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El Paso: Local Frontiers At A Global Crossroads

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title El Paso: Local Frontiers At A Global Crossroads
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Victor M. Ortiz-Gonzalez
SeriesGlobalization and Community
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:216
Dimensions(mm): Height 229,Width 149
ISBN/Barcode 9780816640775
ClassificationsDewey:976.496063
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher University of Minnesota Press
Imprint University of Minnesota Press
Publication Date 15 January 2004
Publication Country United States

Description

A grounded and instructive analysis of the ways globalization affects a border city. Every marker of social difference can be easily interpreted in the fashionable language of "borderlands"--and if so, as Victor M. Ortiz-Gonzalez reveals, the practical reality of the border region is often grossly misrepresented and its people woefully served. He argues that amid the tantalizing abstractions generated by the sweeping reconfigurations of globalization, people in cities like El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, on the U.S.-Mexican border, are actually living the gritty realities of a new world order. With descriptions of grassroots initiatives to confront the challenges and opportunities that NAFTA represents for the city, El Paso challenges us to acknowledge and address the conceptual and sociopolitical tasks of a world in which abstract representations and nonlocal interests override concrete situations. Ortiz-Gonzalez also provides an indepth analysis of groups such as La Mujer Obrera, Unite El Paso, and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and their attempts to give local residents and workers more autonomy and power. Balancing ethnographic detail with precise theoretical insights, El Paso offers a compelling case study and a stirring call to understand both the conceptual challenge and the social urgency of the effects of globalization in local settings.