La Quinceanera and the Keen-say-an-Yair-uh: the politics of making gender and ethnic identity in Chicago

Abstract

IntrQductiQn As James Clifford, and George Marcus (1986) originally suggested at a seminar in Santa Fe, ethnographers have been engaged in establishing their own authority over particular popu lations. We now read ethnographies with a different eye and see them as inherently partial truths (Clifford 1986). For some readers the task is simply to discover the author's strategies that transform the messy day-to-day details of research experiences into a legitimate written description or interpretation of a popu lation.