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Fresh fruit, broken bodies : migrant farmworkers in the United States / Seth M. Holmes ; with a foreword by Philippe Bourgois.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Publication details: Berkeley : University of California Press, (c)2013.Description: 1 online resource (xxiv, 234 pages) : illustrations, mapContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780520954793
  • 9781299557901
Subject(s): Genre/Form: LOC classification:
  • HD1525 .F747 2013
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
Contents:
"We are field workers": embodied anthropology of migration -- Segregation on the farm: ethnic hierarchies at work -- "How the poor suffer": embodying the violence continuum -- "Doctors don't know anything": the clinical gaze in the field of migrant health -- "Because they're lower to the ground": naturalizing social suffering -- Conclusion: change, pragmatic solidarity, and beyond -- Appendix: On ethnographic writing and contextual knowledge.
Action note:
  • digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve
Subject: "This book is an ethnographic witness to the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants. Based on 5 years of research in the field (including berry-picking and traveling with migrants back and forth from Oaxaca up the West Coast), Holmes, an anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, uncovers how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmes' material is visceral and powerful-for instance, he trekked with his informants illegally through the desert border into Arizona, where they were apprehended and jailed by the Border Patrol. After he was released from jail (and his companions were deported back to Mexico), Holmes interviewed Border Patrol agents, local residents, and armed vigilantes in the borderlands. He lived with indigenous Mexican families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the United States, planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals, participated in healing rituals, and mourned at funerals for friends. The result is a "thick description" that conveys the full measure of struggle, suffering, and resilience of these farmworkers. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies weds the theoretical analysis of the anthropologist with the intimacy of the journalist to provide a compelling examination of structural and symbolic violence, medicalization, and the clinical gaze as they affect the experiences and perceptions of a vertical slice of indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers, farm owners, doctors, and nurses. This reflexive, embodied anthropology deepens our theoretical understanding of the ways in which socially structured suffering comes to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care, especially through imputations of ethnic body difference. In the vehement debates on immigration reform and health reform, this book provides the necessary stories of real people and insights into our food system and health care system for us to move forward to fair policies and solutions."--Publisher information
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Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction: "Worth risking your life?" -- "We are field workers": embodied anthropology of migration -- Segregation on the farm: ethnic hierarchies at work -- "How the poor suffer": embodying the violence continuum -- "Doctors don't know anything": the clinical gaze in the field of migrant health -- "Because they're lower to the ground": naturalizing social suffering -- Conclusion: change, pragmatic solidarity, and beyond -- Appendix: On ethnographic writing and contextual knowledge.

"This book is an ethnographic witness to the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants. Based on 5 years of research in the field (including berry-picking and traveling with migrants back and forth from Oaxaca up the West Coast), Holmes, an anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, uncovers how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and health care. Holmes' material is visceral and powerful-for instance, he trekked with his informants illegally through the desert border into Arizona, where they were apprehended and jailed by the Border Patrol. After he was released from jail (and his companions were deported back to Mexico), Holmes interviewed Border Patrol agents, local residents, and armed vigilantes in the borderlands. He lived with indigenous Mexican families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the United States, planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals, participated in healing rituals, and mourned at funerals for friends. The result is a "thick description" that conveys the full measure of struggle, suffering, and resilience of these farmworkers. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies weds the theoretical analysis of the anthropologist with the intimacy of the journalist to provide a compelling examination of structural and symbolic violence, medicalization, and the clinical gaze as they affect the experiences and perceptions of a vertical slice of indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers, farm owners, doctors, and nurses. This reflexive, embodied anthropology deepens our theoretical understanding of the ways in which socially structured suffering comes to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care, especially through imputations of ethnic body difference. In the vehement debates on immigration reform and health reform, this book provides the necessary stories of real people and insights into our food system and health care system for us to move forward to fair policies and solutions."--Publisher information

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Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. MiAaHDL

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