Books

Contemporary Cuba (2023)

This completely revised and updated edition focuses on Cuba since Raúl Castro stepped down as president in 2018. The book offers a comprehensive description and analysis of contemporary Cuban politics, economy, international relations, and society. 

All but two of the twenty-seven articles were written expressly for this volume, in a style accessible for a broad audience. Ideally suited for students and general readers seeking to understand this small yet still influential country, the book includes a substantive introduction setting the historical context, as well as introductions to each topical section and a chronology of events since 2014. 

The book is perfect for undergraduate classrooms, and anyone interested in learning about what is going on in Cuba today.

AVAILABLE NOW FROM ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Everyday Adjustments in Havana: Economic Reforms, Mobility and Emerging Inequalities 

(Lexington Press, 2018) 

Growing economic inequalities are  rarely acknowledged in Socialist Cuba. Market reforms in the 1990s and between 2008-2015  altered the structures of opportunity created by the 1959 Revolution. This book is the first ethnography of life in Cuba to examine social stratification and the creative everyday contortions made by Havana households to adjust (and re-adjust) after Fidel Castro's departure from leadership.

I argue that distinct configurations of social capital and Revolutionary Cultural Capital structure opportunities for mobility, access to consumption, and power. As the labor market is restructured, individuals and families in Havana change their everyday practices, weighing what they perceive as the advantages and disadvantages of moving into previously stigmatized private sector. These decisions about labor market participation are shaped by gender and generation. 

One of the strengths of anthropology in post-Socialist contexts is the way it can challenge neoliberal transition narratives, showing how the economic systems that develop after state Socialism are unique, influenced by local norms of culture, kinship and community. 

This ethnography of an important moment in contemporary Cuban history amplifies the voices and experiences of people in Havana to challenge the dominant narratives of transition and confirms the value of anthropological research for policymakers interested in understanding the impacts of economic restructuring and growing social inequalities on people’s everyday lives as they attempt to target future social policy to maintain equity.

Cuba's Forgotten Decade: How the 1970s Shaped the Revolution

The 1970s have largely been overlooked in studies of the Cuban Revolution, dismissed simply as a period of “Sovietization”, bureaucratization, institutionalization, and orthodoxy. However, it was also a time of intense transformation and many of the ideas, approaches, policies, and legislation developed and tested during the 1970s maintain a very visible legacy in contemporary Cuba. 

My chapter, Cuban Women and the State: Women’s Lives in the 1970s and the New Reproductive Bargain, looks at the evolving relationship between women and the State during the decade.