Peruvian Street Lives

by Linda J. Seligmann

"For more than twenty years Linda J. Seligmann has walked the streets of Peru in city and countryside alike, talking to the women who work in the informal and open-air markets of the Andean highlands of Cuzco. In this readable ethnography, composed of vignettes and accompanied by a superb series of photographs, Selignmann offers a humane yet incisive portrayal of their lives. In Peruvian Street Lives, Seligmann leads us through the complex, informal networks that market women have established. Despite how disorderly and chaotic these networks appear, she argues that they often paradoxically keep dysfunctional economies and corrupt bureaucracies from utterly destroying the ability of citizens to survive from day to day. Seligmann asks why the constructive efforts of market women to make a living provoke such negative social perceptions from some members of Peruvian society, who see them as symbols and actual catalysts of social disorder, domestically and publicly. The book traces the im