City of Flowers ─ An Ethnography of Social and Economic Change in Costa Rica's Central Valley

City of Flowers is an ethnographic study of social and economic change in Costa Rica. Rather than investigate how macroeconomic forces bear down on workers and households, this book explores how individuals and households give meaning and shape to neoliberalism as it evolves over time. Drawing on twenty years of field work and 100 life histories of people living in one Costa Rican city, the book considers how individuals in four different class locations negotiate the economic changes going on around them. Author Susan E. Mannon argues that these responses are bound up in class, race, and gender aspirations and anxieties.

City of Flowers is a volume in the ISSUES OF GLOBALIZATION: CASE STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY ANTHROPOLOGYseries, which examines the experiences of individual communities in our contemporary world. Each volume offers a brief and engaging exploration of a particular issue arising from globalization and its cultural, political, and economic effects on certain peoples or groups.

Susan E. Mannon is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Her work has been published inGender & Society and Human Organization.