Monica Dehart
Biographic Data
| ID | 109712 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Monica Dehart |
| GIVEN NAMES | Monica |
| FAMILY NAME | Dehart |
| SIGNATURE | DEHART M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Puget Sound |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5953-833X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The re‐sinification of San José's Chinatown
The Costa Rican Chinatown inaugurated in 2012 as a project of the San José mayor, is generally agreed to have been a failure, neither able to maintain Chinese businesses nor to draw new local consumers or foreign tourists. Since 2021, however, the district has rebounded in ways that accentuate changing Chinese cultural politics. Through the notion of re‐sinification, this article highlights both the growing ownership of the district by local and …
The Tropical Silk Road
Reorienting transpacific commerce
Over the last 16 years, Central American governments have increasingly embraced diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China to foster economic opportunities and national development. This analysis builds on ethnographic research in Costa Rica and Guatemala to trace the kinds of entrepreneurialism Central American governments are mobilizing to foment these transpacific commercial relations. This article explores those transpacific spa…
Transpacific Developments
This book intervenes in the debates of China's growing presence in Latin America with original ethnographic research that challenges conventional thinking about who and what constitutes Chinese development in Central America, how it is perceived locally, and what it portends for the future. The book makes visible the history of transregional encounters and relations that have produced local development, including Central America's partnership wit…
Ethnic Entrepreneurs
Ethnic Entrepreneurs examines how diverse groups, including indigenous communities in Latin America and Latino communities in the United States, have become visible and valuable as agents of economic development in Latin America in recent years
Paisanos Chinos
Imagining Asia in the Americas
Imagining Asia in the Americas (2016) is an ambitious edited volume published as part of Rutgers’ Asian Studies Today series. The project emerged out of conversations that developed over four years
How Development Projects Persist
Reviewed by: How Development Projects Persist: Everyday Negotiations with Guatemalan NGOs by Erin Beck Monica DeHart Erin Beck, How Development Projects Persist: Everyday Negotiations with Guatemalan NGOs. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. 280 pp. Poverty alleviation, empowerment, participation, and microcredit are just a few of the buzzwords associated with the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Global South during t…
Chino Tico Routes and Repertoires
Aunque las comunidades chinas diaspóricas tengan raíces en Centro América desde el siglo diecinueve, la creciente relación contemporánea entre China e América Latina ha asignado un nuevo valor a la cultura china dentro de esta relación. En este ensayo, analizo cómo una nueva generación de costarricenses de descendencia china concibe, practica, y proyecta su identidad étnica para cultivar una ventaja económica dentro de las nuevas iniciativas tran…
Who Speaks for China
Drawing on ethnographic analysis of a Confucius Institute and two private schools, this article analyzes how diverse Chinese language institutes in Costa Rica have sought to capitalize on a growing local interest in learning Mandarin Chinese. It argues that a shifting global geopolitics has increased the perceived value of Chinese language acquisition and, thus, the stakes for language institutes seeking to assert their cultural authority as legi…
Costa Rica's Chinatown
Inaugurated in its capital city of San José in 2012, Costa Rica's Chinatown represents the newest addition to a list of over 100 Chinatowns worldwide. Through ethnographic research on the project's construction, public debates, and fall-out, this paper analyzes how municipal efforts to enact urban revitalization were tied to a changing global landscape increasingly defined by China. In particular, I examine how planners, urban citizens, and ethni…
Remodelling the Global Development Landscape
China's explosive growth and growing international influence have prompted policy makers and scholars to question how that country will reshape the global development landscape. While Western observers have used the concept of the China Model to describe China's development strategies and the potential threat they pose to Western liberal traditions, Chinese policy makers have promoted South–South cooperation to emphasise China's goal of a harmoni…
Fried Chicken orPop? Redefining Development and Ethnicity in Totonicapán
This article draws on ethnographic research with a K'iche' community development organisation in the rural department of Totonicapán to examine how neoliberal development policies in post-conflict Guatemala both enabled and problematised grassroots ethnic development strategies. Specifically, this study analyses efforts by the Cooperation for the Rural Development of the West (CDRO) to operationalise Maya culture as a tool for development through…
Nations of Emigrants
A Contemporary Micropolitics of Indigeneity
Contemporary studies of the relationship between indigeneity and neoliberalism in Latin America have focused primarily on how indigenous groups have negotiated the contradictory effects of political decentralization and multicultural reforms, which both recognize and yet continue to exclude indigenous subjects. In order to more fully comprehend the nature and the implications of these transformations in governance, as well as their relationship t…
Notes on the Anthropology of Neoliberalism
Re-Locating Gender in Latin America. A Review Essay
What role do specific geographic, political, and historical contexts play in how gendered identities and practices are mobilized to negotiate larger structures of inequality? Through innovative efforts to come to terms with the very contingent and situated nature of gender formation, four recent books reconfirm the important contributions of gender studies of Latin America to feminist studies in general. These texts apply unique methods of analys…
Hermano Entrepreneurs
On a balmy September morning in 2003, I arrived at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to attend the launching of an innovative development initiative. This invitation-only event was advertised as a novel effort to promote "the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals through mobilizing the technological, entrepreneurial, and professional expertise and resources of Diaspora networks" (UNICT, "Digital Bridge"). Based on the successf…
"Hermano Entrepreneurs!" Constructing a Latino Diaspora across the Digital Divide
"Hermano Entrepreneurs!" Constructing a Latino Diaspora across the Digital Divide Monica DeHart (bio) On a balmy September morning in 2003, I arrived at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to attend the launching of an innovative development initiative. This invitation-only event was advertised as a novel effort to promote "the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals through mobilizing the technological, entrepreneurial, and profe…
Notes on the Anthropology of Neoliberalism
Costa Rica's Chinatown
Inaugurated in its capital city of San José in 2012, Costa Rica's Chinatown represents the newest addition to a list of over 100 Chinatowns worldwide. Through ethnographic research on the project's construction, public debates, and fall-out, this paper analyzes how municipal efforts to enact urban revitalization were tied to a changing global landscape increasingly defined by China. In particular, I examine how planners, urban citizens, and ethni…
Remodelling the Global Development Landscape
China's explosive growth and growing international influence have prompted policy makers and scholars to question how that country will reshape the global development landscape. While Western observers have used the concept of the China Model to describe China's development strategies and the potential threat they pose to Western liberal traditions, Chinese policy makers have promoted South–South cooperation to emphasise China's goal of a harmoni…
A Contemporary Micropolitics of Indigeneity
Contemporary studies of the relationship between indigeneity and neoliberalism in Latin America have focused primarily on how indigenous groups have negotiated the contradictory effects of political decentralization and multicultural reforms, which both recognize and yet continue to exclude indigenous subjects. In order to more fully comprehend the nature and the implications of these transformations in governance, as well as their relationship t…
Chino Tico Routes and Repertoires
Aunque las comunidades chinas diaspóricas tengan raíces en Centro América desde el siglo diecinueve, la creciente relación contemporánea entre China e América Latina ha asignado un nuevo valor a la cultura china dentro de esta relación. En este ensayo, analizo cómo una nueva generación de costarricenses de descendencia china concibe, practica, y proyecta su identidad étnica para cultivar una ventaja económica dentro de las nuevas iniciativas tran…
Reorienting transpacific commerce
Over the last 16 years, Central American governments have increasingly embraced diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China to foster economic opportunities and national development. This analysis builds on ethnographic research in Costa Rica and Guatemala to trace the kinds of entrepreneurialism Central American governments are mobilizing to foment these transpacific commercial relations. This article explores those transpacific spa…
Who Speaks for China
Drawing on ethnographic analysis of a Confucius Institute and two private schools, this article analyzes how diverse Chinese language institutes in Costa Rica have sought to capitalize on a growing local interest in learning Mandarin Chinese. It argues that a shifting global geopolitics has increased the perceived value of Chinese language acquisition and, thus, the stakes for language institutes seeking to assert their cultural authority as legi…
Fried Chicken orPop? Redefining Development and Ethnicity in Totonicapán
This article draws on ethnographic research with a K'iche' community development organisation in the rural department of Totonicapán to examine how neoliberal development policies in post-conflict Guatemala both enabled and problematised grassroots ethnic development strategies. Specifically, this study analyses efforts by the Cooperation for the Rural Development of the West (CDRO) to operationalise Maya culture as a tool for development through…
"Hermano Entrepreneurs!" Constructing a Latino Diaspora across the Digital Divide
"Hermano Entrepreneurs!" Constructing a Latino Diaspora across the Digital Divide Monica DeHart (bio) On a balmy September morning in 2003, I arrived at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to attend the launching of an innovative development initiative. This invitation-only event was advertised as a novel effort to promote "the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals through mobilizing the technological, entrepreneurial, and profe…
Hermano Entrepreneurs
On a balmy September morning in 2003, I arrived at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to attend the launching of an innovative development initiative. This invitation-only event was advertised as a novel effort to promote "the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals through mobilizing the technological, entrepreneurial, and professional expertise and resources of Diaspora networks" (UNICT, "Digital Bridge"). Based on the successf…
"Hermano Entrepreneurs!" Constructing a Latino Diaspora across the Digital Divide
"Hermano Entrepreneurs!" Constructing a Latino Diaspora across the Digital Divide Monica DeHart (bio) On a balmy September morning in 2003, I arrived at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to attend the launching of an innovative development initiative. This invitation-only event was advertised as a novel effort to promote "the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals through mobilizing the technological, entrepreneurial, and profe…
Re-Locating Gender in Latin America. A Review Essay
What role do specific geographic, political, and historical contexts play in how gendered identities and practices are mobilized to negotiate larger structures of inequality? Through innovative efforts to come to terms with the very contingent and situated nature of gender formation, four recent books reconfirm the important contributions of gender studies of Latin America to feminist studies in general. These texts apply unique methods of analys…
Notes on the Anthropology of Neoliberalism
Nations of Emigrants
A Contemporary Micropolitics of Indigeneity
Contemporary studies of the relationship between indigeneity and neoliberalism in Latin America have focused primarily on how indigenous groups have negotiated the contradictory effects of political decentralization and multicultural reforms, which both recognize and yet continue to exclude indigenous subjects. In order to more fully comprehend the nature and the implications of these transformations in governance, as well as their relationship t…
Fried Chicken orPop? Redefining Development and Ethnicity in Totonicapán
This article draws on ethnographic research with a K'iche' community development organisation in the rural department of Totonicapán to examine how neoliberal development policies in post-conflict Guatemala both enabled and problematised grassroots ethnic development strategies. Specifically, this study analyses efforts by the Cooperation for the Rural Development of the West (CDRO) to operationalise Maya culture as a tool for development through…
Remodelling the Global Development Landscape
China's explosive growth and growing international influence have prompted policy makers and scholars to question how that country will reshape the global development landscape. While Western observers have used the concept of the China Model to describe China's development strategies and the potential threat they pose to Western liberal traditions, Chinese policy makers have promoted South–South cooperation to emphasise China's goal of a harmoni…
Costa Rica's Chinatown
Inaugurated in its capital city of San José in 2012, Costa Rica's Chinatown represents the newest addition to a list of over 100 Chinatowns worldwide. Through ethnographic research on the project's construction, public debates, and fall-out, this paper analyzes how municipal efforts to enact urban revitalization were tied to a changing global landscape increasingly defined by China. In particular, I examine how planners, urban citizens, and ethni…
Who Speaks for China
Drawing on ethnographic analysis of a Confucius Institute and two private schools, this article analyzes how diverse Chinese language institutes in Costa Rica have sought to capitalize on a growing local interest in learning Mandarin Chinese. It argues that a shifting global geopolitics has increased the perceived value of Chinese language acquisition and, thus, the stakes for language institutes seeking to assert their cultural authority as legi…
Paisanos Chinos
Imagining Asia in the Americas
Imagining Asia in the Americas (2016) is an ambitious edited volume published as part of Rutgers’ Asian Studies Today series. The project emerged out of conversations that developed over four years
How Development Projects Persist
Reviewed by: How Development Projects Persist: Everyday Negotiations with Guatemalan NGOs by Erin Beck Monica DeHart Erin Beck, How Development Projects Persist: Everyday Negotiations with Guatemalan NGOs. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. 280 pp. Poverty alleviation, empowerment, participation, and microcredit are just a few of the buzzwords associated with the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the Global South during t…
Chino Tico Routes and Repertoires
Aunque las comunidades chinas diaspóricas tengan raíces en Centro América desde el siglo diecinueve, la creciente relación contemporánea entre China e América Latina ha asignado un nuevo valor a la cultura china dentro de esta relación. En este ensayo, analizo cómo una nueva generación de costarricenses de descendencia china concibe, practica, y proyecta su identidad étnica para cultivar una ventaja económica dentro de las nuevas iniciativas tran…
Ethnic Entrepreneurs
Ethnic Entrepreneurs examines how diverse groups, including indigenous communities in Latin America and Latino communities in the United States, have become visible and valuable as agents of economic development in Latin America in recent years
Transpacific Developments
This book intervenes in the debates of China's growing presence in Latin America with original ethnographic research that challenges conventional thinking about who and what constitutes Chinese development in Central America, how it is perceived locally, and what it portends for the future. The book makes visible the history of transregional encounters and relations that have produced local development, including Central America's partnership wit…
The Tropical Silk Road
Reorienting transpacific commerce
Over the last 16 years, Central American governments have increasingly embraced diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China to foster economic opportunities and national development. This analysis builds on ethnographic research in Costa Rica and Guatemala to trace the kinds of entrepreneurialism Central American governments are mobilizing to foment these transpacific commercial relations. This article explores those transpacific spa…
The re‐sinification of San José's Chinatown
The Costa Rican Chinatown inaugurated in 2012 as a project of the San José mayor, is generally agreed to have been a failure, neither able to maintain Chinese businesses nor to draw new local consumers or foreign tourists. Since 2021, however, the district has rebounded in ways that accentuate changing Chinese cultural politics. Through the notion of re‐sinification, this article highlights both the growing ownership of the district by local and …
Political science (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · China (8 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Anthropology (6 works) · Ethnography (6 works)