Papers by Ana Ramos-Zayas
Latino Studies, Mar 1, 2006
Identities-global Studies in Culture and Power, Sep 23, 2009
This essay examines the power-evasive reduction of "race," racial conflict, and racial subordinat... more This essay examines the power-evasive reduction of "race," racial conflict, and racial subordination from the terrain of the social, material, and structural to the "private" realm of affect and emotions, in an effort to explain how neoliberalism operates in the everyday lives of U.S.-born Latino and Latin American migrant youth, particularly, young, working-class Puerto Rican and Brazilian women in Newark, New Jersey. A main argument of this project is that urban neoliberalism has been complicit in generating new racial configurations in the United States and that, in the case of populations of Latin American and Spanish-speaking Caribbean backgrounds, such articulations of difference have deployed a variation of "racial democracy" ideologies. This "cartography of racial democracy" gives credence to denunciations of racism or racial subordination as long as they are launched in the realm of intimate relationships and attraction-as aspects of "affect" or an "urban erotics"-that frequently overshadows and flattens the structures of urban neoliberalism that require that individual worth is measured in relation to how one "packages" oneself culturally to be profitable.
Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 2001
American Quarterly, Sep 1, 2022
Drawing from my ethnographic research on ''national performances'' in Puerto Rican Chicago, I exa... more Drawing from my ethnographic research on ''national performances'' in Puerto Rican Chicago, I examine the ways in which Puerto Rican residents of Humboldt Park are criminalized and rendered ''terrorist.'' The essay analyzes the production of a Puerto Rican US citizenship that is ''delinquent'' and approaches the status of illegality that has traditionally been imposed on other Latino (im)migrants. Puerto Ricans have tried to escape a stigmatized citizenship by consistently demonstrating their deservingness and deploying a ''politics of worthiness'' largely centered around involvement in the US military. The essay ultimately argues that constructions of homeland security are ideological and judicial projects of the US nation-state that not only unfold in an international arena but also configure domestic opportunities, power inequalities, and racial formations.
The journal of Latin American and Caribbean anthropology, Dec 1, 2019
Drawing from almost a decade of ethnographic research in largely Brazilian and Puerto Rican neigh... more Drawing from almost a decade of ethnographic research in largely Brazilian and Puerto Rican neighborhoods in Newark, New Jersey, Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, in "Street Therapists", examines how affect, emotion, and sentiment serve as waypoints for the navigation of interracial relationships among US-born Latinos, Latin American migrants, blacks, and white ethnics. Tackling a rarely studied dynamic approach to affect, Ramos-Zayas offers a thorough - and sometimes paradoxical - new articulation of race, space, and neoliberalism in US urban communities. After looking at the historical, political, and economic contexts in which an intensified connection between affect and race has emerged in Newark, "Street Therapists" engages in detailed examinations of various community sites - including high schools, workplaces, beauty salons, and funeral homes, among others - and secondary sites in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and San Juan to uncover the ways US-born Latinos and Latin American migrants interpret and analyze everyday racial encounters through a language of psychology and emotions. As Ramos-Zayas notes, this emotive approach to race resurrects Latin American and Caribbean ideologies of "racial democracy" in an urban US context - and often leads to new psychological stereotypes and forms of social exclusion. Extensively researched and thoughtfully argued, "Street Therapists" theorizes the conflictive connection between race, affect, and urban neoliberalism.
Routledge eBooks, Jul 14, 2023
Duke University Press eBooks, 2020
My interests in parenting, sovereignty, and the Latin American elite emerged in uneven, roundabou... more My interests in parenting, sovereignty, and the Latin American elite emerged in uneven, roundabout ways, at the unexpected intersections of personal and academic paths. The fieldwork for Parenting Empires began after a de cade of learning about the lives of working-class Brazilian mi grants and US-born Puerto Ricans in Newark, New Jersey, as well as following Brazilian and Puerto Rican youths on their return to their parents' ancestral lands. As a new parent, increasingly moving in vari ous parenting circles in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the United States, I came to realize how much parenting ambitions and sovereign aspirations mirrored each other. For Latin American elites, like those profiled in this book, closeness to power turns parental ambitions and sovereignty aspirations into everyday practices of place making, affective inequalities, and inner-world dispositions. This is what I hope to document here in this ethnography, a work spanning more than six years and enabled by many people. I am thankful to the individuals whose voices appear in this ethnography. They generously gave me their time and emotional labor, introduced me to their lives and loved ones, and shared interior worlds and everyday routines with me over my years of fieldwork in Brazil and Puerto Rico. Some unexpected friendships formed during the making of this ethnography, as interlocutors became unwitting collaborators and allowed me to witness vulnerable moments in their lives and to examine their ongoing ambivalence about their privileged place in the world. Following anonymity and confidentiality promises, I will not mention these interlocutors by name. I want to assure them, however, that I appreciate their willingness to allow me into their journeys, as they aimed to resolve the dissonance and multiple conflicts caused by the presumably noble acknowl edgments x Acknowl edgments task of advocating on behalf of their children, their neighborhoods, and their countries. During moments when I was not physically in the field, I worked as a faculty member at cuny-Baruch College, where I occupied the Valentín Lizana y Parragué Endowed Chair in Latin American Studies, and at the cuny Gradu ate Center, where I was affiliated with the Center for Latin American, Ca rib bean, and Latino Studies (clacls) and the Critical Social Psy chol ogy Department. At the Gradu ate Center, I am grateful to Michelle Fine, Setha Low, and the faculty in the Critical Social Psy chol ogy program, who welcomed me into the Psy chol ogy Department despite my training in anthropology; to Dana-Ain Davis, director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society, whose understanding of the unrealized potential of anthropology keeps me hopeful; to Arlene Torres, who remains committed to identifying issues of discrimination against Latinx faculty throughout cuny; and to the clacls staff for so enthusiastically embracing my work. At Baruch, I want to thank Sandra Nieves, administrative assistant in the Black and Latino Studies Department. Sandra was always honest and kind, showing the greatest dignity, even when wealthy South American donors criticized her Nuyorican working-class Spanish and did not want her included at the lunch table. She made tough years in a tough place more bearable, and I will always be very thankful for that. Over the years, I have benefited from the unwavering support of Katherine S. Newman, my former dissertation advisor and the best example of what mentoring should look like. I also appreciate Micaela di Leonardo's candid guidance and occasional tough love over the past several de cades. In the fall of 2016, and after nearly two de cades teaching at public institutions, I accepted a position at Yale University, where I am currently professor of American studies; women's, gender, and sexuality studies; and ethnicity, race, and migration. I thank the colleagues in each of these exceptional programs, as well as those affiliated with the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration and La Casa. I want to single out the leadership of Alicia Camacho-Schmidt, Inderpal Grewal, Matthew Jacobson, and Stephen Pitti. I always knew I would meet bright minds and gifted teachers in this new adventure, but the fact that I also encountered warmth, solidarity, commitment to social justice, and humility has been a marvelous surprise. The ethnographer in me also appreciates the opportunity to work alongside Aimee Cox, Kathryn Dudley, and Eda Pepe to invigorate and "re-enchant anthropology" at Yale and beyond. My students at Yale are similar to the extraordinary students I met during my years at Rutgers and cuny: they are energetic working-class, first-generation students of color, some undocumented, who possess a unique Acknowl edgments xi conviction and dedication to issues of social justice. Regardless of the institutions I inhabit, those gradu ate and undergraduate students still make me feel like the luckiest person in the world when I walk into the classroom, whether at Rutgers, cuny, or Yale. The Whiteness in the Amer i cas workshop served as intellectual home for this proj ect over the past five years. I am especially thankful to the unwavering support, brotherly warmth, and incisive intellectual engagement of workshop co-organizer and compadre Carlos Vargas-Ramos. I am im mensely grateful for his feedback, encouragement, and support, as I am for those I received from wia members
Latin American Perspectives, Sep 1, 2004
... about her sister's visit from Puerto Rico, she says, "We went to the Boricu... more ... about her sister's visit from Puerto Rico, she says, "We went to the Boricua Festival and ... invariably described as very fair-skinned or fashionably tanned with shoulder-length straight black hair (pageboy ... What are the spaces of collaboration between islanders and mainlanders? ...
Critique of Anthropology, Dec 1, 2012
Wiley-Blackwell eBooks, Jul 14, 2011
Identities-global Studies in Culture and Power, Feb 5, 2007
This essay examines the performance of "race," particularly the appropriation of "Blackness," amo... more This essay examines the performance of "race," particularly the appropriation of "Blackness," among U.S.-born Latinos and Latin American migrants in two neighborhoods in Newark, New Jersey. A main argument of this essay is that "Blackness"-a performance of race somewhat detached from actual Black bodies and often associated with Puerto Ricans in Newark-has become a more valued benchmark of belongingness among Latin American migrants than "whiteness," a stature of belongingness among European migrants in the past. By deconstructing the concept of "urban competency," an implicit knowledge and cultural capital associated with the valorization of "being urban," modern, and cosmopolitan, the essay explores how racial performances are deployed by United States-born Puerto Rican and Brazilian migrant youth to mediate alternative constructions of citizenship and belongingness.
strategic interests with FARC, and on the other, acknowledging FARC’s contribution to the movemen... more strategic interests with FARC, and on the other, acknowledging FARC’s contribution to the movement. FARC was interested in the continuation of the status quo, benefitting from the illegality of coca, while peasants would be better off with legal and viable coca substitutes. Not surprisingly, when it seemed that an agreement between cocaleros and the government that included eradication of coca crops was reachable, cocaleros inevitably found themselves, in the words of the mayor of a local town, ‘‘between a rock and a hard place’’ (p. 149). Unfortunately, Ramirez does not look in any detail at the particular ways in which FARC influenced and organized the movement, and thus, misses an opportunity to help clarify the recurrent ways or mechanisms that networks of activists use in the development of grass roots political movements. Less attention is given in the book to another collective political actor, the drug traffickers. Ramirez tells us that in the 1980s there was an uneasy alliance between FARC and drug traffickers. FARC was an intermediary between producers and distributors of coca, taxing production and distribution, in exchange for military protection. But in 1987 drug traffickers assaulted a FARC military base and a war between the two groups was declared. The author clearly shows that cocaleros were not neutral in this war and that they allied with FARC. Why? Ramirez mentions some cases in which drug traffickers used force and physical threats to recruit labor to produce and process coca, and paid workers in kind with low-grade cocaine. How generalized were these practices? Did traffickers prefer small or large producers? Overall, the reader knows little about the interaction between traffickers and peasants, and as a consequence the path that led to an alliance between cocaleros and FARC seems to be taken for granted. Ramirez does not promise theoretical developments or extensions. She is nonetheless theoretically informed, and she does a good job in engaging the description of the political movement with theories of state making, and identity in particular. At times however it is difficult to know why some specific aspects of theories are emphasized, and theoretical statements appear obscure and arbitrary, given that these theories are not systematically discussed. For example, in explaining the emergence of the cocalero uprising Ramirez argues that ‘‘. . . the notion of citizenship mediates the paradoxes within the cocalero movement, which derives its identity not from its opposition to the state but from the social and political exclusion of its members by that state’’ (emphasis in original, p. 111). Or ‘‘. . . spatial categories affect the articulation of identity, concretely in relation to those meanings ascribed to rural and urban spaces’’ (p. 111). There is little empirical discussion of individuals’ meanings of identities, and no way to know how notions of citizenship mediate the paradoxes of the movement. The cocalero uprising did not ultimately succeed. Some goals, including voluntary eradication and crop substitution were short term and only partially applied. Aerial fumigation continued under the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia, and paramilitary forces with the mission of clearing the region of leftist influence were responsible for mass killings of political activists and peasants. But Ramirez ends her book with an optimistic tone: the cocalero movement achieved international recognition, and cocaleros are now recognized by the international community as agents and citizens. That achievement was the fundamental claim of the movement.
Centro Journal, 2008
How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org ... more How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Scientific Information System Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative
Journal of Urban History, Feb 28, 2021
The field that came to be known as Whiteness Studies in the United States in the 1990s has much i... more The field that came to be known as Whiteness Studies in the United States in the 1990s has much intellectual debt to black scholars in the Americas. By the 1930s, African American scholars like WEB DuBois, in the United States, and Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, in Brazil, understood the value of viewing whiteness as an analytical category crucial in understanding racial inequality. In Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (1936), DuBois argued that white American workers received a public and "psychological wage" by grounding their identities and communities primarily on their white race, rather than forging class solidarities across the color line. 1 DuBois understood that white supremacy usurped people of color of their very humanity and personhood, of their right to self-definition and self-determination. A contemporary of DuBois, Afro-Brazilian social scientist Alberto Guerreiro Ramos published Patologia social do "branco" brasileiro (Social Pathology of the "White" Brazilian), a 1955 pamphlet that introduced whiteness, a topic from a book of poems he wrote in the 1930s, into Latin American social sciences. 2 Trained in sociology and social work, Guerreiro Ramos contended that Brazilians faced a sort of cognitive dissonance in which "whiteness" remained the preferred aesthetic referent in a predominantly non-white country, a "neocolonial fixation on Europe." Guerreiro Ramos noted, inhibited the development of a Brazilian national identity expansive enough to acknowledge the plight and contributions of a majority of the country's population. 3 For Guerreiro Ramos, the so-called racial problem in Brazil, and which had captured the interest of scholars of the time, was one of naturalizing the supremacy of whiteness as much, if not more, than of rejecting blackness.
European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Studies of wealth and the family have provided important insights into how financial and legal in... more Studies of wealth and the family have provided important insights into how financial and legal institutions allow the long-term perpetuation of fortunes, such as inheritance and trust laws, as well as examining the role of family offices and philanthropy as practices that upper-class families use to preserve their wealth across generations. Such scholarship has noticed that a flip side of this is that the family, as a unit involved in the preservation of inter-generational wealth, can also be a site of conflict that ultimately destroys great fortunes. Focusing on life coaching as a growing therapeutic cultural form among the wealthy in Brazil, I expand on these important financial and legal practices to include an often-ignored gendered site of elite reproduction: processes of self-cultivation to accrue interiority currency, as practiced by wealthy parents (especially mothers) in the socialization of family heirs. In this article, I analyze the intersection of wealth, gender, and th...
Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies
This introductory essay outlines and contributes to ful ll the major goals of this special issue:... more This introductory essay outlines and contributes to ful ll the major goals of this special issue: 1) The examination of whiteness in Latin America in its articulation with broader social hierarchies, and 2) The development of a conceptual and theoretical roadmap for the study of whiteness in the region. The essay is divided into ve substantive sections through which we develop our main arguments. In the rst section, we o er a brief and admittedly incomplete overview of the literature on race in Latin America, paying particular attention to how whiteness was, until recently, rendered peripheral or entirely absent. In the second section, we consider the concept of 'ordinary whiteness' and its usefulness for capturing the often taken-for-granted aspects of white privilege and the everyday ways through which whiteness organizes routines, perspectives, subjectivities, and a ects. In the third section, we approach the intersection of race and class to examine the materiality of whiteness in the multiple forms of economic, cultural, and symbolic capital. In the fourth section, we examine the politics of race, space, and (im)mobility in the production of whiteness in the region. In the last part, we conclude with a commentary on the methodological and epistemological challenges of studying whiteness in Latin America.
Uploads
Papers by Ana Ramos-Zayas