Peruvian Street Lives

Culture, Power, and Economy among Market Women of Cuzco

Linda J. Seligmann

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780252071676
  9780252029011
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252054228
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Women in Business
• Index: Social Sciences

For more than twenty years, Linda J. Seligmann walked the streets of Peru in city and countryside alike, talking to the women who work in the informal and open-air markets in Cuzco's Andean highlands. Her combination of ethnographic analysis, insightful and human vignettes, and superb photographs offers a humane yet incisive portrait of the women's lives against the backdrop of globalization and other powerful forces.

In Peruvian Street Lives, Seligmann argues that the sometimes invisible and informal economic, social, and political networks market women establish may appear disorderly and chaotic, but in fact often keep dysfunctional economies and corrupt bureaucracies from utterly destroying the ability of citizens to survive from day to day. Seligmann asks why the constructive efforts of market women to make a living provoke such negative social perceptions from some members of Peruvian society, who see them as symbols and actual catalysts of social disorder. At the same time, Seligmann shows how market women eke out a living, combat discrimination, and transgress racial and gender ideologies within the rich and expressive cultural traditions they have developed.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Market Spaces and Market Places
• 2. Dried Goods, Soup, and Fried Eggs: Exchange Relations
• 3. Bitter Salt: Household Structures and Gender Ideologies
• 4. Straw Hats: The World of Wholesalers
• 5. Harpies and the Empty, Dirty, Overpriced Bread Basket: Regulating the Market Chain
• 6. Sharks: Loan and Credit Arrangements
• 7. Talking Brew, Butchering Patience: Conversations in the Marketplace
• 8. Race Recipes: Alliances and Animosity
• 9. Angels and Saints: Popular Religiosity
• 10. Two-Way Streets: Political Action
• Conclusion: What’s in Store?
• References Cited
• Index