Bodies, Faith, and Inner Landscapes

This study of violence faith and womens hopes dreams and fears in contemporary urban Mexico draws on qualitative research conducted in a low- income neighborhood in Guadalajara and is grounded in the quotidian lives of 19 low-income women. In their mediation of the impoverished socioeconomic landscape arising from Mexicos shift to a neoliberal-inspired macroeconomic growth paradigm these women provide vital conceptual insights for the study of the human dimensions of economic change. I argue that analysis of economic crisis and neoliberal restructuring must go deeper than the local as it is typically constructed. Specific sexed bodies faith and inner landscapes of hopes dreams and fears--what I call here the very local--must become a legitimate component of Latin Americanist research and theory. (excerpt)