Subject People and Colonial Discourses: Economic Transformation and Social Disorder in Puerto Rico, 1898-1947

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SUNY Press, Jan 1, 1994 - Social Science - 304 pages
This book rethinks the social processes that violently refashioned Puerto Rican society in the first half of the twentieth century. Santiago-Valles explores how the new regime's socio-economic, political, and signification systems socially constructed the laboring poor of this Caribbean island as "wayward" subjects. Critically drawing on recent theorizations of post-structuralism, feminism, critical criminology, subaltern studies, and post-coloniality he examines the mechanisms through which colonized subjects become recognized, contained, and represented as subordinate.

He analyzes the structures of social control in Latin America by focusing on the evolving definitions of deviance, social unrest, and economic development. At issue are the cultural practices that necessarily accompanied and aided U. S. colonialist enterprises in Puerto Rico during a shift in the world capitalist market and in geopolitical hegemony with the Caribbean.
 

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Contents

PostColonlality Corrective Studies and the Remaking of History
3
A Contest of Structures
19
The Contradictory Mechanisms of Preservation and Transformation
49
The Rise of the EvilDisposed Classes 18981909
77
Waging Battle Against Numerous Evils 19101921
111
Creating a Discontented Working Class 19221929
135
The Age of Criminal Saturation 19301939
165
Rage Concentrated Twice Over 19401947
195
The Subjects in Question
229
Notes
243
Index
297
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About the author (1994)

Kelvin A. Santiago-Valles is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department, State University of New York at Binghamton.

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