R Yeh
Biographic Data
| ID | 35216 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Yeh |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Yeh |
| SIGNATURE | YEH R |
| AFFILIATIONS | El Colegio de México |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1818-8059 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Ghost deixis and the public secret in Tijuana, Mexico
Through analysis of one interview, this paper explores ghost deixis-the act of pointing to and, I argue, iconically embodying imaginary or absent objects-in the articulation of a public secret: governmental responsibility for the deaths caused by a 1980 flood in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. My interlocutor struggles against the dominant evidentiary regime of the public sphere, which shapes our interaction both via the interview genre itsel…
Una soberanía emergente: Interrupciones E Impases en Las Interacciones Con Funcionaries Públiques
procesos burocrticos-remite en su sentido ms profundo a los pasos, al fluir (aunque sea lento) y al transcurrir del tiempo y del movimiento: "cada uno de los pasos o diligencias que hay que recorrer en un asunto hasta su conclusin; paso de una parte a otra, o de una cosa a otra" (RAE s. f.)
La (no-)ciudadanía: Un interrogatorio en la frontera México-Estados Unidos
Este ensayo examina la narrativa de una joven de ascendencia mexicana, nacida en Estados Unidos, sobre un interrogatorio al cual fue sometida al entrar a su país natal desde México, donde había crecido. Mediante su fijación en el intercambio de preguntas y respuestas, el interrogatorio divide y hasta desaparece a le sujete de la interrogación, transformando así un procedimiento burocrático en un lugar de manifestación de la soberanía estatal, clá…
Espectáculo de matar. Posicionamientos frente a la violencia estatal estadounidense en la frontera norte de México
En la frontera México-Estados Unidos, sucede con cierta regularidad que oficiales migratorios estadounidenses maten a ciudadanos mexicanos. Este ensayo explora etnográficamente cómo, desde el lado mexicano de la frontera, los espectadores de esta violencia toman posición ante ella. En Tijuana, ciudad colindante con San Diego, California, muchos residentes se representan como parte de un "nosotros" local que excluye a los migrantes hacia Estados U…
Immigration
In recent years, linguistic anthropology has honed a powerful theoretical and ethnographic approach to social processes of immigration, with broad implications for interdisciplinary and public debates on the topic. After situating “immigration” as a highly particular lens onto human mobilities, this entry sketches the historical development of the subdiscipline's conceptual toolkit for grappling with the topic and reviews how current work is shif…
Anacleto. El tiempo y el don en una ruta del transporte público (Tijuana, México)
En Tijuana, en la frontera México-Estados Unidos, desvencijados camiones conectan la periferia urbana con una de las garitas terrestres más transitadas del mundo. Estas rutas conformanlos estratos más bajos del sistema de movilidad fronteriza; en ellas, el imperativo de la movilidad capitalista —convertida por la frontera en un valor supremo— lleva la explotación laboral a un extremo y fragiliza la solidaridad entre los trabajadores. Entre ellos,…
Narrative Flight: Comics, Cartels, and Crowds Across 40 Years of Crisis in Mexico
In 2015, drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s escape from prison provoked a fan frenzy that played out in public demonstrations as well as social and mass media. In this article, I argue that this episode must be understood as symptomatic of a long-term transformation of Mexico’s public sphere. The waves of economic crisis that began in the late 1970s unmoored personal desires and aspirations from the promises of the nation-state. The publ…
Three Types of Traffic in Tijuana
In Tijuana, across the US-Mexico border from San Diego, California, transnational flows precipitate anxieties over autonomous agency. This essay explores how these anxieties afflict not just individual “I”s but the city’s “we”s as well. Due to pressures associated with different types of traffic—from ideals of citizenship in automotive traffic, to neoliberal demands to economize time in industrial supply-chain provisioning, to efforts to establis…
La Racha: Speed and Violence in Tijuana
Perched at the edge of California, Tijuana occupies a strategic location for capitalist mobilities of all sorts. This essay examines how the violence of drug trafficking and the speed of the transnational assembly plants came into resonance during a period often known locally as the racha , or streak, of violence, when Mexico’s so-called war on drug trafficking was perceived by many to be at its worst. The semiotic underpinnings of the racha , I …
Visas, Jokes, and Contraband: Citizenship and Sovereignty at the Mexico–U.S. Border
This article explores citizenship and sovereignty at the Mexico–U.S. border through jokes told about and around checkpoint encounters—most centrally, those staged at the main port of entry connecting Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California. In Tijuana, I argue, U.S. state recognition validates the proper, middle-class citizenship of Mexicans resident in Mexico. Attitudes towards the United States, however, remain ambivalent. I begin by explori…
On the Possibility of Imagining an Open Border
In Tijuana, Mexico, middle-class desires for an open border with neighboring San Diego, California, are riddled with tensions and contradictions that derive from the way in which local ideals of citizenship are entangled with securitized US entry protocols: legal access to the US is basic for local belonging. This article examines the limitations that haunt both these tijuanenses' nostalgic memories of free passage in the past and their projects …
Commensuration in a Mexican Border City: Currencies, Consumer Goods, and Languages
In Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego, California, dollars and pesos, English and Spanish, US and Mexican commodities circulate apace. Moving beyond both the old fascination with transnational flows and the emphasis on enforcement and prohibition in current research on international borders, this article examines the everyday pragmatics involved in engaging these disparate forms. In multiple contexts and for varied reasons, actors …
La calle es un río: El Público De Los (Narco)corridos Como El Pueblo
Through detailed analysis of some (narco)corridos, along with the practice of taking them up and relating them to daily life, this essay explores how this musical and narrative genre interpellates its public as “el pueblo” (the people). Relying on the linguistic anthropological perspective on publics as reflexive entities, formed in the circulation of discourse, it examines the paradoxical emergence of el pueblo amidst ideologies that emphasize t…
Two Publics in a Mexican Border City
In the Mexican border city of Tijuana, two publics contend to represent the city as a whole. One styles itself after the classic bourgeois public sphere, showing the continued relevance of this model even in an only ambivalently Western society such as Mexico's. The other, taking shape through genres of hearsay, significantly expands received conceptions of publicity. Ethnographic examination of the two publics together renders a picture of the p…
We're Mexican Too: Publicity and Status at the International Line
A series of ethnographic examples, all related to a demonstration at the International Port of Entry connecting Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego, California, show the importance for Tijuana's public sphere of the distinction between documented and undocumented status vis-à-vis the United States. They also show how Tijuana's documented public reproduces itself across a range of communicative genres and sites, from a newspaper poll, to face-to-face di…
Visas, Jokes, and Contraband: Citizenship and Sovereignty at the Mexico–U.S. Border
This article explores citizenship and sovereignty at the Mexico–U.S. border through jokes told about and around checkpoint encounters—most centrally, those staged at the main port of entry connecting Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California. In Tijuana, I argue, U.S. state recognition validates the proper, middle-class citizenship of Mexicans resident in Mexico. Attitudes towards the United States, however, remain ambivalent. I begin by explori…
Two Publics in a Mexican Border City
In the Mexican border city of Tijuana, two publics contend to represent the city as a whole. One styles itself after the classic bourgeois public sphere, showing the continued relevance of this model even in an only ambivalently Western society such as Mexico's. The other, taking shape through genres of hearsay, significantly expands received conceptions of publicity. Ethnographic examination of the two publics together renders a picture of the p…
Commensuration in a Mexican Border City: Currencies, Consumer Goods, and Languages
In Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego, California, dollars and pesos, English and Spanish, US and Mexican commodities circulate apace. Moving beyond both the old fascination with transnational flows and the emphasis on enforcement and prohibition in current research on international borders, this article examines the everyday pragmatics involved in engaging these disparate forms. In multiple contexts and for varied reasons, actors …
We're Mexican Too: Publicity and Status at the International Line
A series of ethnographic examples, all related to a demonstration at the International Port of Entry connecting Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego, California, show the importance for Tijuana's public sphere of the distinction between documented and undocumented status vis-à-vis the United States. They also show how Tijuana's documented public reproduces itself across a range of communicative genres and sites, from a newspaper poll, to face-to-face di…
La Racha: Speed and Violence in Tijuana
Perched at the edge of California, Tijuana occupies a strategic location for capitalist mobilities of all sorts. This essay examines how the violence of drug trafficking and the speed of the transnational assembly plants came into resonance during a period often known locally as the racha , or streak, of violence, when Mexico’s so-called war on drug trafficking was perceived by many to be at its worst. The semiotic underpinnings of the racha , I …
On the Possibility of Imagining an Open Border
In Tijuana, Mexico, middle-class desires for an open border with neighboring San Diego, California, are riddled with tensions and contradictions that derive from the way in which local ideals of citizenship are entangled with securitized US entry protocols: legal access to the US is basic for local belonging. This article examines the limitations that haunt both these tijuanenses' nostalgic memories of free passage in the past and their projects …
Espectáculo de matar. Posicionamientos frente a la violencia estatal estadounidense en la frontera norte de México
En la frontera México-Estados Unidos, sucede con cierta regularidad que oficiales migratorios estadounidenses maten a ciudadanos mexicanos. Este ensayo explora etnográficamente cómo, desde el lado mexicano de la frontera, los espectadores de esta violencia toman posición ante ella. En Tijuana, ciudad colindante con San Diego, California, muchos residentes se representan como parte de un "nosotros" local que excluye a los migrantes hacia Estados U…
La calle es un río: El Público De Los (Narco)corridos Como El Pueblo
Through detailed analysis of some (narco)corridos, along with the practice of taking them up and relating them to daily life, this essay explores how this musical and narrative genre interpellates its public as “el pueblo” (the people). Relying on the linguistic anthropological perspective on publics as reflexive entities, formed in the circulation of discourse, it examines the paradoxical emergence of el pueblo amidst ideologies that emphasize t…
We're Mexican Too: Publicity and Status at the International Line
A series of ethnographic examples, all related to a demonstration at the International Port of Entry connecting Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego, California, show the importance for Tijuana's public sphere of the distinction between documented and undocumented status vis-à-vis the United States. They also show how Tijuana's documented public reproduces itself across a range of communicative genres and sites, from a newspaper poll, to face-to-face di…
Two Publics in a Mexican Border City
In the Mexican border city of Tijuana, two publics contend to represent the city as a whole. One styles itself after the classic bourgeois public sphere, showing the continued relevance of this model even in an only ambivalently Western society such as Mexico's. The other, taking shape through genres of hearsay, significantly expands received conceptions of publicity. Ethnographic examination of the two publics together renders a picture of the p…
La calle es un río: El Público De Los (Narco)corridos Como El Pueblo
Through detailed analysis of some (narco)corridos, along with the practice of taking them up and relating them to daily life, this essay explores how this musical and narrative genre interpellates its public as “el pueblo” (the people). Relying on the linguistic anthropological perspective on publics as reflexive entities, formed in the circulation of discourse, it examines the paradoxical emergence of el pueblo amidst ideologies that emphasize t…
Commensuration in a Mexican Border City: Currencies, Consumer Goods, and Languages
In Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego, California, dollars and pesos, English and Spanish, US and Mexican commodities circulate apace. Moving beyond both the old fascination with transnational flows and the emphasis on enforcement and prohibition in current research on international borders, this article examines the everyday pragmatics involved in engaging these disparate forms. In multiple contexts and for varied reasons, actors …
La Racha: Speed and Violence in Tijuana
Perched at the edge of California, Tijuana occupies a strategic location for capitalist mobilities of all sorts. This essay examines how the violence of drug trafficking and the speed of the transnational assembly plants came into resonance during a period often known locally as the racha , or streak, of violence, when Mexico’s so-called war on drug trafficking was perceived by many to be at its worst. The semiotic underpinnings of the racha , I …
Visas, Jokes, and Contraband: Citizenship and Sovereignty at the Mexico–U.S. Border
This article explores citizenship and sovereignty at the Mexico–U.S. border through jokes told about and around checkpoint encounters—most centrally, those staged at the main port of entry connecting Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, California. In Tijuana, I argue, U.S. state recognition validates the proper, middle-class citizenship of Mexicans resident in Mexico. Attitudes towards the United States, however, remain ambivalent. I begin by explori…
On the Possibility of Imagining an Open Border
In Tijuana, Mexico, middle-class desires for an open border with neighboring San Diego, California, are riddled with tensions and contradictions that derive from the way in which local ideals of citizenship are entangled with securitized US entry protocols: legal access to the US is basic for local belonging. This article examines the limitations that haunt both these tijuanenses' nostalgic memories of free passage in the past and their projects …
Three Types of Traffic in Tijuana
In Tijuana, across the US-Mexico border from San Diego, California, transnational flows precipitate anxieties over autonomous agency. This essay explores how these anxieties afflict not just individual “I”s but the city’s “we”s as well. Due to pressures associated with different types of traffic—from ideals of citizenship in automotive traffic, to neoliberal demands to economize time in industrial supply-chain provisioning, to efforts to establis…
Narrative Flight: Comics, Cartels, and Crowds Across 40 Years of Crisis in Mexico
In 2015, drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s escape from prison provoked a fan frenzy that played out in public demonstrations as well as social and mass media. In this article, I argue that this episode must be understood as symptomatic of a long-term transformation of Mexico’s public sphere. The waves of economic crisis that began in the late 1970s unmoored personal desires and aspirations from the promises of the nation-state. The publ…
Immigration
In recent years, linguistic anthropology has honed a powerful theoretical and ethnographic approach to social processes of immigration, with broad implications for interdisciplinary and public debates on the topic. After situating “immigration” as a highly particular lens onto human mobilities, this entry sketches the historical development of the subdiscipline's conceptual toolkit for grappling with the topic and reviews how current work is shif…
Anacleto. El tiempo y el don en una ruta del transporte público (Tijuana, México)
En Tijuana, en la frontera México-Estados Unidos, desvencijados camiones conectan la periferia urbana con una de las garitas terrestres más transitadas del mundo. Estas rutas conformanlos estratos más bajos del sistema de movilidad fronteriza; en ellas, el imperativo de la movilidad capitalista —convertida por la frontera en un valor supremo— lleva la explotación laboral a un extremo y fragiliza la solidaridad entre los trabajadores. Entre ellos,…
Espectáculo de matar. Posicionamientos frente a la violencia estatal estadounidense en la frontera norte de México
En la frontera México-Estados Unidos, sucede con cierta regularidad que oficiales migratorios estadounidenses maten a ciudadanos mexicanos. Este ensayo explora etnográficamente cómo, desde el lado mexicano de la frontera, los espectadores de esta violencia toman posición ante ella. En Tijuana, ciudad colindante con San Diego, California, muchos residentes se representan como parte de un "nosotros" local que excluye a los migrantes hacia Estados U…
Una soberanía emergente: Interrupciones E Impases en Las Interacciones Con Funcionaries Públiques
procesos burocrticos-remite en su sentido ms profundo a los pasos, al fluir (aunque sea lento) y al transcurrir del tiempo y del movimiento: "cada uno de los pasos o diligencias que hay que recorrer en un asunto hasta su conclusin; paso de una parte a otra, o de una cosa a otra" (RAE s. f.)
La (no-)ciudadanía: Un interrogatorio en la frontera México-Estados Unidos
Este ensayo examina la narrativa de una joven de ascendencia mexicana, nacida en Estados Unidos, sobre un interrogatorio al cual fue sometida al entrar a su país natal desde México, donde había crecido. Mediante su fijación en el intercambio de preguntas y respuestas, el interrogatorio divide y hasta desaparece a le sujete de la interrogación, transformando así un procedimiento burocrático en un lugar de manifestación de la soberanía estatal, clá…
Ghost deixis and the public secret in Tijuana, Mexico
Through analysis of one interview, this paper explores ghost deixis-the act of pointing to and, I argue, iconically embodying imaginary or absent objects-in the articulation of a public secret: governmental responsibility for the deaths caused by a 1980 flood in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. My interlocutor struggles against the dominant evidentiary regime of the public sphere, which shapes our interaction both via the interview genre itsel…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Art (6 works) · Media studies (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Social science (5 works) · Anthropology (4 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (4 works) · Humanities (4 works)