Coming of Age in Times of Crisis (PDF)

JANISE HURTIG is a Senior Researcher at the PRAIRIE Group, College of Education, University of Illinois, Chicago, where she co-directs the Community Writing and Research Project. She has conducted ethnographic and participatory action research in Venezuela, Oregon, and Chicago and is a co-editor of Gender's Place: Feminist Anthropologies of Latin America (Palgrave 2002), with Rosario Montoya and Lessie Jo Frazier.

'Through Hurtig's deft and passionate ethnography, the young men and women of Santa Lucia, Venezuela will quickly gain a prominent, if disquieting, place in the anthropological understanding of schooling and youth identity. Hurtig plumbs the particular, small contradictions of youth's educational lives to illuminate the big contradictions of global political economy, gender, and schooling. A stunning piece of longitudinal educational research - evocative, heartbreaking, but ultimately optimistic.' - Bradley A.U. Levinson, Associate Professor of Education and Anthropology, Indiana University, USA; Lead Editor of Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy

'In this vivid account of secondary school students' experiences of crisis in the Venezuelan Andes, Hurtig demonstrates close connections among state-society relations at local, national, and international levels. Hurtig's skillful analysis of the gendered dimensions of family life and secondary schooling sheds new light on questions about educational processes and social change. A must read for comparative educators, anthropologists of education, and everyone interested in schooling around the world.' - Amy Stambach, author of Lessons from Mount Kilimanjaro: Schooling, Community, and Gender in East Africa

'Hurtig cogently argues for 'patriarchy' as a useful analytic concept, and specifically 'negligent patriarchy,' as a cultural dynamic entailing both the production of desires and the normalized expectation of disappointment. This conceptual work enables her to diagnose gendered contradictions grounded in inequality and exploitation imbricated across house, street, nation, and imperialist realms. This is feminist ethnography at its most powerful.' - Lessie Jo Frazier, Assistant Professor, Gender Studies, Indiana University, USA