Luis Reygadas

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Metropolitan Autonomous University

Does capitalism generate prosperity and well-being in an atmosphere of freedom, as its defenders claim, or is it an unjust system in which workers are exploited for the benefit of a capital-owning minority, as its critics assert? Does capitalism lead inexorably to greater inequality, or does it have mechanisms that in the long run reduce inequaliti...

Este artículo propone una perspectiva multidimensional de la desigualdad, mediante el análisis de la articulación de tres niveles de ejercicio del poder: el de las capacidades individuales, el de las interacciones en campos sociales y el de las redes estructurales de la desigualdad. Analiza las limitaciones de los enfoques individualistas, interacc...

This article analyzes how the working conditions for Mexican anthropologists have deteriorated throughout the last few decades. Until half a century ago, only a few dozen professional anthropologists practiced in Mexico, and most of them had access to stable, well-paid jobs in academia or government agencies. Today there are over 7000 of them worki...

Esta reflexión sobre la propuesta de Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz respecto a las consecuencias y respuestas de los grupos subalternos a la desigualdad -que explora en la migración, la violencia, la religiosidad y la acción colectiva-, valora que coloque de nuevo en el centro la discusión sobre la desigualdad social en América Latina. Reygadas propone var...

This article examines a way of conceiving culture that could be called “critical dualism,” characterized both by its transformative orientation and by its resorting to dualist visions that separate societies and cultures into two opposing, inescapable kinds. Essentialist views of culture predominated for centuries, postulating that each society and...

This text seeks to understand the diversity of the production, circulation, exchange, and consumption of goods and services in digital formats. Collaborative economy or new forms of exploitation? Knowledge commons or expropriation of the general intellect? From an anthropological perspective, the paper explores the economic processes that are confi...

En este texto se intenta comprender la diversidad de la producción, circulación, intercambio y consumo de bienes y servicios en formatos digitales. ¿Economía colaborativa o nuevas formas de explotación? ¿Bienes comunes del conocimiento o expropiación del intelecto colectivo? Desde una perspectiva antropológica, se exploran los procesos económicos q...

This article studies an actually existing cooperative without making a judgment about its advantages or limitations vis-a-vis ideal models. Based on ethnographic field work, the paper analyzes the experiences of TUYO (United and Organized Workers), a production cooperative founded in 1976 in a popular neighborhood in Mexico City. Three different ap...

This paper analyses emerging forms in which life and work are interwoven, based on 20 ethnographic studies conducted in enterprises in Spain. Whereas after the Industrial Revolution work processes tended to be autonomous from the living environments of production agents, in recent decades a trend in the opposite direction has been observed in some...

En base a 20 etnografías realizadas en empresas españolas, este texto analiza formas emergentes de imbricación entre los mundos del trabajo y la vida. Si a partir de la Revolución Industrial se da una tendencia a la autonomía del proceso de trabajo con respecto a los entornos vitales de los trabajadores, actualmente se observa una tendencia inversa...

To what extent, how and why has new information technology contributed, or not, to cooperation at work? This paper intends to answer to this question from the collaborative ethnography point of view of Designit Madrid (before dnx), a company of the digital world which builds knowledge and learning networks among its workers and with its clients, in...

This article explores the incorpora tion crisis that occurred in Latin America at the end of the twentieth century as a result of: changes in the economic model, the durability of electoral democracies and of inequalities; increasing expectations related to educational mobility, and the dissemination of new patterns of consumption. It is argued tha...

This article explores the incorporation crisis that occurred in Latin America at the end of the twentieth century as a result of: changes in the economic model, the durability of electoral democracies and of inequalities; increasing expectations related to educational mobility, and the dissemination of new patterns of consumption. It is argued that...

dnx Group es una empresa española especializada en usabilidad y diseño de dispositivos digitales (páginas web, teléfonos celulares y cajeros automáticos) que ha tratado de crear un entorno laboral más equitativo y horizontal que el existente en empresas capitalistas "típicas". Mediante una aproximación etnográfica, en el artículo se analiza la expe...

This paper's objective is twofold. First, it aims to demonstrate that the emergence of a powerful social movement in a rural region triggers a period of intense transformations with unpredictable outcomes and widely varied, even contradictory, implications for development – which can be positive and negative, intentional and unintentional. The seco...

This article analyzes the cultural construction of equality, with emphasis in the symbolic processes which express and, at the same time, constitute reciprocal relationships. At a time when purely economic research of inequalities is stagnant, there often is a gap between reciprocity analysis and research on inequalities. In this paper the author u...

This article describes the way the family units in a ejido located in the Lacandona Jungle, in Chiapas, are organized, take decisions and control their natural resources, where one of the central actions is precisely the environmental conservation through self-control processes, of local governing. However, the latter would have not been possible w...

Este artículo describe la forma en que las unidades familiares de un ejido ubicado en la Selva Lacandona, en Chiapas, se organizan, toman decisiones y controlan sus recursos naturales, en donde una de las acciones centrales es precisamente la conservación ambiental mediante procesos de autocontrol, de gobernanza local. Sin embargo, lo anterior no h...

This article analyses the subaltern representations of inequality in Latin America. I argue that these representations 1) synthesize complex social processes into simple, dramatic images with emotional and ethical elements; 2) resort to the historical memory of past abuses in order to interpret contemporary grievances; 3) delegitimize privileges an...

This article analyzes the achievements and shortcomings of some social actions concerning inequalities in Latin America from 1990 to 2005. It compares the efficiency of these actions in reducing gender, class and ethnic inequalities. The comparative approach shows different rhythms of evolution among different kinds of inequalities: they overlap an...

Este artículo analiza los factores institucionales que impiden que el crecimiento económico y de la productividad se traduzca en mejores salarios en la industria maquiladora. A partir del caso de Chihuahua, se muestra la necesidad de adoptar políticas y crear instituciones y organizaciones que promuevan nuevas ventajas competitivas y favorezcan un...

Se describen las estrategias culturales mediante las cuales los trabajadores de industrias maquiladoras de la frontera México-Estados Unidos reciben, se aproprian y transforman los sistemas de organización del trabajo orientados hacia la calidad global. Se vinculan estas estrategias culturales con los procesos de construccción de identidades entre...

Este artículo discute los dilemas del desarrollo territorial en la Selva Lacandona. En particular analiza las relaciones entre movimientos sociales, nuevas formas de gobernanza ambiental y desarrollo en esta región del estado de Chiapas, en México. Con base en el llamado enfoque territorial del desarrollo rural (Schejtman y Berdegué, 2004), plantea...

Con la globalización se ha propiciado que la industria maquiladora de exportación asuma un papel de singular importancia, tanto en lo económico por la generación de divisas y la creación de empleos. Pero por otro lado esta industria no ofrece condiciones salariales adecuadas, su avance tecnológico no ayuda a los niveles de la misma en el país, no s...