Statement of Purpose

Leigh Campoamor
Justin Izzo
Alvaro Jarrin
Bianca Williams

Leigh Campoamor
Statement of Purpose

I am applying to Duke University’s Doctoral Program in Cultural Anthropology in order to pursue my research interests in Latin America, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and child labor. My undergraduate work in history, anthropology, and social and cultural theory, and most recently, my experiences as an independent researcher in Peru have prepared me to embark upon this path.

I plan to focus my doctoral research on transnational and local aid programs aimed at Peruvian youth. This topic connects to key debates about development, social change, and the politics of modernity and globalization. I am particularly interested in the issue of child labor among children of rural-urban immigrants. Rural-urban migration has been a trend in Peru since the 1940’s, but the twenty-year internal war between the Maoist guerilla group Shining Path and state counterinsurgency forces, combined with recent neo-liberal economic policies, have devastated the highlands and contributed to an urban population explosion. Forced to abandon rural life, most highland migrants now participate in the burgeoning informal sector of the competitive urban labor market. Perhaps the most visual display of this pattern is the ubiquitous presence of children shining shoes, selling candy and newspapers, and cleaning windshields on Peruvian city streets. In some cases, these children are orphans of the war and thus responsible for their own well-being. Youth laborers usually balance their financial obligations with educational and family commitments.

The issue of child labor raises troubling questions about global capitalism and what James Ferguson has called the “failed expectations of modernity” in the Third World. In my experiences among domestic and foreign NGOs in Peru, I have noticed two distinct ideological positions that guide aid projects targeted at youth laborers. The first is situated within a human rights perspective, condemning child labor as a human rights abuse that must be brought to the attention of international rights institutions and abolished. NGOs promoting this view tend to be devoted to diverse issues—child labor representing one of many concerns—and often structure their projects according to the priorities of international funding institutions. The second position, which I perceive as responding to a more “local” practice, presents child labor in a positive light, as a work ethic that instills a sense of responsibility, self-respect and organization in children. Its proponents, including national and provincial institutions composed of, and administered by, youth laborers, emphasize the tradition of child labor in Peru by calling attention to the historical participation of youth in agricultural work practices in the Andes.

During graduate work, I will investigate how these contradictory discourses of aid and child welfare are formulated and negotiated. I will also explore the complexity of the child labor issue and the implications of limiting its discussion to two philosophies. What underlying meanings do aid agencies attach to their endorsement or rejection of child labor? How do local projects assimilate or conflict with the ideologies of international funders? How are the aspirations of children and their families represented by aid groups, and what kinds of social struggles are at work in these representations? How areWhat kinds of spaces are youth workers forging their own spaces in an attempt to assert themselves as active subjects in the dialogue regarding child labor? What does the Peruvian case teach us about globalization, social change and development in the Third World? As is increasingly the case in anthropological research, my project will be multi-sited so that I can explore ideas about child labor in Lima, the national capital, and in provincial cities with greater geographic, demographic and cultural links to rural zones.

Several factors have motivated and prepared me to seek a doctoral degree in anthropology and study ideologies about child labor in Peru. As the daughter of a Latin American father and a North American mother, the awareness that I had an intricate history and my desire to better comprehend fundamental elements of my own identity drew me to Latin America. After graduating from Brown University with a bachelor’s degree in history focusing on modern Latin America in May, 2000, I came to Peru on a Fulbright grant. I lived in the highland city of Ayacucho for fifteen months, conducting independent field-based research throughout the region. My project examined the intermediary role played by an NGO in a local development initiative dealing with adolescent sexual and reproductive health. I concentrated on how the different players involved in the project—international financing and technical assistance organizations, the NGO executing the project, project beneficiaries, other local actors, and state institutions—positioned themselves in the initiative according to their own understanding and prioritization of local necessities. This experience demonstrated to me the importance of field research, familiarized me with the complexity of NGO projects involving international and local actors, and brought me into contact with Peruvian youth.

Eager to learn more about the many ways in which social issues are conceptualized and addressed in Peru, I commenced my present job in Lima in April, 2002. I am responsible for developing a collection of materials from Peruvian social movements, grass-roots organizations and civil society organizations for the Princeton University library. These publications (hand-outs, pamphlets, posters, bulletins, magazines, books from small presses, and NGO reports), unavailable in the standard university library, allow students to draw upon atypical primary sources in conducting their library research. My work for Princeton has dovetailed with my Ayacucho research experience; I have been involved with an array of women’s, indigenous (Amazonian), peasant (Andean), environmentalist, youth and human rights organizations, along with the proliferating non-governmental organizations that direct international funds to the local and national levels. These connections have prompted compelling questions. How do Peruvians formulate social agendas in a country consumed by the pressures of globalization? To what extent can NGOs claim to represent local needs to an increasingly international audience? How is the formulation of aid projects affected by the language of international funding agencies? What possibilities do grass-roots organizations have when sharing an arena with foreign-funded NGO projects? These questions have helped me to identify future research topics.

I am certain that Duke University’s Program in Cultural Anthropology will provide me with the proper theoretical and methodological groundwork from which to investigate the topics that interest me, including Latin America, NGOs, child labor, and the cultivation and transnational diffusion of ideologies regarding these issues. The university’s strong Latin American resource base, the Anthropology Department’s encouragement of cross-disciplinary studies, the availability of research support for work in Peru, and the similarity of my research interests to those of faculty members such as Orin Starn, Charles Piot, and Irene Silverblatt, with whom I have corresponded through e-mail, strongly attract me to the Anthropology Program at Duke University. While I am dedicated to becoming a professor of Cultural Anthropology and Latin American Studies at a U.S. university, I believe that it is equally important that my research find a place in the ongoing discussions about development policies that affect countries such as Peru.

As an undergraduate student much of my independent academic work has focused on issues of race and identity both in French colonial West Africa and in contemporary French society. However, I did not begin to analyze these questions from an anthropological perspective until my interest in colonial expansion prompted me to read Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History. Wolf’s work helped me consider French colonialism as the product of complex intercultural influences and relationships, and as a result I moved away from the simplistic notions of conquerors and “victimization” that I had previously held. Although I have developed a strong background in modern French history, including some graduate work, anthropology has provided me with a new framework in which to situate my interest in questions of postcolonial migration in contemporary France. In my view, the experiences of many immigrants from former colonies are structured by an important problem facing French society: while France negotiates the legacy of its colonial past, its present and future are governed by efforts to integrate into the European Union. An anthropological approach will allow me to analyze how tensions between these two poles are played out in the daily lives of individual migrants. Furthermore, I am eager to explore how migrants’ visions of the future (and of actions that could make it happen) are shaped by their status as former colonial subjects and by France’s role in the new Europe.

I had the opportunity to begin exploring my interest in anthropological approaches to the study of immigration in France while working on an honors thesis during my final year at New York University. After spending the 2002-2003 academic year in Paris, I won a research grant from NYU that allowed me to conduct fieldwork for my thesis in Paris for three months during the summer of 2003. While discussing possible topics for my research with professors from NYU and the University of Paris-I who were aware of my interest in West African colonial history and postcolonial migration, I was introduced to the sans-papiers social movement of 1996. In a dramatic gesture, over a period of weeks, three hundred undocumented West African workers occupied several Catholic churches in Paris and demanded that the government legalize their precarious situation. Although this movement galvanized public opinion in the city, the state refused to negotiate with the activists and finally granted legal status only to those migrants who had French-born children. Further examination of the sans-papiers occupations revealed a rich, if generally untapped, source of information on race and identity in contemporary French society.

My thesis research was concerned primarily with how the West African activists (many of whom were natives of Mali) forcefully occupied the French public sphere and challenged their own marginality as a subaltern population. Furthermore, I argued that the movement was ultimately rejected by the government because it called into question institutionalized definitions of citizenship and belonging in the nation-state. However, since the occupations occurred in 1996 I found myself restricted by a perspective that was largely historical, one that did not allow me to critically analyze how France’s colonial past and European future are played out in immigrants’ daily lives. During the course of my research I discovered that journalistic accounts of the movement as well as interviews with church officials often kept me at a distance from the people I had intended to study, since individual experiences, rituals and anecdotes often go unmentioned in “official” discourses. Thus it became evident to me that an anthropological approach would be necessary for the type of research I envisage, as the methodological tools it offers will allow me to examine the lived experiences of immigrant activists and the ways in which social movements are used to construct images of the future for Third World migrants in European nations.

In order to further develop this research I will need rigorous training in cultural anthropology, especially in the studies of transnationalism, as well as race, postcolonial theory and the African diaspora. Duke offers me important resources such as the Center for European Studies and a chance to work closely with Professors Baker and Piot, who share many of my interests. I was able to communicate with Professor Piot by email in May 2003 and he expressed interest in my research ideas and future projects. Thus I will be able to greatly expand the research I have already completed while learning to critically analyze other theoretical and empirical issues that I will undoubtedly encounter during my fieldwork. Training in anthropology at Duke will provide me with the tools I need to further explore the complex interplay between European integration and Third World social movements through a focus on the lived experiences of postcolonial immigrant activists in France.

He wanted to speak to me in private - outside the small bar filled with smoke and men dancing techno-bhangra. Not that Delhi’s streets are ever empty: rickshaws, cows and fruit sellers crisscross each other even at late hours of the night. My friend leaned against a car and hesitated, breathing heavily, before he spoke. The young man, a twenty-six year old who had come to the capital to work, told me he was unsatisfied with his life. His parents were arranging his marriage, and he was uncertain about the future. He was split between his duty to his family (his dharma) and his secret desire for men (his kama), a desire which would always remain unspoken. How would he keep up the charade that his married friends went through?

I heard many similar life stories during my research in New Delhi about men who have sex with men. The liminal social spaces these men inhabit are the cause for their anxiety but also the source of their ability to skew social convention. I interviewed two men who had considered themselves a ‘real’ couple for decades, but they were married to women and had children, the two families sharing the same living space like one extended family connected by a same-sex tie. Sexual preference as such is not a marker for identity in India, but a covert behavior that hinges on a complex subculture. Since such behavior has remained invisible instead of being stigmatized and pathologized like in the West, homosocial boundaries are much less stringent. There is widespread gender segregation in Indian culture, such that it is taboo that couples kiss in Indian movies, but men hold hands or hug as they walk down the street, it is usual for them to share a bed, and it is an open secret that teenage boys learn to have sex with other boys. In my independent study project, written during a study abroad program in India, I also tried to place South Asian same-sex relationships in a historical and cultural context. I argued that homosexual behavior was driven underground due to postcolonial anxieties about masculinity and an urge to model Hindu traditions after Western religions. There is much evidence in literature about greater comfort with all forms of sexuality before India became part of the British Empire.

I believe being a gay man gave me a unique access to this subculture, just as being a male severely limited my research into female same-sex desire. It is unlikely that I would have been able to gain the trust of my informants on such a delicate subject if I had not first shared with them my own struggle with homosexuality. As a teenager, I always felt smothered by the close-mindedness of my small country, Ecuador. My sexuality remained largely invisible, even from myself, and I had a growing sense of anomie. The skeptic in me, though, craved for other truths out there, and in search of answers I left home with a scholarship for a small, American liberal arts college. The greatest cultural shock was making heterosexual friends who learned I was gay and thought it was more than okay: it was my right and my identity.

In my first anthropology reading for an introductory class, nothing sounded more true to me than Durkheim’s statement that “Society is God,” especially because I grew aware of the fact that gods could be dethroned. The role of the anthropologist, to translate between cultures, is a potentially subversive one, in that it examines labels as cultural constructions and questions power structures. At the same time, ethnography is a tool for greater communication and tolerance, not only between cultures but also within one society. Trying to make sense of how my identity had been shaped by Ecuadorian social mores and the changes I was going through in my self-conception, I became interested in how people acquire an identity and acculturate to new social contexts.

Thanks to the Williams College Undergraduate Research Fellowship, I was able to dedicate two summers and four semesters to writing a memoir about my experiences growing up gay in Ecuador, a long-term project that has become my English creative nonfiction thesis. The project developed from an urge I had to give a voice to a group previously unmentioned in any kind of literature. I felt compelled to travel to Ecuador to perform several interviews of gay men from different backgrounds, and I researched the history of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement in Ecuador. I found interesting that under the gaze of Latin-American machismo, all feminine sexual behavior is a threat, particularly effeminate males because they represent masculinity’s Other, simultaneously an object of aversion and an object of desire.

In every country that I have visited, I have found different gender role patterns and versions of masculinity. In order to fully understand contemporary issues of crucial worldwide importance, like AIDS and movements for sexual rights, one must also understand how in different localities sexuality and gender are culturally constructed. I feel anthropological approaches to sexual identities always confirm the variety and fluidity of such complex phenomena. A Ph.D. in anthropology will permit me to conduct serious academic research about geographies of desire, and how they intersect with race, class and religion in the developing world. Nowadays, sexuality must also be understood as a global network of influences and power relations.

I want to become a professor to teach others to judge critically even their most basic assumptions about human sexual behavior. I want do ethnography, because it brings real people into what would otherwise remain bare statistical analysis. Most of all, I want to analyze social discourse and the way it shapes the way we see each other. I believe this is the anthropologist’s métier and hopefully also mine at your program.

“What can one learn about American culture by analyzing the Thanksgiving holiday?” asked Professor Charles Piot in my introduction t cultural anthropology class. I always cite this class discussion as the moment I knew that cultural anthropology was the discipline I wanted to pursue for graduate study. Professor Piot walked us through a stereotypical Thanksgiving, with the woman waking up early to slave over the stove, entertain guests, and take care of rambunctious children, while the man sits on the couch head of the table, and makes a huge production out of carving the turkey. This holiday about giving thanks was unmasked as a way for gender roles and sexism to be transferred to children through tradition. Throughout the class, I was fascinated by the cultural lessons and social regulations hidden in everyday interactions and holiday rituals. Since that lecture, I find myself continuously analyzing the hidden messages in things that seem uncomplicated, such as commercials, movies, and even the way “ethnic” food is set up in the aisles in grocery stores.

During my senior year, I enrolled in graduate courses that were both challenging and academically stimulating, imagining this curriculum would prepare me for my first year of graduate school. The first graduate course titled “Race, Racism, and Democracy,” introduced me to the work of John Jackson, one of the professors I desire to work with during graduate study. The other course, “Cultural Analysis of Discourse,” served as my methodology class, which acquainted me with the different approaches available to analyze interviewee’s words, and figure out the cultural meanings behind them. I believe these graduate courses, my independent study, and my honors seminar enabled me to learn the importance of time management, and the significance of values such as perseverance. I have learned that if you stay dedicated and passionate throughout obstacles that may arise during research, in the end, you will be rewarded. During my research, I have found that anthropology is the best field of study for encouraging the blossom of both my creative and scholastic abilities.

Much of my senior year has been spent diligently working on my honors thesis. I was intrigued by the large population of upper class, white, suburban youth on my campus that fanatically listened to rap music- a genre started by poor, black, inner city youth, so I chose to research the influence of hip-hop culture on white suburbia. My research is entrenched in the debates surrounding identity formation, and the appropriation and transmission of cultural practices. Although there is scholarly work on hip-hop and these issues, most of the work focuses on the black experience-blacks producing, rapping, or consuming hip-hop. My work attempts to study white suburbia’s consumption of hip-hop, how it affects their formation of identity, and informs their political and social views. I am in the process of using my research to find answers to questions such as, “Are white suburban youth using hip-hop culture as a way to stylize or perform their struggle, resistance, or negotiations with society’s stereotypical view of whiteness, or even middle-class? Are white hip-hop fans using their interactions with hip-hop as a venue to critique the formation of whiteness or blackness? Do white suburban youth ever deal with the “too black/too white” discussion? Are those that listen to hip-hop ever labeled as too black for the white middle class?”

My fieldwork includes surveys of one hundreds students on their musical preferences, in-depth interviews with eight black males and white males, and focus group discussions with these eight males after the interviews. I decided to do fieldwork on the campuses of Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), hoping that UNC would provide a large pool of subjects from various socio-economic classes to counteract the explicit class stratification on Duke’s campus. I targeted males because informal interviews with females during the early part of my project always brought up issues of sexism and misogyny in lyrics, which I agreed was significant, but were not at the core of the research that I was doing. The surveys provided me with general information such as race, age, and musical preferences, while the interviews provided me with insight on how the individual defines hip-hop and blackness through personal narratives.

My research challenged me to look at this cultural phenomenon through various lenses, such as those of Stuart Hall, Maureen Mahon, Frederic Jameson, Mary Patillo-McCoy, and others. I was also challenged to use my research as a tool for opening up doors of opportunity. These opportunities include presenting my work at an upcoming hip-hop conference on Duke’s campus, and being the first undergraduate teaching assistant in the anthropology department for a class called “Everyday Life in America,” during the Spring 2002 semester, where I will also present my work to the class.

My thesis research has pushed me towards focusing on white people in the U.S. during graduate school. I know that cultural anthropologists often go abroad to study “others” hoping to learn more about cultural practices and identity formation from these groups; however, I want to study American culture and find out what are the cultural markers of this often ambiguous identity. Is white culture different from American culture, and if so, are there white cultural markers? A subtopic of my research will deal with white consumption of hip-hop music, and if this lyrical exposure to the black experience informs the white perspective of social and political views. Historically, white people have actively participated in African American music scenes, whether it be the blues, jazz in the Cotton Club of Harlem, or rock ‘n’ roll. Hip-hop has been added to this list of genres that were originally associated with a black experience, but are now monetarily supported by white American buying power. Are these patterns evidence of Freud’s idea about “consumption of the other,” or is there real dialogue taking place between black artists making the music, and whites buying it? Will the white upper-class college male use his love for Tupac Shakur’s rap narratives of the black experience to inform his decisions on public housing, racial profiling, or affirmative action policies when he becomes a senator? Or, will his passion for Tupac be compartmentalized in his head as “for entertainment purposes only?”

I believe that Duke University is the best place for me to do my work on these interests because of the numerous professors that do work on popular culture, identity formation, and study the U.S. Although I understand that I may be at a home-court disadvantage since some may hesitate to admit a Duke undergraduate that is a cultural anthropology major, I believe that my previous goal to study law inhibited me from exhausting all of the extraordinary anthropology resources this university has. I have already established a yearlong advising relationship with Professor Lee Baker through my aforementioned thesis research, and independent study, and my upcoming teaching assistant position. His work on the African-American experience in the U.S. and on race formation will help my work as far as establishing historical and contemporary definitions of whiteness and blackness, and figuring out at which points in history these labels shifted. The arrival of Deborah Thomas and John L. Jackson, Jr. in the fall of 2002 also persuades me to believe that Duke’s anthropology program is the best for me. Thomas’ expertise on how popular culture affects political and cultural aspects of Jamaican nationalism would guide me in my research on how hip-hop culture, a huge part of popular culture, affects American and white identity. Jackson’s detailed work on contemporary New York, the birthplace of hip-hop, on what he calls “the performance of racial difference,” and on racial identity in relation to the socio-economic status of blacks, will inform my work on white identity, the middle class, and cultural markers. The arrival of these professors will supplement the strong focus on the African Diaspora and the African American experience Duke’s anthropology department already has, and ensure that various aspects of the black experience, such as politics and class, can be explored. Furthermore, the work of Charles Piot in African American Diaspora studies and Naomi Quinn on the limits of American individualism will undoubtedly aid me throughout my research.
The opportunity to earn a certificate African-American Studies is another reason for my desired admission into this program. The unlimited resources for research on African Americans in the Triangle area, at Duke and at UNC, in addition to the numerous professors in this department that would be able to guide me through my research, will definitely enhance my journey towards a Ph.D., and make it an exciting, fulfilling experience. Although my goal to acquire training to be an exceptional professor is significant in my decision to apply to this program, I also believe that the education available here, and the department’s reputation for being “cutting edge,” will enable me to contribute to an area of anthropology that is often ignored-the analysis of our homeland the dominant group that inhabits it. This department’s focus on theory, especially on postcolonial theory, will enable me to examine the construction of whiteness, and give me the foundation necessary to contribute new ideas in this under researched area. It is time to turn the critical and observant eye on ourselves, and I endeavor to make a contribution to this innovative area of study through my work. Graduate research with this department will give me the tools necessary for the academically enriched journey I desire.

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