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Oscar Lewis in Cuba
La Partida Final
Susan M. Rigdon
166 pages, bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80539-607-9 $120.00/£89.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (August 2024)
eISBN 978-1-80539-620-8 eBook Not Yet Published
Reviews
“This is a splendid book. I could not put it down… Rigdon’s discussion of the issues of research project integrity is a tour de force.” • Jorge I. Domínguez, Harvard University
Description
American anthropologist Oscar Lewis secured permission from Fidel Castro to undertake three years of field research on cultural and economic change in Cuba in the decade after the victory of Castro’s M-26 Movement. This book delves into Lewis’ research goals, methods, the training and composition of his field team, and the difficulties of executing the plan in the political climate in Cuba at the time. The government’s reasons for early termination of the research agreement are enumerated and their many discrepancies and inconsistencies evaluated. The experience of Project Cuba offers lessons on the difficulties of doing social science research in any highly surveilled, politically controlled environment however sympathetic the principal investigator.
Susan M. Rigdon is a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of The Culture Facade: Art, Science and Politics in the Work of Oscar Lewis (University of Illinois Press, 1988) and for 20 years co-authored the award winning textbook American Government (West, 1986).
Subject: Political and Economic AnthropologyHistory: 20th Century to PresentTheory and Methodology
Area: Latin America and the Caribbean
Contents
Of Related Interest
Exceptional Experiences
Engaging with Jolting Events in Art and Fieldwork
The Categorical Impulse
Essays on the Anthropology of Classifying Behavior
