Howard Campbell
Biographic Data
| ID | 3591047 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Howard Campbell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Howard |
| FAMILY NAME | Campbell |
| SIGNATURE | CAMPBELL H |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at El Paso |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3594-8494 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 191 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Precarización, movilidad y mercantilización de los caminantes venezolanos
Over the course of a decade, Venezuela has experienced the largest migratory episode in the history of the Americas. During this period, more than eight million Venezuelans have left their country, often on foot, mainly heading to neighboring nations, although many have also migrated to the United States. This highly visible diaspora has often been the target of criticism from political elites, the media, and civilians, which associate it with cr…
Sovereignty and Extortion: A New State Form in Mexico
Dilemmas of Immigrant Asylum Claims for Expert Witnesses
Expert witnesses are key players in immigration asylum proceedings. In many cases, their testimony is the difference between prompt deportation and some form of relief. However, political and economic structures overdetermine the factual and legal dimensions of immigrant asylum claims. The U.S. immigration system from its inception has been heavily politicized and discriminatory. The problem has become even more pronounced since the election of D…
Kurt Hollander’s Joyous Life and the Architecture of Sex
Black Barrio on the Border: “Blaxicans” of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
Typically, analysts perceive the U.S.-Mexico border in terms of brown and white, that is, as the place where Mexican and (White) American cultures both come together as well as divide and conflict. Although the standard emphases are beginning to change, there is still a dearth of studies of border people of African descent. The article concerns a Black barrio in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, that existed from the 1950s to the 1990s. The life …
Mexican Immigrants, Anthropology, and United States Law: Pragmatics, Dilemmas, and Ethics of Expert Witness Testimony
This article examines the use of anthropological research by expert witnesses in legal cases involving Mexican immigrants and the intellectual strategies employed to defend them as well as the obstacles such efforts confront. Expert witness research and writing in more than one hundred immigration and criminal cases is the basis for a discussion of the political and legal constraints that often lead to a particular characterization of Mexico, one…
On Narco‐coyotaje: Illicit Regimes and Their Impacts on the US–Mexico Border
Many have debated whether or not human smugglers, known as coyotes, are involved with drug trafficking organizations. Scholars have largely rejected so‐called “narcocoyotaje”, however; we hope to problematize this narrative by adding a new theoretical layer to the discussion. Namely, we explore the ways in which different criminal activities produce hierarchies and control illicit activities within the clandestine geography of the US–Mexico borde…
Illicit Economies and State(less) Geographies – The Politics of Illegality: A Commentary by Howard Campbell and Josiah Heyman
The relationship between states and illegal or illicit activities remains a relatively understudied social science subject in spite of its great cultural, political and economic importance. Drug ma
Escaping identity: Border Zones as Places of Evasion and Cultural Reinvention
The article, based on in-depth ethnographic research in the El Paso, Texas/Ciudad Juárez area, is concerned with the ways in which liminal border zones become places of cultural transformation in which groups of individuals, rather than synthetically blending two or more identities, may attempt to downplay potentially harmful or restrictive uni-dimensional identities, evade past lives, and re-create themselves anew. The argument is twofold: the r…
Is Narco-Violence inMexico Terrorism
Mexico's drug 'war' produced 100,000 deaths between 2006 and 2012. The extreme violence has raised the notion thatMexico has become a failed state wracked by terrorism. We categorise the forms of narco-violence inMexico in light of the literature on terrorism and contemporaryMexican politics. Our study suggests three overlapping dimensions of narco-violence that should be considered terrorism: (a) narco-terror as a struggle for regional political…
A Hedonic Model for Off-Campus Student Housing: The Value of Proximity to Campus
This paper presents a hedonic model for off-campus student housing. Implicit values for select structural and locational characteristics were estimated, with a special emphasis on proximity to campus. Variable data for six university markets were collected with results indicating a nonlinear relationship between rent and distance from the academic center of campus. Within one mile of campus, there was a significant premium for proximity (16.3%), …
Transnational Homelessness: Finding a Place on the US–Mexico Border
To date, research on homeless people has neglected three issues of growing importance: transnationalism, biculturalism, and the emergence of neoliberal security regimes. Homelessness is a complex and open-ended phenomenon that is too often imagined through narrow pre-existing categories or essentialized conceptions that are transcended by the actual experiences of people living in cultural and political border zones. This article attempts to addr…
Getting out of the Game: Desistance from drug trafficking
Narco-Propaganda in the Mexican “Drug War: An Anthropological Perspective
Organized crime and drug-related violence are major threats to the Mexican state and civil society. An anthropological study of the narco-propaganda (orchestrated acts of violence, videos, graffiti, signs and banners, blogs, narcocorridos, and control of the mass media) wielded by Mexican drug “cartels” suggests that, rather than just a form of criminal behavior, it is the quasi-ideological expression of criminal organizations that, along with th…
The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity
No End in Sight: Violence in Ciudad Juárez
Additional informationNotes on contributorsHoward CampbellHoward Campbell is a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas–El Paso. He is the author of Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches From the Streets of El Paso and Juárez (University of Texas Press, 2009)
Drug War Tragedy in Juárez Living Juárez: Collateral Damage in Mexico’s Drug War (A Work in Progress) . Film. Directed by Alexandra Halkin. Background music by Jeff Beck ( Emotion and Commotion ). Pro…
Building the Borderlands: A Transnational History of Irrigated Cotton along the Mexico-Texas Border by Casey Walsh
Adoring the saints: Fiestas in Central Mexico - By Yolanda Lastra, Joel Sherzer & Dina Sherzer
The Study of Borderlands Consumption: Potentials and Precautions
Land of Necessity: Consumer Culture in the United States-Mexico Borderlands
Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches from the Streets of El Paso and Juárez
Thousands of people die in drug-related violence every year in Mexico. Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, adjacent to El Paso, Texas, has become the most violent city in the Mexican drug war. Much of the cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine consumed in the United States is imported across the Mexican border, making El Paso/Juárez one of the major drug-trafficking venues in the world. In this anthropological study of drug trafficking and anti-drug law e…
The anthropology of global flows: A critical reading of Appadurai's `Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy
Arjun Appadurai's essay `Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' popularized the idea of `global flows'. He argues that these flows are `disjunctive' and `chaotic' in character and that they supersede standard geographical thinking in social-cultural analysis. Appadurai's emphasis on disjuncture prioritizes ephemeral and shifting flows, thereby underestimating the relative power of capital and the interactions between different…
Slantwise: Beyond Domination and Resistance on the Border
Drawing on extensive participant observation and interviews concerned with barriers to census enumeration in colonias (irregular migrant settlements along the United States-Mexico border) and Mexican migration to the United States, we argue that recent ethnography has overemphasized the role of domination and resistance. While power is fundamental to cultural analysis, we also need to examine behavior we call slantwise, that is, actions that are …
Cultural Seduction: American Men, Mexican Women, Cross-border Attraction
■ Recent anthropological studies have emphasized power, domination and hegemony. The US-Mexico border is a key site for ethnographic research on such issues. This article uses an ethnographic approach to examine cross-border sexual encounters in the Ciudad Juárez/El Paso area. Through a study of Anglo/Mexican sexual interactions and the blurred boundaries between the cross-border marriage market and sex tourism, I explore the cultural dimensions …
The anthropology of global flows: A critical reading of Appadurai's `Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy
Arjun Appadurai's essay `Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy' popularized the idea of `global flows'. He argues that these flows are `disjunctive' and `chaotic' in character and that they supersede standard geographical thinking in social-cultural analysis. Appadurai's emphasis on disjuncture prioritizes ephemeral and shifting flows, thereby underestimating the relative power of capital and the interactions between different…
Narco-Propaganda in the Mexican “Drug War: An Anthropological Perspective
Organized crime and drug-related violence are major threats to the Mexican state and civil society. An anthropological study of the narco-propaganda (orchestrated acts of violence, videos, graffiti, signs and banners, blogs, narcocorridos, and control of the mass media) wielded by Mexican drug “cartels” suggests that, rather than just a form of criminal behavior, it is the quasi-ideological expression of criminal organizations that, along with th…
Slantwise: Beyond Domination and Resistance on the Border
Drawing on extensive participant observation and interviews concerned with barriers to census enumeration in colonias (irregular migrant settlements along the United States-Mexico border) and Mexican migration to the United States, we argue that recent ethnography has overemphasized the role of domination and resistance. While power is fundamental to cultural analysis, we also need to examine behavior we call slantwise, that is, actions that are …
The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity
On Narco‐coyotaje: Illicit Regimes and Their Impacts on the US–Mexico Border
Many have debated whether or not human smugglers, known as coyotes, are involved with drug trafficking organizations. Scholars have largely rejected so‐called “narcocoyotaje”, however; we hope to problematize this narrative by adding a new theoretical layer to the discussion. Namely, we explore the ways in which different criminal activities produce hierarchies and control illicit activities within the clandestine geography of the US–Mexico borde…
Is Narco-Violence inMexico Terrorism
Mexico's drug 'war' produced 100,000 deaths between 2006 and 2012. The extreme violence has raised the notion thatMexico has become a failed state wracked by terrorism. We categorise the forms of narco-violence inMexico in light of the literature on terrorism and contemporaryMexican politics. Our study suggests three overlapping dimensions of narco-violence that should be considered terrorism: (a) narco-terror as a struggle for regional political…
Cultural Seduction: American Men, Mexican Women, Cross-border Attraction
■ Recent anthropological studies have emphasized power, domination and hegemony. The US-Mexico border is a key site for ethnographic research on such issues. This article uses an ethnographic approach to examine cross-border sexual encounters in the Ciudad Juárez/El Paso area. Through a study of Anglo/Mexican sexual interactions and the blurred boundaries between the cross-border marriage market and sex tourism, I explore the cultural dimensions …
Tradition and the New Social Movements: The Politics of Isthmus Zapotec Culture
A Tale of Two Families: The Mutual Construction of 'Anglo' and Mexican Ethnicities Along the US-Mexico Border
In the American Southwest and along the US–Mexico border, ‘Anglos’ and Mexicans are often viewed as the quintessential ‘others’. This ethnographic study problematises the Anglo‐Mexican opposition with ethnographic data from interviews with a Mexican farmworker family and an ‘Anglo’ farmer family of the EI Paso Lower Valley. I argue that ‘Anglo’ hegemony is not based exclusively on cultural separation but often involves hybridity (including ‘Mexic…
Escaping identity: Border Zones as Places of Evasion and Cultural Reinvention
The article, based on in-depth ethnographic research in the El Paso, Texas/Ciudad Juárez area, is concerned with the ways in which liminal border zones become places of cultural transformation in which groups of individuals, rather than synthetically blending two or more identities, may attempt to downplay potentially harmful or restrictive uni-dimensional identities, evade past lives, and re-create themselves anew. The argument is twofold: the r…
Transnational Homelessness: Finding a Place on the US–Mexico Border
To date, research on homeless people has neglected three issues of growing importance: transnationalism, biculturalism, and the emergence of neoliberal security regimes. Homelessness is a complex and open-ended phenomenon that is too often imagined through narrow pre-existing categories or essentialized conceptions that are transcended by the actual experiences of people living in cultural and political border zones. This article attempts to addr…
Chicano Lite: Mexican-American consumer culture on the border
This article is an ethnography of working-class, Mexican-American consumer patterns on the US-Mexico border. Through a study of locally-owned grocery stores, family parties and fast-food restaurants in El Paso, Texas, I examine the double-edged nature of border consumerism. Minority consumers, such as Mexican-Americans, often modify mainstream consumer products and processes to suit their own needs and values. The resultant consumer styles embody…
Recent Research on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Down By the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family. By Charles Bowden. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Pp. 433. $27.00 cloth.) Huesos en el desierto. By Sergio González Rodríguez. (Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Anagrama, 2002. Pp. 334. $18.86 paper.) Genders In Production: Making Women Workers in Mexico's Global Factories. by Leslie Salzinger. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. 217. $55.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.)…
Tribal synthesis: Piros, Mansos, and Tiwas through history
This article critically examines recent anthropological theorizing about indigenous tribalism using ethnographic and historical data on the Piro-Manso-Tiwa Indian tribe of New Mexico. Debates about constructionism, neo-tribal capitalism, and proprietary approaches to culture provide valuable insights into recent indigenous cultural claims and political struggles, but also have serious limitations. The approach taken in the article, 'tribal synthe…
Beat Mexico: Bohemia, Anthropology and `The Other
The literary turn in anthropology has provoked an examination of the textual bases of ethnography and sought alternative models for ethnographic writing in works of fiction. This article contributes to this literature through an analysis of the works and lives in Mexico of members of the Beat generation, mainly Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Hal Chase. Comparing Bohemia and anthropology, I discuss the limitations and strengths of Beat writin…
The Socorro Mission: Culture, Economic Development, and the Politics of Historic Preservation along the Río Grande/Río Bravo
El Paso is an archetypical part of what many North Americans consider the Old West. Though not as famous as the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone Park, El Paso is strongly associated in the American imaginary with western expansion and adventures among wild lands and primitive peoples (Fox, 1999; King, 2004). In U.S. cultural mythology, American history is the glorious march of Euro-American culture from its east-coast founding by the Pilgrims to its c…
Juchitan: The Politics of Cultural Revivalism in an Isthmus Zapotec Community
Illicit Economies and State(less) Geographies – The Politics of Illegality: A Commentary by Howard Campbell and Josiah Heyman
The relationship between states and illegal or illicit activities remains a relatively understudied social science subject in spite of its great cultural, political and economic importance. Drug ma
A Hedonic Model for Off-Campus Student Housing: The Value of Proximity to Campus
This paper presents a hedonic model for off-campus student housing. Implicit values for select structural and locational characteristics were estimated, with a special emphasis on proximity to campus. Variable data for six university markets were collected with results indicating a nonlinear relationship between rent and distance from the academic center of campus. Within one mile of campus, there was a significant premium for proximity (16.3%), …
A history of representations of Isthmus Zapotec women
This paper consists of a history of outsiders' representations of Isthmus Zapotec women of Oaxaca, Mexico. Isthmus Zapotec women are famous throughout Mexico and well‐known abroad because of their image as matriarchal, Amazon‐like figures. The paper traces the construction of a discourse about powerful Zapotec women from colonial times to the present. Special attention is paid to the ways in which prominent Mexican painters have depicted Zapotec …
La Cocei: Cultura y etnicidad politizadas en el istmo de Tehuantepec
Howard B. Campbell, Martha Tappan, La COCEI: cultura y etnicidad politizadas en el istmo de Tehuantepec, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, Vol. 51, No. 2, Visiones de México (Apr. - Jun., 1989), pp. 247-263
La Cocei: Cultura y etnicidad politizadas en el istmo de Tehuantepec
Howard B. Campbell, Martha Tappan, La COCEI: cultura y etnicidad politizadas en el istmo de Tehuantepec, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, Vol. 51, No. 2, Visiones de México (Apr. - Jun., 1989), pp. 247-263
Juchitan: The Politics of Cultural Revivalism in an Isthmus Zapotec Community
Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism
Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism. SCOTT COOK and LEIGH BINFORD. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. 328 pp., 28 tables, 15 b&w photos, 1 map. $'37.50 (cloth). ISBN 0‐292‐76032‐9
Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism:Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism
Tradition and the New Social Movements: The Politics of Isthmus Zapotec Culture
Zapotec Renaissance: Ethnic Politics and Cultural Revivalism in Southern Mexico
"In this outstanding ethnography, Campbell explores how the construction of identity and the politics of ethnicity provide the Zapotec a sense of local power and independence. Focuses on the important role of indigenous intellectuals and the movement for local rule that has long consumed the community and its population"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.. - http://www.loc.gov/hlas
Zapotec Struggles: Histories, Politics, and Representations from Juchitan, Oaxaca
Zapotec Struggles: Histories, Politics, and Representations from Juchitan, Oaxaca
Journal Article Zapotec Struggles: Histories, Politics, and Representations from Juchitán, Oaxaca Get access Zapotec Struggles: Histories, Politics, and Representations from Juchitán, Oaxaca. Edited by Campbell Howard et al. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993. xxvi + 317 pp. Illustrations, map, glossary, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00, cloth; $19.95, paper.) Susan Schroeder Susan Schroeder Loyola University of Chic…
The Decline of Community in Zinacantan: Economy, Public Life, and Social Stratification, 1960-1987
Images of Juchitán
Zapotec Struggles: Histories, Politics, and Representations from Juchitan, Oaxaca
A history of representations of Isthmus Zapotec women
This paper consists of a history of outsiders' representations of Isthmus Zapotec women of Oaxaca, Mexico. Isthmus Zapotec women are famous throughout Mexico and well‐known abroad because of their image as matriarchal, Amazon‐like figures. The paper traces the construction of a discourse about powerful Zapotec women from colonial times to the present. Special attention is paid to the ways in which prominent Mexican painters have depicted Zapotec …
Behind the Mexican Mountains
In 1930, anthropologists Robert Zingg and Wendell Bennett spent nine months among the Tarahumara of Chihuahua, Mexico, one of the least acculturated indigenous societies in North America. Their fieldwork resulted in The Tarahumara: An Indian Tribe of Northern Mexico (1935), a classic ethnography still familiar to anthropologists. In addition to this formal work, Zingg also penned a personal, unvarnished travelogue of his sojourn among the Tarahum…
Mexican Memoir: A Personal Account of Anthropology and Radical Politics in Oaxaca
Beat Mexico: Bohemia, Anthropology and `The Other
The literary turn in anthropology has provoked an examination of the textual bases of ethnography and sought alternative models for ethnographic writing in works of fiction. This article contributes to this literature through an analysis of the works and lives in Mexico of members of the Beat generation, mainly Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Hal Chase. Comparing Bohemia and anthropology, I discuss the limitations and strengths of Beat writin…
To See with Two Eyes: Peasant Activism & Indian Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico
To See with Two Eyes: Peasant Activism & Indian Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico
Recent Research on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Down By the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family. By Charles Bowden. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Pp. 433. $27.00 cloth.) Huesos en el desierto. By Sergio González Rodríguez. (Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Anagrama, 2002. Pp. 334. $18.86 paper.) Genders In Production: Making Women Workers in Mexico's Global Factories. by Leslie Salzinger. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. 217. $55.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.)…
Drug trafficking stories: Everyday forms of Narco-folklore on the U.S.–Mexico border
Chicano Lite: Mexican-American consumer culture on the border
This article is an ethnography of working-class, Mexican-American consumer patterns on the US-Mexico border. Through a study of locally-owned grocery stores, family parties and fast-food restaurants in El Paso, Texas, I examine the double-edged nature of border consumerism. Minority consumers, such as Mexican-Americans, often modify mainstream consumer products and processes to suit their own needs and values. The resultant consumer styles embody…
At the Anthropology Meetings
This short story uses satire to depict political and cultural posturing at the American Anthropological Association annual meetings. The story describes the encounter of a female working-class Mexican American graduate student with upper-middle-class Anglo professors and the miscommunications that ensue. The story illustrates and parodies Anglo-Mexican ethnic relations within the academy and along the U.S. Mexico border from the standpoint of a C…
The Socorro Mission: Culture, Economic Development, and the Politics of Historic Preservation along the Río Grande/Río Bravo
El Paso is an archetypical part of what many North Americans consider the Old West. Though not as famous as the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone Park, El Paso is strongly associated in the American imaginary with western expansion and adventures among wild lands and primitive peoples (Fox, 1999; King, 2004). In U.S. cultural mythology, American history is the glorious march of Euro-American culture from its east-coast founding by the Pilgrims to its c…
A Tale of Two Families: The Mutual Construction of 'Anglo' and Mexican Ethnicities Along the US-Mexico Border
In the American Southwest and along the US–Mexico border, ‘Anglos’ and Mexicans are often viewed as the quintessential ‘others’. This ethnographic study problematises the Anglo‐Mexican opposition with ethnographic data from interviews with a Mexican farmworker family and an ‘Anglo’ farmer family of the EI Paso Lower Valley. I argue that ‘Anglo’ hegemony is not based exclusively on cultural separation but often involves hybridity (including ‘Mexic…
The Grimace of Macho Ratón: Artisans, Identity and Nation in Late Twentieth-Century Western Nicaragua. Les Field
The Role of Religion on the Health Practices of Mexican Americans
Sociology (41 works) · Political science (34 works) · Law (30 works) · Politics (23 works) · Law (21 works) · Anthropology (20 works) · History (20 works) · Ethnography (13 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · History (11 works)