Peruvian Street Lives: Culture, Power and Economy among Market Women of Cuzco (review)
Open-air markets are a challenge to the scholarly writer. Experientially, they are an assault on the senses, stimulating and overwhelming. But beneath the surface lies a complex structure that offers daunting problems to the analyst, comprising as it does layer upon layer of activities, networks, and relationships that are at once public and private, formal and informal. For the most part, despite being such a familiar and highly visible aspect of the cities where they operate, these institutions remain woefully understudied, their rich social lives undocumented and their economic import unknown. The written records that do exist tend towards two extremes: the occasional vivid but impressionistic glimpses found in travel books, and the sporadically published, dryly analytical studies produced by development experts. Linda Seligmann's ethnography of market women in Cuzco, Peru easily bridges these two extremes. As a cultural anthropologist, she is both an alert observer who has participated in the day-to-day life of the markets for many years, and a careful researcher who provides background information on the social, economic, religious and political life of the women who work in them. Her book is generously filled with lively details that make Cuzco come alive for the reader, but she also scrupulously attempts to explain many aspects of market organization that are invisible to the casual onlooker.