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constructing local identities in a revolutionary nation: the cultural politics of the artisan class in Nicaragua, 1979‐90
Author(s) -
FIELD LES W.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1995.22.4.02a00070
Subject(s) - subaltern , ideology , politics , ethnic group , gender studies , sociology , identity (music) , elite , consciousness , identity politics , class (philosophy) , class consciousness , anthropology , political science , law , aesthetics , psychology , philosophy , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science
During the Nicaraguan Revolution (1979‐90), the Sandinista government was simultaneously committed to a politics of class consciousness and a nation‐building project informed by an indigenista ideology. Western Nicaraguan artisan communities, a heterogeneous social group with variable and distinctive cultural practices, responded to the Sandinista Revolution by creating a union that represented artisans' interests in terms of class rather than ethnicity, which has historically been a marker of subordinate status. Through an analysis of a particular history in which class identity became salient, in this article I stress not only the fluidity of local identities, but also underscore ways in which anthropology may be complicit in nation‐building projects that maintain the subaltern position of peoples among whom anthropologists work.