature focuses on what I would call “Big Globalizations.”  George Ritzer worries about the McDonaldization of Society while James Watson’s edited volume Golden Arches East shows how McDonalds has become localized throughout Asia.  Now, I love Watson’s book — I teach chapters from it in my Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class [...]

Llama meat in La Paz’s tourist district, June 2010

This is, in part, a shameless plug for Helen Haines and my upcoming edited volume Adventures in Eating: Anthropological Experiences in Dining from Around the World. In it, anthropoloigists discuss frankly what it’s like to be offered unfamiliar foods and how we can turn that discomfort into methodologically useful data.  The book is aimed at [...]

As promised – Tourism Toys!

As I mentioned in a comment below, part of the on-going bicentennial celebrations here include kids’ meal toys at Pollos Copacabana celebrating various “touristic” places around La Paz. Notable is that the “tourists” are little pollitos (the chain’s mascot) and therefore should probably be read as paceños, not foreign tourists. This is important for several [...]

Power’s “Whispering in the Giant’s Ear,” reviewed

Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: A Frontline Chronicle from Bolivia’s War on Globalization by William Powers.  New York and London: Bloomsbury. 2006.  305 pp. This book, written by a U.S. international aid worker, is a well-written, honest, warts-and-all look at Koel Kempff and other Bolivian national parks in a context of growing indigenous political power [...]

Bolivia’s mom and kid friendly new law

La Razón reports that all working women with nursing infants up to six months of age have the right to bring their babies to work or school with them, nurse them in a comfortable room under “condiciones óptimas,” and to continue their work/study with their infants for this period of time. The motivation behind the [...]