Finding Our Place: Reconstructing Community through Oral History

Abstract "Finding Our Place: Reconstructing Community throughOral History," analyzes how oral histories not only give newmeaning to places, but play a significant role in locating sitesspecific in the development of the Spanish-language music industry.These oral histories chronicle the emergence and growth of businesses,particularly their role in maintaining the economic and socialinfrastructure of Mexican American communities throughout southTexas. The use of oral history interviews proved the only avenueof documenting Mexican American rural communities, singers,and businesswomen finding that culture means turning our attentionto parks, church halls, cantinas, and dance halls. These placesgather significance when an experience is attached, and embodya sense of communal or shared space. Focusing on women in themusic industry, cantantes [singers] and businesswomen illustratedhow they negotiated travel, interaction with audiences, andexperiences on the stage. Though many of the interviewees expressedtheir distrust of the oral historian initially, stemming frompoor treatment in the music industry, their reluctance gaveway after hours of interviewing by the oral historian. Importantto this study, their narratives pinpointed the existence ofpopular socializing spots in south Texas small towns and surroundingcommunities.     

Small Product,Big Issues: Value Contestations and Cultural Identities in Cross-border Commodity Networks

This article follows the trajectory of maize husks from their production sites in rural Western Mexico to diverse consumption and commercialization locales both within the country and in the United States, showing how the uses and meanings of specific products are continuously reassembled and transformed within the livelihoods and social networks of Mexicans living in a transnational world. By highlighting the multiplicities and ambiguities of social value and cultural identities implicit in the workings of commodity chains and globalization processes, the study leads to a questioning of commodity-chain analysis. It also challenges theories of cultural production and circulation based on a unified and hierarchical system of value.