Cuba in the Special Period:Culture and Ideology in the 1990s

This collection is a multidisciplinary evaluation of the impact of market reforms in Cuba’s cultural policies and practices after the fall of the Soviet bloc. Anthropologists, musicologists, and literary, film, media and art scholars examine revolutionary discourses, representations of people and places, ideologies and practices of cultural production, dissemination and consumption, and the circulation of various cultural forms in transnational networks of publicity and exchange. These insightful contributions shed light on the changes that Cuba’s opening to global markets of mass culture brought to the cultural field during the so-called Special Period in Times of Peace.

Ariana Hernandez-Reguant is a cultural anthropologist and a professor of media studies at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of many academic as well as popular articles on Cuban music, media, and intellectual thought. A Spanish native, she spent several years in Cuba during the Special Period.