The Broken Village

Reichman (anthropology, U. of Rochester) describes the vicissitudes of the coffee-trade and economically motivated migration in the Honduran village of La Quebrada. It is essentially a work of ethnography and starts out with migrant stories, but places them in a wider context of global trade, national policies and historical trends. He considers the tensions created as migrants are forced to juggle economic motivations and social responsibilities, which generate dueling images of "needy" and "selfish" migrant-workers. He argues that the Honduran migration boom has to be placed in the context of the failure of Cold War "development", of the welfare state and the NGOs that have replaced them, and the rise of neoliberal market-driven production. He makes this argument, in part, through a micro-biography of coffee-cooperative activist Hernan Lopez. Reichman also shows how religion figures in the way that Hondurans make sense of social-disintegration and how to respond to it. He examines the differences between the austere Pentecostal church and fringe churches advocating a "prosperity gospel". The final chapter returns to coffee production and how NGOs helped to foster a new language for articulating alienation, a desire for economic justice and progressive means to it. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)