Suchergebnisse

The Department of Sanitation in New York City is a mayoral agency with a key role in municipal government, but it also has the attributes of a powerful corporation. With an annual budget in excess of a billion dollars, it hires, monitors, and replaces private vendors and contractors for a host of essential services, balances the often conflicting demands of several unions, and answers to a watchful but perpetually critical public. As the Department's anthropologist-in-residence since 2006, my work has included consulting, advocacy, collaboration, education, and organizing various projects focused on the interface between Sanitation and that larger public. These efforts have helped me understand the urban environment from the perspective of those who keep it clean, while also letting me become intimately acquainted with the complex dynamics of a workforce that is generally scorned even while it is fundamental to the well-being of the metropolis it serves. This paper considers the model of anthropologist-in-residence as I've structured it within the DSNY, discusses contributions to an anthropology of organizations, and explores the possibility of similar relationships between anthropologists and other public and private institutions.

Discusses controversies generated by liberation theology in Morro da Conceicao, a lower-class neighborhood on the northern periphery of Recife, Brazil, to argue that the Christian Base Communities (CEBs) represented both the best & worst of the progressive movement. Characteristics of the neighborhood are described, noting that it has been a pilgrimage site since 1904. Padre Reginaldo, a liberation theology priest who worked in Morro between 1978 & 1991, helped to form six vital CEBs within the parish, & used them to encourage residents to organize to collectively demand basic city services they were being deprived of. The effort brought running water, street paving, garbage pickup, streetlights, bus service, & other benefits to the community. However, tension between the old & new resulted in conflicts within the CEBs over such issues as the nature of Catholic ritual, respect for Catholic symbols, the roles of clerics/lay people, & loyalty to the CEB vs the traditional church. The progressive movement's redefinition of relationships with space, faith, identity, community organizing, & political engagement are explored. 58 References. J. Lindroth