Dore, Elizabeth W. 1946-

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Dore, Elizabeth W. 1946-

PERSONAL:

Born July 17, 1946.

ADDRESSES:

Home—England. Office—School of Humanities, University of Southampton, University Rd., Southampton SO17 1BJ, England. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

University of Southampton, Southampton, England, Department of Humanities, professor of Latin American studies; senior lecturer in Latin American studies at the University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, England.

WRITINGS:

(With John Weeks) Basic Needs in Development Strategies: The Journey of a Concept, Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University (Washington, DC), 1979.

Acumulación y crisis en la minería peruana, 1900-1977, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos: Instituto Cultural José María Arguedas (Lima, Peru), 1986.

The Peruvian Mining Industry: Growth, Stagnation, and Crisis, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1988.

(Editor) Gender Politics in Latin America: Debates in Theory and Practice, Monthly Review Press (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor, with Maxine Molyneux) Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2000.

Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer, researcher, and educator Elizabeth W. Dore serves on the faculty of the University of Southampton, Southampton, England, where she is a professor of Latin American studies. Previously, she spent time as a senior lecturer in the same subject at the University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, England. In addition to her academic endeavors, Dore is the author or coauthor of a number of books, including Basic Needs in Development Strategies: The Journey of a Concept, written with John Weeks, The Peruvian Mining Industry: Growth, Stagnation, and Crisis, and Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua. She also edited Gender Politics in Latin America: Debates in Theory and Practice, and, with Maxine Molyneux, Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America.

Gender Politics in Latin America, is a collection of essays that analyze gender roles in modern-day Latin American politics, economics, and social relations. The essays cross disciplines, using both literary and historical references, as well as studies in the social sciences, to provide context for various arguments and styles of debate, including Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism. As a whole, the essays are meant to unite theory and practice within these subject areas, and offer real experiences of women who are striving to participate within various disciplines in Latin American countries. One popular subtopic discusses the ways in which public and private social interactions have long been perceived as separate, with public social interactions involving more national and international concerns, such as politics and economic conditions, and private interactions relegated to more domestic interests traditionally considered to be the domain of women, including the home, family, and personal relationships. Another topic addresses the perception of human rights and proper treatment as a universal right versus the reality of how few human rights are afforded to women in many parts of the world, even those that consider themselves to be modern and civilized in their attitudes. One essay in Gender Politics in Latin America presents a vital argument, using the women's movement in Chile as an example, the importance of class combined with gender when addressing questions related to the role of women in Latin America. Critics had mixed reactions to the collection. Teresita Martinez-Vergne, in a review for Gender & Society, stated that "this book lacks the connecting thread of a unified concept of gender politics, notwithstanding its title." Erica G. Polakoff, in a review for the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) Report on the Americas, concluded that "the text goes beyond formulaic conceptions, enhances our grasp of historical processes, and shows that an important body of thought about gender has been generated in various Latin American contexts." Judith Adler Hellman, a contributor to the Journal of Latin American Studies, concluded that "overall, this excellent collection is exceptional in the range of issues it tackles and the degree of success it achieves in challenging the ideas that have become received wisdom in women's and gender studies."

Myths of Modernity is based on much of the early research Dore completed on Nicaragua during the Sandinista regime, focusing primarily on how food and other basic goods were produced and distributed within the country. In this volume, she turns her attention to the failure of Nicaragua to develop a more capitalist concern, despite the financial rewards of the coffee boom, the commercial growth of coffee starting in the 1840s that developed out of an increasing popularity for the product in Europe and North America. She addresses land privatization and debt peonage, and takes a particularly close look at the attitudes toward women during this process. She emphasizes how deeply these issues affected the way women participated in privatization. Dore begins with a basic overview of capitalism, class, gender, and ethnicity, and her ideas regarding how each of these factors played into the overall picture in Nicaragua's approach toward the potential development of capitalism. Much of the documentation that Dore uses to support her theories comes from Diriomo, Nicaragua, near Granada, Nicaragua, a small town that chose to keep its records rather than submitting them to the central government, located in Ma- nagua, Nicaragua, where most other records of the sort were decimated in an earthquake in 1930. As a result, Dore had access to land and court records dating back as far as the 1840s, as well as the testimony of locals that allowed her to get a fairly accurate feel for various historical disputes in the region. This information explained why the coffee boom failed to promote a turn toward capitalism, as it reconstructed a history of debt peonage that the planters developed and that fieldworker peasants found to be acceptable. Dore notes that while some South American countries became more capitalized, largely due to land privatization, they did not rely on coffee production for their livelihood. Charles L. Stansifer, in a review for History: Review of New Books, noted that Myths of Modernity "is clearly intended for professional historians. Nevertheless, those scholars unfamiliar with Nicaragua may have difficulty connecting with the geographical reality." G.B. Paquette, in a review for the Canadian Journal of History, stated that "Dore's book is a model work of scholarship, combining theoretical insights with documents culled from archives as well as interviews with people who experienced the final stage of debt peonage."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Agricultural History, January 1, 2008, Marc Becker, review of Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua, p. 97.

American Historical Review, June 1, 2001, review of Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, p. 1023.

Canadian Journal of History, December 22, 2007, G.B. Paquette, review of Myths of Modernity, p. 559.

Gender & Society, August 1, 1998, Teresita Martinez-Vergne, review of Gender Politics in Latin America: Debates in Theory and Practice, p. 489.

Hispanic American Historical Review, November 1, 1989, Alfonso W. Quiroz, review of The Peruvian Mining Industry: Growth, Stagnation, and Crisis, p. 778; February 1, 1999, Jane S. Jaquette, review of Gender Politics in Latin America, p. 106; November 1, 2002, Sarah C. Chambers, review of Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, p. 806; November 1, 2007, David Carey, review of Myths of Modernity, p. 766.

Historian, March 22, 2007, Debra Sabia, review of Myths of Modernity, p. 110.

History: Review of New Books, June 22, 2006, Charles L. Stansifer, review of Myths of Modernity, p. 120.

Journal of Economic History, September 1, 1989, Michael J. Gonzales, review of The Peruvian Mining Industry, p. 756.

Journal of Economic Literature, June 1, 1989, review of The Peruvian Mining Industry, p. 724.

Journal of Gender Studies, November 1, 2001, Victoria Carpenter, review of Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, p. 333.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, June 22, 2007, Jim Handy, review of Myths of Modernity, p. 164.

Journal of Latin American Studies, May 1, 1998, Judith Adler Hellman, review of Gender Politics in Latin America, p. 421; August 1, 2001, Jane S. Jaquette, review of Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, p. 611.

Latin American Perspectives, September 22, 1991, James M. Cypher, review of The Peruvian Mining Industry, p. 109; November 1, 2001, Nichole Sanders, review of Gender Politics in Latin America, p. 79.

North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) Report on the Americas, September 1, 1997, Erica G. Polakoff, review of Gender Politics in Latin America, p. 46.

Review of Radical Political Economics, June 22, 1999, Tamar Diana Wilson, review of Gender Politics in Latin America, p. 157.

Times Literary Supplement (London, England), October 27, 2000, Susan Socolow, review of Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, p. 33.