Stuart Rockefeller, "House, Field, Bolivia, Buenos Aires: Performing Geographies"

Stuart Rockefeller is an anthropologist in Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. His research involves Bolivians, both in Bolivia and Argentina. His first book (to be published Spring 2010) is about the local and transnational spatial practices of the people of the indigenous highland community of Quirpini. Rockefeller shows how their spatial practices play a crucial role in producing the places they move through, from houses to the Argentine border to the city of Buenos Aires. Currently, he is doing research in preparation for fieldwork on Bolivian immigrant participation in the vibrant social movements of Buenos Aires. Rockefeller has also done work on folkloric representations of culture, the political possibilities of the MAS government in Bolivia, and the role of hearsay both in rural Andean society and in anthropological writing. Rockefeller received his MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago; he has recently taught at Haverford College and Fordham University. He is the board chair of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).Highlighting the role of mobility and perfomativity in making the locations inhabited by the campesinos of Quirpini, Bolivia, this paper presents an approach to the lived space of transnational communities that can grasp the interdependence of places of different scales and cultural realms.Co-sponsored by Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshops