Close Encounters of Empire

by Joseph, Gilbert M.; Legrand, Catherine C.; Salvatore, Ricardo D.; Rosenberg, Emily S.

• ISBN13: 9780822320999
• ISBN10: 0822320991
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-02-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

New concerns with the intersections of culture and power, historical agency, and the complexity of social and political life are producing new questions about the United Statesrs" involvement with Latin America. Turning away from political-economic models that see only domination and resistance, exploiters and victims, the contributors to this pathbreaking collection suggest alternate ways of understanding the role that U.S. actors and agencies have played in the region during the postcolonial period.Exploring a variety of nineteenth- and twentieth-century encounters in Latin America, these theoretically engaged essays by distinguished U.S. and Latin American historians and anthropologists illuminate a wide range of subjects. From the Rockefeller Foundationrs"s public health initiatives in Central America to the visual regimes of film, art, and advertisements; these essays grapple with new ways of conceptualizing public and private spheres of empire. As such,Close Encounters of Empireinitiates a dialogue between postcolonial studies and the long-standing scholarship on colonialism and imperialism in the Americas as it rethinks the cultural dimensions of nationalism and development.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Theoretical Concerns

Close Encounters: Toward a New Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations

The Decentered Center and the Expansionist Periphery: The Paradoxes of Foreign-Local Encounter

The Enterprise of Knowledge: Representational Machines of Informal Empire

Empirical Studies

Landscape and the Imperial Subject: U.S. Images of the Andes, 1859-1930

Love in the Tropics: Marriage, Divorce, and the Construction of Benevolent Colonialism in Puerto Rico, 1898-1910

Mercenaries in the Theater of War: Publicity, Technology, and the Illusion of Power during the Brazilian Naval Revolt of 1893

The Sandino Rebellion Revisited: Civil War, Imperialism, Popular Nationalism, and State Formation Muddied Up Together in the Segovias of Nicaragua, 1926-1934

The Cult of the Airplane among U.S. Military men and Dominicans during the U.S. Occupation and the Trujillo Regime

Central American Encounters with Rockefeller Public Health, 1914-1921

Living in Macondo: Economy and Culture in a United Fruit Company Banana Enclave in Colombia

From Welfare Capitalism to the Free Market in Chile: Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Copper Mines

Everyday Forms of Transnational Collaboration: U.S. Film Propaganda in Cold War Mexico

Gringo Chickens with Worms: Food and Nationalism in the Dominican Republic

Final Reflections

Turning to Culture

Social Fields and Cultural Encounters

From Reading to Seeing: Doing and Undoing Imperialism in the Visual Arts

Contributors

Index

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