Anthropologist Adrienne Pine will present Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras. The event highlights links between Mano Dura and mercenaries, the war on terror, IMF and World Bank policy, the prison-industrial complex, Honduran massacres, gangs, and sweatshop labor

“Honduras is violent.” Adrienne Pine situates this oft-repeated claim at the center of her vivid and nuanced chronicle of Honduran subjectivity. Through an examination of three major subject areas—violence, alcohol, and the export-processing (maquiladora) industry—Pine explores the daily relationships and routines of urban Hondurans. She views their lives in the context of the vast economic footprint on and ideological domination of the region by the United States, powerfully elucidating the extent of Honduras’s dependence. She provides a historically situated ethnographic analysis of this fraught relationship and the effect it has had on Hondurans’ understanding of who they are. The result is a rich and visceral portrait of a culture buffeted by the forces of globalization and inequality.

Adrienne Pine is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.

“A theoretically cutting edge ethnography of neoliberalism as suffered by most poor people across the globe. Pine creatively links macro-structural forces in Honduras to the everyday life of factory workers, shanty town dwellers, gang kids, alcoholics and crack smokers within the context of globalized consumerism and the history of U.S. domination of Central America.”—Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect

“Gutsy fieldwork. A compassionate analysis of the links between work, violence, corporate capitalism, American empire, and self-worth. It will make your blood boil.”—Laura Nader, University of California, Berkeley

“Using largely the voices of others, Pine’s rigorous but sensitive anthropological approach interweaves gangs, work, religion, drink, politics, and even globalization to show clearly how violence pervades the everyday life of many Hondurans. It is a realistic tour de force!”—Dwight B. Heath, Brown University