Latino Urban Ethnography and the Work of Elena Padilla

Latinos in Chicago and the Midwest

by Mérida M. Rúa (Contributor), Nicholas De Genova (Contributor), Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores (Contributor)

This study reclaims and builds upon the classic work of anthropologist Elena Padilla in an effort to examine constructions of space and identity among Latinos. The volume includes an annotated edition of Padilla's 1947 University of Chicago master's thesis, "Puerto Rican Immigrants in New York and Chicago: A Study in Comparative Assimilation," which broke with traditional urban ethnographies and examined racial identities and interethnic relations. Weighing the importance of gender and the interplay of labor, residence, and social networks, Padilla examined the integration of Puerto Rican migrants into the social and cultural life of the larger community where they settled. Also included are four comparative and interdisciplinary original essays that foreground the significance of Padilla's early study about Latinos in Chicago. Contributors discuss the implications of her groundbreaking contributions to urban ethnographic traditions and to the development of Puerto Rican studies and Latina/o studies.
 
Contributors: Nicholas De Genova, Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores, Elena Padilla, Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, Mérida M. Rúa, and Arlene Torres.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2010

Reviews

[jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The text compiles Elena Padilla's groundbreaking 1947 masters thesis, a comparative ethnography of Mexican American and Puerto Rican migrants in Chicago, with four critical essays written by contemporary researchers in Latino Studies on the current significance of Padilla's work. The text also includes some crucial biographical information on Padilla, a Puerto Rican activist and academic who graduated from the University of Puerto Rico. She was among a handful of other UPR alums selected by the university's chancellor to attend graduate programs at various prestigious mainland universities, and then return to the island to presumably be future technocrats in the insular government. Padilla wound up at the University of Chicago's influential Department of Sociology, and while there she obtained her master's in sociology and became personally and politically involved with her interview subjects. Padilla was criticized for her 'lack of objectivity' by her mostly male and white colleagues, who also questioned the validity of her theories on the discrimination her interview subjects. As a result, Padilla went on to obtain her doctoral degree from Columbia University, but rather than go into government or become a full-time professor, she remained an 'independent researcher.' The critical essays in the volume are mostly about these choices, and Padilla's role as a public rather than university-sponsored intellectual, and the impact of these choices on the field of Latino Studies. While this information is fascinating and all of the essays well-written and well-reasoned, it is straight-up ethnography, and as such it can at times make for dry reading. Recommended to all self-styled or formal students of the social sciences, especially those looking for true badasses outside of the academy to look up to.