Transforming Modernity: Popular Culture in Mexico

by Néstor García Canclini

Book Overview

Is popular culture merely a process of creating, marketing, and consuming a final product, or is it an expression of the artist's surroundings and an attempt to alter them? Noted Argentine/Mexican anthropologist N stor Garc a Canclini addresses these questions and more in Transforming Modernity, a translation of Las culturas populares en el capitalismo. Based on fieldwork among the Pur pecha of Michoac n, Mexico, some of the most...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292727593
• ISBN13: 9780292727595
• Release Date: June 1993
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Utterly Fascinating

"Transfoming Modernity" tells the story of the popularization of Mexican culture and crafts. He shows how the desires and tastes of tourists have homogenized traditional Mexican crafts into the few forms favored by tourists (like those associated with death and skulls). He also talks of the folklorization of festivals. Festivals ostensibly in honor of saints have become huge tourist attractions, which have lead to their mutation into little more than a market to sell goods. Very, very interesting and theoretical look at how the global affects the local, and at culture change...something people often talk about but never demonstrate this effectively.