Chicana/o Ethnography

Abstract

Chicana/o ethnography is a subfield of Chicana/o anthropology and sociocultural anthropology. There are two ways of looking at the term Chicana/o ethnography: one, as the work conducted and written by self-identified Chicana/o anthropologists and social scientists; two, as the anthropological work produced on Chicanas/os and US-based ethnic Mexicans. Chicana/o ethnography emerges in the late 1960s with the Chicano Power movement in the United States. With the entry of Chicana/o PhDs in the social sciences and in particular anthropology during the 1960s, the field of cultural anthropology became the site of contested counter-narratives by racialized groups in the United States. Those self-identifying as Chicana/o and receiving degrees in the social sciences ushered in a critique of anthropology’s colonial and imperial legacy. In particular, conducting ethnographic fieldwork and writing ethnographies on US ethnic Mexicans by non-Mexicans came under scrutiny by Mexican Americans. Although there have been Mexican and Mexican American social scientists that have studied US Mexican communities since the late 19th century, the emergence of Chicana/o ethnography is situated out of political struggle both in Chicana/o communities and in universities throughout the United States. Since then, Chicana/o ethnography has evolved to include ethnographic studies on expressive culture and folklore, identity formation, transnational migration and communities, community studies, US-Mexico borderlands studies, social movements, and (il)legality and subject formation. Accordingly, this bibliography begins with initial texts and works that contested the ways in which anthropologists and social scientists initially viewed the US Mexican population and the politics of conducting research in Chicana/o communities. This bibliography emphasizes the field of Chicana/o anthropology as it pertains to the production of ethnographic work by Chicana/o anthropologists and the ethnographic work on Chicana/o communities, cultures, and experience. It does not encapsulate all of the ethnographic work conducted by Chicana/o social scientists in fields other than anthropology nor does it include all the ethnographic work conducted on Chicana/o lives by social scientists. Instead, it also incorporates several key works by social scientists that further the field of Chicana/o anthropology and sociocultural anthropology.