Feeding Chilapa : the birth, life, and death of a Mexican region

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This smart and accessible work reinvigorates the old call for regional economic study in ethnography, as a more useful, effective explanatory framework than community-based studies or ones that make recourse to "resistance" to the state. It examining the ups and downs of rural and urban people in this region across centuries, especially agricultural productivity and rural-urban relations, and explores the problematic impacts of changes in economic and political conditions and policies up to very recent times. The study informs a distinct perspective on what motivates economic and related social behavior in regional areas of Mexico, including such things as diet, reforestation, agriculture, migration and responses to government welfare programs in regions economically transformed by globalization.