Immediate Struggles

This superb historical and ethnographic study of the political economy of the Vega Baja region of Spain, one of the European Union's "Regional Economies," takes up the difficult question of how to understand the growing alienation ordinary working people feel in the face of globalization. Combining rich oral histories with a sophisticated and nuanced structural understanding of changing political economies, the authors examine the growing divide between government and its citizens in a region that has in the last four decades been transformed from a primarily agricultural economy to a primarily industrial one. Offering a new form of ethnography appropriate for the study of suprastate polities and a globalized economy, Immediate Struggles contributes to our understanding of one region as well as the way we think about changing class relations, modes of production, and cultural practices in a newly emerging Europe. The authors also consider how phenomena such as the "informal economy" and "black market" are not marginal to the normal operation of state and economic institutions but are intertwined with both.

ISBN 0520245695   Pages 275 ISBN13 9780520245693 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher The University Press Group Ltd   Weight (grammes) 399 Imprint University of California Press   Published in CA Format Paperback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 25 Jul 2006   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress 2006003043   Spine width (mm) 15 DEWEY 306.360946765   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

1		Toward an anthropological framework for studying contemporary Europe		1
2		The histories of the regional political economy		33
3		Regulating social life through uncertainty and fear		56
4		From insecurity to dependency		75
5		From insecurity to movement		97
6		Families and entrepreneurs		121
7		Flexible structures and torn lives		145
8		The culture of politics, the politics of culture		169
9		The power of ethnography		203

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