LAII Lecture Emphasizes Women's Roles in Global Commodities Production

October 30, 2014

The UNM Latin American & Iberian Institute (LAII) is pleased to announce the third presentation in its Fall 2014 Lecture Series. THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED AND WILL TAKE PLACE ON FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2014, at which time Dr. María L. Cruz-Torres will present on "The Local Dimensions of a Global Commodity: Women and Work in the Mexican Shrimp Industry." The presentation will be held from 12:00-1:00 p.m. in the LAII Conference Room. Please see the event flyer for reference.

Cruz-Torres is conducting research at UNM, and is affiliated with the LAII as a Visiting Scholar. An Associate Professor at Arizona State University, she is a cultural anthropologist whose areas of teaching and research include: political ecology; impact of globalization upon local communities and households; gender and work; gender, sustainability and the environment; and the environmental and social aspects of natural resource management. She earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers University, and has conducted anthropological ethnographic research in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and southern Florida. She is the author of Lives of Dust and Water: An Anthropology of Change and Resistance in Northwestern Mexico (University of Arizona Press) and co-editor of Gender and Sustainability: Lessons from Asia and Latin America (University of Arizona Press).

In this presentation, Cruz-Torres will analyze the manner in which women in southern Sinaloa, Mexico, were able to carve out their own space within the male-dominated fishing industry. It focuses on the many struggles and challenges that women encountered in their path towards unionization, and the many dimensions of their work as shrimp traders. Based on long-term anthropological ethnographic fieldwork and framed within a Feminist Political Ecology Approach, this presentation illustrates a case study that connects women's relations to natural resources, labor production, the economic and social reproduction of households, and their location within global, and transborder processes.