The field: The city has 14312 inhabitants, more than half are unemployed, 53% of the under 18 years old are officially living under the poverty line. The main source of income for the town: Smuggling of people and drugs.
Social anthropologist Johannes Wilm has written an ethnography of the town Douglas in Arizona, a border town to Mexico. It builds on his master thesis at the University of Oslo. He looks "at the complex influence that the two involved countries have on individual actors and how community and identity are shaped thereof."
The book has been published these days, it looks very interesting and written with the reader in mind. I'll write more about it the coming days / weeks.
The whole book can be downloaded as pdf (30MB!)
UPDATE: SEE ALSO:
Too engaged anthropology? The Lumpenproletariat on the US-Mexican Border
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