Ana Ramos-Zayas
Yale University, Ethnicity, Race and Migration, Faculty Member
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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... 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.
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... 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... 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? ...
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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... 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.
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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... 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...
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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... 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.
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I examine how affect and feelings, long consider the domain of individual interiority and psychology, in fact directly impact the everyday life and political economy of cities. What do individuals’ affective worlds tell us about... more
I examine how affect and feelings, long consider the domain of individual interiority and psychology, in fact directly impact the everyday life and political economy of cities. What do individuals’ affective worlds tell us about multi-scale experiences of race, gender, and sexuality in urban America? What kinds of emotional work do embodied practices of learning race and expressing adequate gender/sexual norms require? How does becoming a transnational racial and gendered subject in the U.S. impact one’s affective world and perspectives on the emotional subjectivities of others? I approach these questions by drawing from ethnographic materials gathered from fieldwork conducted in two neighborhoods –one Brazilian and one Puerto Rican- in the predominantly African American city of Newark, NJ, between 2001 and 2008. I argue that Latin American and Latino populations in urban areas of the U.S. navigate unfamiliar racial situations through the development of a quotidian emotional epistem...
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This essay examines how Latinos construct "White culture" and generate ideas of Whiteness in such a way that the identities of people racialized as "White" are not guaranteed the privileged stand of securely being the... more
This essay examines how Latinos construct "White culture" and generate ideas of Whiteness in such a way that the identities of people racialized as "White" are not guaranteed the privileged stand of securely being the racial norm. In varying de- grees, Latinos have developed complex conceptions of "WTrite cul- ture" shaped in the context of demographic and economic change, urban gentrification, and face-to-face interactions. Drawing from ethnography research in a Chicago Latino neighborhood, this ar- ticle shows that Latinos construed and articulated Whiteness as a function of power and privilege, as a multilayered "ladder" of Whiteness. Moreover, this essay contributes to the relatively new field of White critical studies by expanding the field beyond con- cerns of how Whites see racial Others or how Whites see them- selves to also include an understanding of how racial (and subor- dinate) Others (namely, those racialized as "Latinos&quo...
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Latino Urban Ethnography and the Work of Elena Padilla Edited by Merida M. Rua Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010 224 pages; $22.00 [paper] ISBN: 978-0-252-07763-0 Reviewer: Ivis Garcia, University of Illinois-ChicagoUpon... more
Latino Urban Ethnography and the Work of Elena Padilla Edited by Merida M. Rua Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010 224 pages; $22.00 [paper] ISBN: 978-0-252-07763-0 Reviewer: Ivis Garcia, University of Illinois-ChicagoUpon completion of her undergraduate work at the University of Puerto Rico, Elena Padilla migrated to the United States to pursue a master's degree in anthropology at the University of Chicago, and later went on to earn her doctorate at Columbia University. Known for her work with the Puerto Rican diaspora, and especially for her book Up from Puerto Rico, Padilla's master's thesis with the University of Chicago has gone largely unnoticed. This is the subject of Latino Ethnography and the Work of Elena Padilla, edited by Merida M. Rua.The introduction to the book, jointly authored by Rua and Arlene Torres, gives Elena Padilla's work historical perspective, a contemporary framework and a primer for future studies in Latino ethnography. Rua has brok...
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Drawing on ethnographic research conducted among parents living in the affluent neighbourhoods of Ipanema, Brazil, and El Condado, Puerto Rico, I examine how urban Latin American elites deployed their parenting practices as moral... more
Drawing on ethnographic research conducted among parents living in the affluent neighbourhoods of Ipanema, Brazil, and El Condado, Puerto Rico, I examine how urban Latin American elites deployed their parenting practices as moral justification for their racial and class privilege (what I call ‘sovereign parenting’). One way in which they do this is by producing particular forms of affective relationships with their nannies. The women these upper-class parents hired were largely dark-skinned immigrants: from the Dominican Republic, to work in El Condado, and from the Brazilian Northeast, to work in Ipanema. I demonstrate how elites cultivated a form of ‘informality’ and expressions of care in relation to childcare workers in ways that not only produced whiteness as a pillar of Latin American liberalism, but also associated whiteness with the world of interiority and personal growth.
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... 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... 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? ...
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In this article, Ana Ramos-Zayas argues that schooling cannot be divorced from the political and socioeconomic forces governing neighborhood development. She focuses on the role of grassroots activists with a nationalist agenda (i.e., in... more
In this article, Ana Ramos-Zayas argues that schooling cannot be divorced from the political and socioeconomic forces governing neighborhood development. She focuses on the role of grassroots activists with a nationalist agenda (i.e., in favor of independence for Puerto Rico) in community-based educational projects in Chicago, particularly the Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS), a compelling example of the potential of an educational project based on a nationalist ideology. For Puerto Ricans, the question of the political status of the Island—future U.S. state, commonwealth, or independent nation—has been debated for the past one hundred years. For the students and teachers of PACHS, independence, and an education based on the principles of Puerto Rican self-determination, is the only option. Ramos-Zayas argues that an oppositional education based on such a political ideology is a powerful, yet largely untapped, resource for creating successful ethnoracial youth and popular edu...
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In this book Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas explores how Puerto Ricans in Chicago construct and perform nationalism. Contrary to characterizations of nationalism as a primarily unifying force, Ramos-Zayas finds that it actually provides the... more
In this book Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas explores how Puerto Ricans in Chicago construct and perform nationalism. Contrary to characterizations of nationalism as a primarily unifying force, Ramos-Zayas finds that it actually provides the vocabulary to highlight distinctions along class, gender, racial and generational lines among Puerto Ricans, as well as between Puerto Ricans and other Latino, black and white populations. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Ramos-Zayas shows how the performance of Puerto Rican nationalism in Chicago serves as a critique of social inequality, colonialism and imperialism, allowing barrio residents and others to challenge the notion that upward social mobility is equally available to all Americans - or all Puerto Ricans. Paradoxically, however, these activists' efforts also promote upward social mobility, overturning previous notions that resentment and marginalization are the main results of nationalist strategies. Ramos-Zayas's groundbreaking work allows her here to offer one of the most original and complex analyses of contemporary nationalism and Latino identity in the United States.
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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... 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.
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This article examines everyday constructions of racial subjects, the affective worlds of those subjects, and the potential material consequences behind emotional ethos that are oftentimes in alignment with the interests of state and... more
This article examines everyday constructions of racial subjects, the affective worlds of those subjects, and the potential material consequences behind emotional ethos that are oftentimes in alignment with the interests of state and market imperatives. Under neoliberalism, there has been an intensification in the cultural standardization and organization of feelings and sentiments (Haskell 1985). I examine how feelings and sentiments intersect with everyday evaluations of racial difference and processes of racial learning, particularly among Latin American migrant and U.S.‐born Latino youth. What do individuals’ affective worlds tell us about multi‐scale experiences of race, racial ideologies, and racialization practices? What kinds of emotional work do embodied practices of learning race require? How does becoming a transnational racial subject in the United States alter one's affective world and perspectives on the emotional subjectivities of racialized others? I approach thes...
Research Interests: Sociology, Gender Studies, Anthropology, Diaspora, Racialization, and 3 moreAffect, Race, and Feeling
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EnglishIn this ethnographic study with parents living in the affluent areas of Ipanema, Brazil, and El Condado, Puerto Rico, I examine how urban Latin American elites reformulate their understandings of race and classs in relationship to... more
EnglishIn this ethnographic study with parents living in the affluent areas of Ipanema, Brazil, and El Condado, Puerto Rico, I examine how urban Latin American elites reformulate their understandings of race and classs in relationship to their parenting practices. In particular I consider how these upperclass parents interpreted their relationship with the poor, darkskin women hired to care for their children; those women were largely immigrants from the Dominican Republic, in El Condado, and migrants from the Brazilian Northeast, in Ipanema. I demonstrate how the genuinely positive feelings these elite parents harbored toward domestic workers, in fact, sustained power inequalities inherent in the parent-nanny relationship. I introduce the concept of “sovereign parenting,” as a unique characteristic of this parent-nanny relationship in Ipanema and El Condado. portuguesA partir de estudo etnografico com paises residentes nos bairros afluentes de Ipanema, no Brasil, e El Condado, em P...
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No obstante el reciente auge de trabajos academicos acerca del afecto desde una variedad de disciplinas, se ha prestado escasa atencion a la interseccion del afecto y los procesos de racializacion, ya sea en terminos historicos o en... more
No obstante el reciente auge de trabajos academicos acerca del afecto desde una variedad de disciplinas, se ha prestado escasa atencion a la interseccion del afecto y los procesos de racializacion, ya sea en terminos historicos o en contextos contemporaneos. Este articulo situa la articulacion diacronica entre raza y afecto –particularmente en terminos de las vidas cotidianas y los contextos materiales politico-economicos de las poblaciones con herencia latinoamericanos y caribenos– en los estudios antropologicos acerca de la “racializacion” y trabajos academicos contemporaneos sobre el afecto. Basandonos en una amplia lectura de las construcciones cientificas y populares del afecto entre las poblaciones latinoamericanas y de latinos en Estados Unidos, proponemos el concepto de “afecto racializado” para dar cuenta de las contradicciones inscritas en el estudio de raza y afecto, tanto por separado como en sus intersecciones. Resaltamos lo que percibimos como los dos principios basico...