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The Caribbean Carretera : Race, Space and Social Liminality in Costa Rica
Author(s) -
Sharman Russell Leigh
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
bulletin of latin american research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1470-9856
pISSN - 0261-3050
DOI - 10.1111/1470-9856.00004
Subject(s) - communitas , liminality , mainstream , sociology , gender studies , ambiguity , race (biology) , context (archaeology) , latin americans , state (computer science) , geography , ethnology , anthropology , political science , archaeology , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , computer science , law
A single highway connects the Caribbean province of Limón to mainstream society in the highlands of Costa Rica. This paper explores the ways in which that highway affects the status hierarchy of mainstream society in Costa Rica, and how the construction of whiteness as an unexamined racial qualifier for total social incorporation constrains the perception of blacks as social liminars and blackness as a state of communitas. The argument elaborates the work of Victor Turner on ritual liminality to suggest the structural ambiguity of Afro‐Latin Americans in the context of Costa Rica.