The U.S.-Mexico Border as a Model for Social-Cultural Theory - PDF

Received: 30 November 2022 | Accepted: 5 January 2023 DOI: 10.1111/ciso.12446 C O M M E N TA R Y The U.S.-­Mexico border as a model for social-­cultural theory: A brief discussion Josiah Heyman University of Texas at El Paso Correspondence Josiah Heyman Email: [email protected] Abstract The US–­Mexi...

Received: 30 November 2022 | Accepted: 5 January 2023 DOI: 10.1111/ciso.12446 C O M M E N TA R Y The U.S.-­Mexico border as a model for social-­cultural theory: A brief discussion Josiah Heyman University of Texas at El Paso Correspondence Josiah Heyman Email: [email protected] Abstract The US–­Mexico border has influenced social-­cultural theory by drawing attention to hybrids that stand apart from supposedly cohesive wholes. This point, albeit important, does not exhaust the lessons to be learned from the US–­Mexico border region. It also displays highly unequal power relations. Adjacent, interactive, but profoundly asymmetrical border city pairs are key sites for analyzing unequal relationships between the so-­ called global South and global North. This social relationality of apparently contrastive endpoints, and the cultural frameworks and practices that mediate the connections, is yet another lesson from the US–­Mexico border. Culture occurs in a matrix of often highly unequal social relationships. Culture is made and reproduced at relational meeting points between differentiated positionalities, even when there is an apparently exclusionary border in between. KEYWORDS border theory, culture, culture theory, Gloria Anzaldúa, inequality, US–­Mexico Border I NTRO D U C TI O N necessarily stand apart from and resist social-­cultural exclusion and domination. Rather, given their role in facilitating flows and connec- The US–­Mexico border, and geopolitical borders more generally, tions across borders, they often enable the production and repro- have influenced culture theory by drawing attention to hybrids that duction of inequalities. While occurring at many geographic sites, stand apart from supposedly cohesive cultural wholes. Such imag- key inequality-­mediating people and processes are particularly pro- ined wholes—­“monuments,” as Renato Rosaldo calls them (1989, nounced at sites like the US–­Mexico border. 31)—­include a previous period of anthropological study of “whole” Unequal relationships often occur between paired cities along cultures. The most influential text exploring this critique is Gloria the border (Velasco Ortiz and Contreras, 2011). These cities are Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). She fo- notable for their proximity, which allows for easy and frequent in- cuses on a specific position, the hybrid position, which stands apart teraction, but also for their high degree of inequality. Furthermore, from the monuments on each side of the border, even as it partakes the movement of people and goods between them is differentially of elements from each. Anzaldúa has been influential in the current filtered by massive apparatuses of two states, with the United States usage of “border” as a key metaphor in understanding and critiquing being much more inquisitorial and punitive (Heyman, 2004). While dominant social-­cultural formations. the policing of migration from the global South to the global North The importance of the hybrid position does not exhaust the garners this border the most public scrutiny, urban pairs along this lessons to be learned from the US–­Mexico border. This region also border deserve attention also for their powerful, generative roles displays highly unequal power relations, including the unequal re- in separating highly unequal wage spaces and facilitating the move- lationship between the so-­called global South and global North. ment of goods and people between them (Heyman, 1999, 2012). Enacting these uneven relationships are mediating people and The foundational concept of transnationalism (Wimmer and Glick processes, which deftly use border-­crossing social-­cultural codes. Schiller, 2002) is witnessed on an everyday basis in numerous inter- Such people and processes have qualities of hybridity but do not actions that both cross a conventional border but also reveal how 8 | © 2023 American Anthropological Association. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ciso City & Society. 2023;35:8–13. 9 inequality is generated, conducted, and reproduced. Border urban- (Anglo American) United States and Mexico, less cohesive cultural ism reflects recent trends in urban and border securitization as well entities than cultural ideologies that claim superiority and authority. as the neoliberal reworking of space (e.g., vast but highly bounded Writing from the margins of the United States, and from the stance free trade) (Maskovsky and Cunningham, 2009). Hence, this setting of a subordinated people (those of Mexican origin) in a white settler can offer many insights into how unequal relations are both en- society, Anzaldúa uses her border perspective to convey a radical, acted and kept in (partially) separate geographic, social, and cultural critical view of United States culture. In this move, being mixed and spaces. the creativity emerging from that mix (e.g., switching and blending We can think about the lessons this has for social-­cultural theory, Spanish and English languages) defies the supposed purity and su- just as with the lessons derived from the previous idea of hybridity periority of the white United States. Following her work, thinkers resisting monumentality. It is informative to think, via the border ex- have concentrated on two ideas: (1) hybrids as alternatives to mon- ample, about the productive relationality of unequal endpoints and uments or essences, and (2) using borders—­the setting of Anzaldúa's the cultural frameworks and practices that mediate the connections upbringing—­as a key metaphor. between them. The concept of uneven and combined development To understand the full force of Anzaldúa's critical move, it helps forms my framework here. This concept, originated by Leon Trotsky, to recognize her radical defiance of many social-­cultural hierarchies. points to how world economic processes generate very different She uses the term border to express an in between position that de- outcomes and how highly disparate, unequal geographic sites com- fies strict dichotomies of unequal power and representation. She bine in political and economic formations (Smith, 1984). In keeping describes (US-­based) borderlanders defying US and Mexican nation- with Marxist theory, this concept points out that people are not alism, Chicanas defying US racism, lesbians defying heteronorma- just unequal because of their separate positions but that they are tive male/female binaries, an intellectual artist from a farmworker unequal because of their relations with each other. Sharryn Kasmir background defying the class/race framing of (mostly white) capi- and Lesley Gill (2018) apply the concept to great effect in anthro- talist farmers exploiting (mostly Mexican) farmworkers, and so on. pology, pointing out how histories of labor shaped specific regional This radical, critical stance is summarized in her famous bilingual social-­cultural patterns in larger national and global settings. Their phrase describing the exploitation, risk, and suffering found at the main emphasis is on unevenness, countering theoretical tendencies US–­Mexico border: “The U.S.-­Mexican border es una herida abierta to minimize unequal power (e.g., the idea of flatness in an intercon- (open wound) where the Third World grates against the first and nected world). They do briefly critique an overemphasis on auton- bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood omy as resistance (influenced by, among other sources, Anzaldúa) of two worlds merging to form a third country—­a border culture” and an underemphasis on interactional processes of struggle as re- (Anzaldúa, 1987, 3). sistance (or for that matter, subordinate inclusion). My analysis of the Anzaldúa captures here a fundamental lesson from the border: US–­Mexico border, and its broader lessons for theory, emphasizes naming and defying unequal extremes. Her response is to claim an the relationships occurring at urban nodes along the border—­that is autonomous identity against all these power hierarchies. Her poli- to say, I emphasize the word combined. Of course, it is unevenness tics are resistant and her identities defiant in each instance. There that is combined, so this is consistent with Kasmir and Gill's vision. is critical value in her self-­positioning. The United States is charac- The question I pose here is how those combinations are enacted and terized by massive and pervasive stigma against people of Mexican orchestrated, and how this offers tools for social-­cultural analysis. origin. So Anzaldúa, articulating defiant identities in a powerfully expressive style, strikes a blow against the power system. Her defiant TH E I N FLU E N C E O F G LO R I A A NZ A LD ÚA' S B O R D ER L A N DS/L A FR O NTER A politics deserve the influence that her work has had. Yet focusing on defiant positionality only goes so far in illustrating the analytical and political lessons we can learn from borders. We can build further on her important work. Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) is a crucial text in Each of the dichotomies Anzaldúa expresses is a power relation. the history of border culture theory. Her book is not a systematic It is not only that binary thought needs to be defied from a bor- review of border culture theory, nor even of US–­Mexico border life. der stance—­the dichotomies themselves have crucial features. A di- Rather, this imaginative and expressive text puts forth an influential chotomy is not just a verbal contrast. It is shorthand for important vision grounded in Anzaldúa's own standpoint on the US side of the social relationships, often starkly unequal combinations. Identities, US–­Mexico border. Her exposition helped anthropologists to break one might argue, emerge within relations. The dichotomy's oppo- with their inherited agenda of assuming an inner essence of a single, sition presents opportunities for critique and resistance of its ex- coherent culture or society. Rosaldo (1989), for example, repeatedly treme ends, but it also invites critical examination of its relational uses the concept of borderlands and cites Anzaldúa to communicate processes, negotiated enactment, routine performance, and—­ as this new perspective, one that he distinguishes from his classical an- Anzaldúa says—­bleeding outcomes. Her famous line about the US–­ thropological education.1 Mexico border being an open wound where the Third World grates Anzaldúa values mixed (mestiza) culture. Such culture occurs against the First has served as a vivid metaphor of suffering, harm, in between and in defiance of two putative national cultures: the and exploitation at that border. But the phrase's adoption has the 1548744x, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ciso.12446 by Southern Illinois University, Wiley Online Library on [18/02/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License | CITY & SOCIETY | THE U.S.-­MEXICO BORDER AS A MODEL FOR SOCIAL-­CULTURAL THEORY: A BRIEF DISCUSSION problem of becoming unmoored and unspecific. Repeating it does latter needs the former to keep prices high; there is a mostly silent not characterize the processes and actors that wound. When we ex- mutual acknowledgement of the necessary presence of the other, as amine what produces the many enduring open wounds at this bor- well as a surface of opposition (these connections and coordination der—­a complex but unflinching power analysis—­we are drawn to ask meanings are documented in Campbell, 2009). analytical questions about particular relationships and interactions One important part of this web is the transfer of guns and that generate suffering, harm, and exploitation in border settings. We munitions (death technologies) from the United States to Mexico. ask how those relationships are implanted, reproduced, conducted, Such guns and munitions are open, legal, and culturally ordinary in expressed, avoided, and defied in diverse ways (Heyman, 2017). the United States. In Mexico, they not only are mostly illegal but Building on Anzaldúa, we are drawn to think not only how to defy meaningfully seen as signs of coercive and political power. The re- binaries but why and how deeply unequal, harmful relations connect coding, then, of such technologies is an important synapse in the opposites, as so clearly displayed at the US–­Mexico border. gun relationship spanning the border. As the terrifying issue of guns Power and inequality are crucial to Anzaldúa's account, as origin suggests, one of the main cultural frameworks and linked material points for her rebellion and resistance. But border life is not always as outcomes is the differential sorting of risk and suffering between resistant and autonomous as she implies. A dichotomy of extremes the United States and Mexico. Such risk and suffering are unques- and a resistant stance against both underestimates the subtlety of tionably part of the same exchange system. But death and terror are border relations and exchanges. This is seen in ethnography done at mostly allocated to Mexico—­in practice and in conceptualization—­ the border (e.g., Vélez-­Ibáñez and Heyman, 2017). Highly unequal and peace, calm, and profit are mostly allocated to the United States hierarchies, despite their divisions, still involve coordination. (This (Heyman, 2021). This is enacted by representations of Mexico as dan- point does not dismiss but does circumscribe the applicability of gerous and corrupt and the United States as safe, clean, and modern Anzaldua's conception of autonomy, of stepping outside combined (Heyman and Campbell, 2007). Key symbols of difference are crucial opposites.) Coordination involves specific sign systems and social in such representation, for example that “all poverty is Mexican” and actors. Hybrids may occur inside those interactions—­for example, the United States is wealthy, modern, and rational (Vila, 2000). This, in brokerage. This is a rich and as-­yet not well explored topic: how of course, is a terrible oversimplification and worse, a rationalization sometimes hybrids can enact vertical inequality and other times for brutal economic and political power. Yet one element of culture enact horizontal solidarity (e.g., Heyman and Alarcón, 2017). A rela- is just this: a framework for enactment and mystification of uneven tional view finds rich, creative, but in terms of power and inequality and combined relations of power. multivalent cultural production at borders. In summary, Anzaldúa A second key part of this web is mobilities, understood broadly. memorably stands against the insistent binaries of the border, but Migrants are symbolically constructed (including by some academ- the two sides of the border are not only a dichotomy to defy but also ics) as vulnerable, disadvantaged, often unauthorized, and often constitute a site where oppressive and unequal relations join. seeking asylum. In this representation, then, the border is understood either as a place of performance of nationalistic xenophobia or B E YO N D A NZ A LD ÚA : I NTE R AC TI O N FR A M E WO R K S I N U N E V E N A N D CO M B I N E D R E L ATI O N S H I P S as a place of harm and suffering brought on by such performances. All of this is quite true—­and also quite incomplete. An important quality of geopolitical borders between wealth and poverty, such as the US–­Mexico border, is that exclusion of specific people coexists with extensive cross-­border mobility of other people (in functional As a first example of unequal relationships, the US–­Mexico border roles and/or privileged positions), commodities, and capital (on in- is an important point of exchange and coordination in the transna- tersecting mobilities, see Cunningham and Heyman, 2004; Ticktin tional guns-­drugs-­money web that ties together Mexico, the United and Youatt, 2022). Deportees in Mexican border cities (some of States, and other countries as well. It is important to think of this whom are Mexican but disconnected from their home ties and some synthetically and transnationally. This web is not just a matter of of whom are non-­Mexican with few protective ties) are vulnerable criminal worlds in Mexico, though “narco” cultural codes are impor- to abuse, exploitation, and violence (Slack, 2019). But prosperous tant. The web also involves the coordination of money cleaning; in- international visitors are valued and coddled due to their mobility. vestments; the work of lawyers and accountants; and collaborations How exactly are mobile people different from migrants? How does with politicians, police, and various militaries. That is, there is a fa- the distinction between travelers and migrants provide a symbolic cilitative framework for connecting the apparently state-­defiant and framework for distinguishing complex, intersectional privileges and the apparently state-­approved practices between the two countries, oppressions at borders: wealth (including leisure)/labor, white/non- especially involving the legalization of money and business interests white, legality/illegality, and so forth? between Mexico and the United States. This requires a deft cultural The cultural work of sorting mobile people and understanding dance between the labels of illegal and legal, which are crucial and how to relate to them is seen when wealthy Mexican shoppers pervasive in the borderlands. Likewise, there is a codependency of visiting malls in the United States are recognized legally by having militarized enforcement bureaucracies and criminal counterparts in a pasaporte local (a US borderland multiple entry visa) and socially both nations. The former needs the latter to justify budgets, and the by considerable positive welcome as “neighbors.” A comparable 1548744x, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ciso.12446 by Southern Illinois University, Wiley Online Library on [18/02/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License 10 story can be told about the mobility of privileged US retirees and 11 (Fernández-­Kelly, 1983; Peña, 1997). There is also a much smaller tourists into Mexico. This arrangement of relations takes place not US-­side maquiladora service sector (e.g., warehouses). To give a only in the immediate borderlands, though it is of great impor- sense of the massive presence of these factories and their ex- tance and utter normality there; it occurs in many cities of the US ploitative regime: In November 2022, Ciudad Juárez's plants had Southwest and no doubt in other places as well. Likewise, many over 300,000 workers, which was approximately one in every five people move back and forth across the border legally, playing human beings—­from babies to elderly people—­in this sprawling key roles in connecting the vast North American production and city of approximately 1.5 million (INEGI, 2022). The maquiladoras “free trade” system. They include relatively prosperous and ed- stand at the conjunction of poverty in Mexico (that is, willingness ucated people (investors, lawyers, managers, and engineers) but to work for low wages) and high purchasing power in the United also workers in specific roles (e.g., truckers and temporary legal States and Canada. The physical proximity of the border—­t he ease farmworkers). The quintessential border-­crossers, then, often help of moving parts, finished products, engineers, and managers back enact major world system flows and processes between the global and forth—­e nables a border unification of extremely uneven and South and global North while also being among the people most combined relations. likely to mix languages and cultures. But this is not just a matter of economic relations. The end- Ground zero for this mobility is ports of entry at the center of points of continental and global economic processes join together each border city pair. US border officers make culturally dense dis- in quotidian border practices that enact intensive inequality. Their cretionary judgments there about documents (status before the meeting is conducted through specific cultural frameworks and state), personal backgrounds, and travel intentions through brief, social relations among very unequal but also constantly interact- intense interrogations and visible signs of class and race. If mobilities ing people. One key trope in the maquiladora system is that the are systemic relation-­enactments, repeated every day, then these United States (and other core countries represented in manage- discretionary state officer judgments are patterned social-­cultural ment) are objective and fair while Mexican middle management performances fundamental to such relations, including border capi- and supervisory workers are untrustworthy, personalistic, and talist trade and manufacturing (Heyman, 2004, 2009). unfair (Heyman, 1991, 189–­9 0). 2 Of course, the latter people Likewise, the everyday life of US citizens/legal residents and dual have the hands-­on role of conducting exploitation. As speakers citizens in Mexico, mostly but not entirely of Mexican origin, who of Spanish, possessors of idiomatic local cultural knowledge, they commute back and forth across the boundary, requires specific cul- have the role of enacting manipulation and coercion. An import- tural frameworks for interpreting (a classic Anzaldúan theme). They ant part of the maquiladora labor recruitment and disposal system balance a fundamentally non-­national, cultural-­social framework in is gossip networks identifying energetic workers, pliable workers which they are household and kin members, though often differen- (maybe desperate ones also), resistant workers, and slightly in- tiated by their elevated earning power in the United States and their dependent workers (Heyman, 1991, 190). This system is trans- legal identification as Unitedstatesians (for lack of a better word). lated from US corporate management to the Mexican shopfloor These material resources and cultural symbols are carefully nego- by skilled socio-­cultural intermediaries. These intermediaries ma- tiated in intimate relationships (Heyman, 1991, 125–­28, 143–­45). nipulate local social relations and cultural idioms to drive workers Transnationals and their kin thus offer an example of breaking with to maximum production (see Wright, 2006, 123–­5 0)—­t hat is, they monumental, nationalistic dualities, but to do so, they also must produce the open wounds of this (enormous) part of the border- engage in subtle patterns of relationship building using the cultural lands. Switching codes and translating languages (literally and idioms of borderlands and nation-­states. They are not entirely au- metaphorically) can, then, facilitate exploitation when relations of tonomous from webs of power and inequality. production cut across borders. By reducing the phenomenon of the border to migrants, and At each juncture across the so-­called world system, pressure and migrants to the most oppressed, a vast number of other social manipulation is coded and recoded across inequalities of national- figures and symbolic representations are either hidden (e.g., legal ity, language, class (especially education-­inflected occupation), and commuting workers) or treated as exceptions in positive terms gender. Border culture, then, not only includes in-­between positions (e.g., wealthy visitors). It is not just that mobilities are unequal, defying hegemonic binary endpoints. It also includes the symbolic though that is important, but that there are relational webs of processes, communicative activities, and social roles that coordinate meaning that sort out various subject positions and flows of in- interfaces ultimately connecting across unequal endpoints, such as equality. What this classifying symbolic framework does, then, investors and (speculative) market values, home corporate offices, is render unequal mobility comprehensible and performable in a box store inventory managers, prosperous consumers, border re- quotidian way (see Yeh, 2018). gion managers, engineers, truckers, and Mexican-­side supervisors Perhaps the most important US–­M exico border relationship, and assembly line operatives. Key synapses, such as governmental one that fully captures the meeting of global South and global ports of entry, govern multiple mobilities between the sites, and he- North (the open wound in Anzaldúa's rhetoric), is the maquila- gemonic (but not perfect) codes, such as US modernity and Mexican dora, a vast complex of low wage, high speed, high productiv- poverty, enable interactions at nodes along this network of uneven ity export assembly plants on the Mexican side of the border and combined relations. 1548744x, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ciso.12446 by Southern Illinois University, Wiley Online Library on [18/02/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License | CITY & SOCIETY | THE U.S.-­MEXICO BORDER AS A MODEL FOR SOCIAL-­CULTURAL THEORY: A BRIEF DISCUSSION CO NTR I B U TI O N S TO S O C I A L A N D C U LT U R E TH EO RY and overgeneralized. How the powerful and powerless are connected, Just as Anzaldúa's book on US–­Mexico border culture has influenced terface situations needs careful social-­cultural analysis. Some cultural understandings of culture more widely, these additional considera- hybrids may indeed defy racialized hegemonic monuments, and this tions derived from the US–­Mexico border situation might also be does matter to politics. But in other contexts, the ability to combine suggestive for social-­cultural theory. We can build on the idea of com- or move between multiple cultural sets is ideal for the brokerage of bination within the theory of uneven and combined relations, which power relations (e.g., in border assembly plants). Multivalence of signs is particularly (but not uniquely) displayed by connections crossing and relations is a crucial quality in the unevenness that characterizes highly unequal borders. It is widely understood now that culture is borders. Hence, overgeneralized or poorly grounded border rhet- not a neatly bounded, local essence. Eric Wolf (1982) describes cul- oric does not adequately address concrete border struggles. While tures in a constantly mutating world of connections. An influential strengthening our social and cultural analysis of border situations does response has been the explicit articulation of multisited ethnography not automatically produce meaningful politics, it can support such pol- (Marcus, 1995). In migration studies, this has involved moving with itics. Viewing connections across bordering divisions helps support a people from origin regions, sometimes witnessing crossing borders, politics of justice across and against borders. even across apparent closures, demands specification. Middles may be present in such border-­like situations, and the role of the middle in in- and then ethnography of work and residence in arrival areas (e.g., Urban sites are particularly important for mediating uneven rela- Holmes, 2013). Other sorts of connection ethnography include trac- tions and have long been understood as central places. Border cities, ing political activism and ideas across the world and commodity which typically come in differentiated pairs with a limited number chains (Tsing, 2005, 2015). This has destabilized our notion of specific of coercively surveilled and governed passages between them, par- cultures located in particular sites (Gupta and Ferguson, 1997). ticularly show this pattern. But this just describes broad patterns There is much importance in multisited thinking. But, joined with of economic geography. The social relations and cultural codes that the customary method of ethnography, the result often is often a se- link disparate elements thrive in the density and complexity of urban ries of sites narrated via mobile people or items. But what about the nodes (of course, by implication, they are also present in rural settings processes of uneven combination? These require interfaces of dispa- and rural–­urban interfaces, just not as densely). Cities themselves, in- rate elements. The US–­Mexico border, among other processual sites, ternally, are filled with interface situations, with important gaps, con- offers important insights. On the one hand, it is an interface marked flicts, and mediations. We can study the connections and not only the by massive inequality and coercive exclusion against some people. On ethnographically charming variation. And the nodal quality of cities in the other hand, processes on each side are tightly connected by mobile uneven economic geography involves many different specific interac- people, goods, and money, much of it transnational capital. That mobil- tions and interactors that merit close, critical ethnography. ity is not an Appaduraian (1990) chaotic flux but rather a highly sorted Thinking about social positions and cultures as components of and organized set of vertical and horizontal interactions (Heyman and unequal relations requires careful analysis, but it can be productive Campbell, 2009), as I have shown for guns-­drugs-­money, cross-­border of new theoretical insights. The close attention to communicating mobilities, and low-­wage assembly. Those site-­crossing interactions the experiences, expressions, and subjectivities in multiple sites—­ occur within key governing signs and structured social roles, allowing open to flows—­ that characterizes contemporary anthropology fluid but patterned practices in a Bourdeiuvian (1972) sense (which is (Carrier, 2016) provides ethnography of great power. But this fine not to deny important phenomena of avoidance, subversion, and po- detailing of local emotions and experiences will benefit from think- litical resistance). Not only does each side or “site” have its complex ing of such subjectivities as nodes in wider, often (but not always) practices, then, but there are frameworks for crossing between them—­ unequal webs. It will benefit from asking what codes help enact and often literally crossing a geopolitical border and also crossing race, express these relationships—­or how people invent new intermediary class, and gender boundaries. Anzaldúa expressed some of this, albeit codes. It will benefit from thinking—­as Anzaldúa did—­about the bor- with a romance that has been subsequently naively consumed. This der condition across society and culture. Its production and repro- suggests that in social-­cultural theory we need more complex, power-­ duction deserve close attention, wherever they occur. aware analyses of interfaces and uneven and combined processes. The politics that most align with this kind of analysis act on relations of power that generate inequality and suffering across appar- ORCID Josiah Heyman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6243-9535 ent social, political, and geographic boundaries. Rather than speaking rhetorically of open border wounds, then, we should point to specific wounding processes and the people responsible for them. Relations E N D N OT E S 1 Authors other than Rosaldo developed parallel breaks with classic anthropology, such as Carlos Vélez-­Ibáñez (1996, 2020) combining his transborder life experience with critical political-­economic anthropology (Mintz, 1985, Wolf, 1982). 2 Many Mexicans interpret East Asian management as being somewhat different from US management. across division and inequality thus can be rendered concrete rather than rendered a general—­and vague—­border condition. Furthermore, the more powerful and more powerless, in uneven interchange with each other (directly and indirectly), need to be revealed together. This matters especially for the powerful, so often rendered vague, abstract, 1548744x, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ciso.12446 by Southern Illinois University, Wiley Online Library on [18/02/2024]. 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How to cite this article: Heyman, Josiah. 2023. “The U.S.-­ Mexico Border as a Model for Social-­Cultural Theory: A Brief Discussion.” City & Society 35(1): 8–13. https://doi. org/10.1111/ciso.12446. 1548744x, 2023, 1, Downloaded from https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ciso.12446 by Southern Illinois University, Wiley Online Library on [18/02/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License | CITY & SOCIETY