Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 1997 and 2004, Lazar contends that in El Alto, citizenship is a set of practices defined by one's participation in a range of associations, many of them collectivist in nature. Her argument challenges Western liberal notions of the citizen by suggesting that citizenship is not only individual and national but in many ways communitarian and distinctly local, constituted through different kinds of affiliations. Since in El Alto these affiliations most often emerge through people's place of residence and their occupational ties, Lazar offers in-depth analyses of neighborhood associations and trade unions. In so doing, she describes how the city's various collectivities mediate between the state and the individual. Collective organization in El Alto and the concept of citizenship underlying it are worthy of attention; they are the basis of the city's formidable power to mobilize popular protest.
ISBN: | 9780822341543 |
Publication date: | 15th February 2008 |
Author: | Sian Lazar |
Publisher: | Duke University Press an imprint of Duke University Press Books |
Format: | Paperback |
Pagination: | 352 pages |
Series: | Latin America Otherwise : Languages, Empires, Nations |
Genres: |
Social and cultural anthropology |