Angela Garcia
2020
Garcia, Angela
One. The Elegiac Addict Book Chapter
In: pp. 36-60, Duke University Press, 2020, ISBN: 9780822395874.
@inbook{Garcia2020,
title = {One. The Elegiac Addict},
author = {Angela Garcia},
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Garcia, Angela
The Ambivalent Archive ANGELA GARCIA Book Chapter
In: pp. 29-44, uke University Press, 2020, ISBN: 9780822373261.
@inbook{Garcia2020b,
title = {The Ambivalent Archive ANGELA GARCIA},
author = {Angela Garcia},
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year = {2020},
date = {2020-12-31},
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2019
Garcia, Angela
Death as a Resource for Life Book Chapter
In: pp. 316-328, University of California Press, 2019, ISBN: 9780520961067.
@inbook{Garcia2019,
title = {Death as a Resource for Life},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.1525/9780520961067-019},
isbn = {9780520961067},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-12-31},
urldate = {2019-12-31},
pages = {316-328},
publisher = {University of California Press},
abstract = {In this chapter, I refl ect on the way death, as involving loss, is realized within kin relations as a resource for life. Specifi cally, I explore how death manifests itself in aff ects and practices that may lessen the injury of loss and strengthen the commitment to live in contexts of uncertainty and pain. My goal is to show how death-in-life is not a morbid manifestation that is somehow opposed to life, but rather a vital experience that provides a basis for life’s meaningful unfolding, even generating hope for a future. However, as this future is expressed through loss, doubt is also cast upon any possibility of its coming to pass. I focus on this tension and try to capture the sense in which it shapes the eff orts of kin to protect and care for one another—to hold on to the possibility of life—but with the knowledge that there is no assurance that their eff orts will succeed.For me these are not issues concerning the moral or psychological foundations of certain behaviors. Rather, I am concerned with understanding the existential situations of people as they struggle to live in a world in which loss is deeply rooted in the rhythms of history and the everyday. There is an enormous literature on death and the experience of loss. My own thinking about these matters is infl uenced by theories of melancholy that point to sources beyond individual consciousness and that develop melancholy’s potential for understanding personal loss within the context of a larger history already laden with it.1 The experience of loss is thus encumbered with a variety of implications, meanings, and temporalities. I seek to unfold and disclose loss as a way of inhabiting the world and as a condition connecting past and future. I do so not in the pursuit of healing or happiness, but to renegotiate the very terms of life and living in a world so often characterized as destructive and deadly.},
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In this chapter, I refl ect on the way death, as involving loss, is realized within kin relations as a resource for life. Specifi cally, I explore how death manifests itself in aff ects and practices that may lessen the injury of loss and strengthen the commitment to live in contexts of uncertainty and pain. My goal is to show how death-in-life is not a morbid manifestation that is somehow opposed to life, but rather a vital experience that provides a basis for life’s meaningful unfolding, even generating hope for a future. However, as this future is expressed through loss, doubt is also cast upon any possibility of its coming to pass. I focus on this tension and try to capture the sense in which it shapes the eff orts of kin to protect and care for one another—to hold on to the possibility of life—but with the knowledge that there is no assurance that their eff orts will succeed.For me these are not issues concerning the moral or psychological foundations of certain behaviors. Rather, I am concerned with understanding the existential situations of people as they struggle to live in a world in which loss is deeply rooted in the rhythms of history and the everyday. There is an enormous literature on death and the experience of loss. My own thinking about these matters is infl uenced by theories of melancholy that point to sources beyond individual consciousness and that develop melancholy’s potential for understanding personal loss within the context of a larger history already laden with it.1 The experience of loss is thus encumbered with a variety of implications, meanings, and temporalities. I seek to unfold and disclose loss as a way of inhabiting the world and as a condition connecting past and future. I do so not in the pursuit of healing or happiness, but to renegotiate the very terms of life and living in a world so often characterized as destructive and deadly.
Garcia, Angela
Fragments of Relatedness: Writing, Archiving, and the Vicissitudes of Kinship Journal Article
In: Ethnos, vol. 85, no. 4, pp. 1-13, 2019.
@article{Garcia2019b,
title = {Fragments of Relatedness: Writing, Archiving, and the Vicissitudes of Kinship},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.1080/00141844.2019.1645190},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-07-25},
urldate = {2019-07-25},
journal = {Ethnos},
volume = {85},
number = {4},
pages = {1-13},
abstract = {This article considers an archive of letters written by three generations of female kin as offering a form for thinking about the nature of kin relations. It tells the story of how the archive came into being, and examines the ways writing and archiving makes visible the shifting relations that constitute kinship. Highlighting the narrative acts of selected letters, it grapples with the failure of things being properly ‘passed on’ within the web of kinship, as well as the potential that this failure generates.},
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This article considers an archive of letters written by three generations of female kin as offering a form for thinking about the nature of kin relations. It tells the story of how the archive came into being, and examines the ways writing and archiving makes visible the shifting relations that constitute kinship. Highlighting the narrative acts of selected letters, it grapples with the failure of things being properly ‘passed on’ within the web of kinship, as well as the potential that this failure generates.
2017
Garcia, Angela
The Ambivalent Archive Book Chapter
In: pp. 29-44, 2017.
@inbook{Garcia2017,
title = {The Ambivalent Archive},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.2307/j.ctv1168bd2.6},
year = {2017},
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Garcia, Angela
The Rainy Season: Toward a Cinematic Ethnography of Crisis and Endurance in Mexico City Bachelor Thesis
2017.
@bachelorthesis{Garcia2017b,
title = {The Rainy Season: Toward a Cinematic Ethnography of Crisis and Endurance in Mexico City},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.1215/01642472-3728020},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-03-01},
urldate = {2017-03-01},
journal = {Social Text},
volume = {35},
pages = {101-121},
abstract = {Based on ethnographic research and critical reflection on Carlos Reygadas’s film Post Tenebras Lux, this article explores the texture and temporality of crisis and endurance in Mexico. Specifically, it traces the transformation of one of Mexico City’s ubiquitous anexos (annexes), which names coercive drug treatment centers run by and for the informal working poor. In putting the ethnography of an anexo in dialogue with Reygadas’s film, this article develops a picture of precarious sociality in contemporary Mexico, one shaped by neoliberal reform and drug-related violence. Finally, it contemplates how the film and the anexo’s resonant “difficulty” upset sense and meaning, thereby suggesting new ways of attending to life within broader durations of politics and history.},
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Based on ethnographic research and critical reflection on Carlos Reygadas’s film Post Tenebras Lux, this article explores the texture and temporality of crisis and endurance in Mexico. Specifically, it traces the transformation of one of Mexico City’s ubiquitous anexos (annexes), which names coercive drug treatment centers run by and for the informal working poor. In putting the ethnography of an anexo in dialogue with Reygadas’s film, this article develops a picture of precarious sociality in contemporary Mexico, one shaped by neoliberal reform and drug-related violence. Finally, it contemplates how the film and the anexo’s resonant “difficulty” upset sense and meaning, thereby suggesting new ways of attending to life within broader durations of politics and history.
2016
Garcia, Angela
The Blue Years: An Ethnography of a Prison Archive Journal Article
In: Cultural Anthropology, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 571-594, 2016.
@article{Garcia2016,
title = {The Blue Years: An Ethnography of a Prison Archive},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.14506/ca31.4.06},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-11-15},
urldate = {2016-11-15},
journal = {Cultural Anthropology},
volume = {31},
number = {4},
pages = {571-594},
abstract = {This article is an ethnographic account of an archive of prison letters written by three generations of female kin. Based on long-term ethnographic research in rural New Mexico, it describes the context in which the letters were written, as well as the desires, preoccupations, and practices that transformed them into an archive. I have placed a particular focus on how dislocation and connection manifest in the letters and shape the kinds of narratives the archive tells. Themes of isolation, loss, and memory are explored within the wider context of colonial history and the acceleration of the carceral state. This article seeks to integrate these registers analytically, while elucidating the role of archiving for a subject's present life.},
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This article is an ethnographic account of an archive of prison letters written by three generations of female kin. Based on long-term ethnographic research in rural New Mexico, it describes the context in which the letters were written, as well as the desires, preoccupations, and practices that transformed them into an archive. I have placed a particular focus on how dislocation and connection manifest in the letters and shape the kinds of narratives the archive tells. Themes of isolation, loss, and memory are explored within the wider context of colonial history and the acceleration of the carceral state. This article seeks to integrate these registers analytically, while elucidating the role of archiving for a subject's present life.
Garcia, Angela; Anderson, Brian T
Violence, addiction, recovery: An anthropological study of Mexicos anexos Journal Article
In: Transcultural Psychiatry, vol. 53, no. 4, 2016.
@article{Garcia2016b,
title = {Violence, addiction, recovery: An anthropological study of Mexicos anexos},
author = {Angela Garcia and Brian T Anderson},
doi = {10.1177/1363461516662539},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-08-17},
urldate = {2016-08-17},
journal = {Transcultural Psychiatry},
volume = {53},
number = {4},
abstract = {Informal, coercive residential centers for the treatment of addiction are widespread and growing throughout Latin America. In Mexico these centers are called “anexos” and they are run and utilized by low-income individuals and families with problems related to drugs and alcohol. This article draws on findings from a 3-year anthropological study of anexos in Mexico City. Participant observation and in-depth interviews were used to describe and analyze anexos, their therapeutic practices, and residents’ own accounts of addiction and recovery. Our findings indicate that poverty, addiction, and drug-related violence have fueled the proliferation of anexos. They also suggest that anexos offer valuable health, social, and practical support, but risk exacerbating the suffering of residents through coercive rehabilitation techniques. Emphasizing this tension, this article considers the complex relationship between coercion and care, and poses fundamental questions about what drug recovery consists of in settings of poverty and violence.},
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Informal, coercive residential centers for the treatment of addiction are widespread and growing throughout Latin America. In Mexico these centers are called “anexos” and they are run and utilized by low-income individuals and families with problems related to drugs and alcohol. This article draws on findings from a 3-year anthropological study of anexos in Mexico City. Participant observation and in-depth interviews were used to describe and analyze anexos, their therapeutic practices, and residents’ own accounts of addiction and recovery. Our findings indicate that poverty, addiction, and drug-related violence have fueled the proliferation of anexos. They also suggest that anexos offer valuable health, social, and practical support, but risk exacerbating the suffering of residents through coercive rehabilitation techniques. Emphasizing this tension, this article considers the complex relationship between coercion and care, and poses fundamental questions about what drug recovery consists of in settings of poverty and violence.
Garcia, Angela; Anderson, Brian T
'Spirituality' and 'cultural adaptation' in a Latino mutual aid group for substance misuse and mental health Journal Article
In: BJPsych Bulletin 39(4):191-5 DOI:, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 191-195, 2016.
@article{Garcia2016c,
title = {'Spirituality' and 'cultural adaptation' in a Latino mutual aid group for substance misuse and mental health},
author = {Angela Garcia and Brian T Anderson},
doi = {10.1192/pb.bp.114.048322},
year = {2016},
date = {2016-01-12},
urldate = {2016-01-12},
journal = {BJPsych Bulletin 39(4):191-5 DOI:},
volume = {39},
number = {4},
pages = {191-195},
abstract = {A previously unknown Spanish-language mutual aid resource for substance use and mental health concerns is available in Latino communities across the USA and much of Latin America. This kind of '4th and 5th step' group is a 'culturally adapted' version of the 12-step programme and provides empirical grounds on which to re-theorise the importance of spirituality and culture in mutual aid recovery groups. This article presents ethnographic data on this organisation.
},
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A previously unknown Spanish-language mutual aid resource for substance use and mental health concerns is available in Latino communities across the USA and much of Latin America. This kind of '4th and 5th step' group is a 'culturally adapted' version of the 12-step programme and provides empirical grounds on which to re-theorise the importance of spirituality and culture in mutual aid recovery groups. This article presents ethnographic data on this organisation.
2015
Garcia, Angela; Anderson, Brian T; Humphreys, Keith
Fourth and Fifth Step Groups: A New and Growing Self-Help Organization for Underserved Latinos with Substance Use Disorders Journal Article
In: Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 235-243, 2015.
@article{Garcia2015,
title = {Fourth and Fifth Step Groups: A New and Growing Self-Help Organization for Underserved Latinos with Substance Use Disorders},
author = {Angela Garcia and Brian T Anderson and Keith Humphreys},
doi = {10.1080/07347324.2015.1018784},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-04-03},
urldate = {2015-04-03},
journal = {Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly},
volume = {33},
number = {2},
pages = {235-243},
abstract = {This article reports results from a preliminary ethnographic study of a new and largely unknown self-help organization for Latinos with substance use disorders, known as “4th and 5th Step Group” (in Spanish, Grupo de Cuarto y Quinto Paso, “CQ”). It describes the nature of CQ, aspects of group membership, and members' experiences of the organization. Although findings are preliminary, they provide critical information on a potentially important therapeutic resource. More rigorous research with larger and more diverse samples of Latinos participating in CQ is warranted.},
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This article reports results from a preliminary ethnographic study of a new and largely unknown self-help organization for Latinos with substance use disorders, known as “4th and 5th Step Group” (in Spanish, Grupo de Cuarto y Quinto Paso, “CQ”). It describes the nature of CQ, aspects of group membership, and members' experiences of the organization. Although findings are preliminary, they provide critical information on a potentially important therapeutic resource. More rigorous research with larger and more diverse samples of Latinos participating in CQ is warranted.
Garcia, Angela
Serenity: Violence, Inequality, and Recovery on the Edge of Mexico City: Violence, Inequality, and Recovery in Mexico City Journal Article
In: Medical Anthropology Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 4, 2015.
@article{Garcia2015b,
title = {Serenity: Violence, Inequality, and Recovery on the Edge of Mexico City: Violence, Inequality, and Recovery in Mexico City},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.1111/maq.12208},
year = {2015},
date = {2015-03-01},
urldate = {2015-03-01},
journal = {Medical Anthropology Quarterly},
volume = {29},
number = {4},
abstract = {Over the last decade, there has been a sharp increase in drug addiction in Mexico, especially among the urban poor. During the same period, unregulated residential treatment centers for addiction, known as anexos, have proliferated throughout the country. These centers are utilized and run by marginalized populations and are widely known to engage in physical violence. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Mexico City, this article describes why anexos emerged, how they work, and what their prevalence and practices reveal about the nature of recovery in a context where poverty, drugs, and violence are existential realities. Drawing attention to the dynamic relationship between violence and recovery, pain, and healing, it complicates categories of violence and care that are presumed to have exclusive meaning, illuminating the divergent meanings of, and opportunities for, recovery, and how these are socially configured and sustained. [addiction, violence, Mexico, drug war, informality] This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Over the last decade, there has been a sharp increase in drug addiction in Mexico, especially among the urban poor. During the same period, unregulated residential treatment centers for addiction, known as anexos, have proliferated throughout the country. These centers are utilized and run by marginalized populations and are widely known to engage in physical violence. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Mexico City, this article describes why anexos emerged, how they work, and what their prevalence and practices reveal about the nature of recovery in a context where poverty, drugs, and violence are existential realities. Drawing attention to the dynamic relationship between violence and recovery, pain, and healing, it complicates categories of violence and care that are presumed to have exclusive meaning, illuminating the divergent meanings of, and opportunities for, recovery, and how these are socially configured and sustained. [addiction, violence, Mexico, drug war, informality] This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
2014
Garcia, Angela
Regeneration: Love, drugs and the remaking of Hispano inheritance Journal Article
In: Social Anthropology, vol. 22, no. 2, 2014.
@article{Garcia2014,
title = {Regeneration: Love, drugs and the remaking of Hispano inheritance},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.1111/1469-8676.12070},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-05-01},
urldate = {2014-05-01},
journal = {Social Anthropology},
volume = {22},
number = {2},
abstract = {This article explores the changing nature of inheritance among Hispanos in northern New Mexico. Specifically, it examines how Hispano families have reworked the traditional application of inheritance, referring to property passed down the generations, to conceive of heroin addiction as ‘inherited’. It shows how this emerging formation of inheritance is shaped by, and refracts back upon, past configurations of property and belonging. This article reflects on intergenerational addiction as a modality of connection and continuity, but one that is entangled with experiences of loss. It highlights the implications of this tension for anthropological understandings of inheritance, addiction and the embodiment of history.},
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This article explores the changing nature of inheritance among Hispanos in northern New Mexico. Specifically, it examines how Hispano families have reworked the traditional application of inheritance, referring to property passed down the generations, to conceive of heroin addiction as ‘inherited’. It shows how this emerging formation of inheritance is shaped by, and refracts back upon, past configurations of property and belonging. This article reflects on intergenerational addiction as a modality of connection and continuity, but one that is entangled with experiences of loss. It highlights the implications of this tension for anthropological understandings of inheritance, addiction and the embodiment of history.
Garcia, Angela
The Promise: On the Morality of the Marginal and the Illicit Journal Article
In: Ethos, vol. 42, no. 1, 2014.
@article{Garcia2014b,
title = {The Promise: On the Morality of the Marginal and the Illicit},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.1111/etho.12038},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-03-01},
urldate = {2014-03-01},
journal = {Ethos},
volume = {42},
number = {1},
abstract = {Moral engagement in the setting of drug addiction is often at odds with prevailing moral discourse and is treated in punitive terms. In this article, I explore how one moral gesture—a promise between a heroin-using mother and daughter—embodies the difficulty and ambiguity of moral experience in the context of addiction and offers insight into how it is profoundly shaped by social processes. By offering a close description of the promise over time, I show how morality is lived through sentiments and practices of care and commitment, which are vulnerable to isolation, punishment, and wounding. The story of the promise thus offers a way to reflect upon morality as the blurring of these different intensities.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
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Moral engagement in the setting of drug addiction is often at odds with prevailing moral discourse and is treated in punitive terms. In this article, I explore how one moral gesture—a promise between a heroin-using mother and daughter—embodies the difficulty and ambiguity of moral experience in the context of addiction and offers insight into how it is profoundly shaped by social processes. By offering a close description of the promise over time, I show how morality is lived through sentiments and practices of care and commitment, which are vulnerable to isolation, punishment, and wounding. The story of the promise thus offers a way to reflect upon morality as the blurring of these different intensities.
2013
Garcia, Angela
The Elegiac Addict Book Chapter
In: pp. 36-60, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-8223-5350-8.
@inbook{Garcia2013,
title = {The Elegiac Addict},
author = {Angela Garcia},
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isbn = {978-0-8223-5350-8},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
urldate = {2013-01-01},
pages = {36-60},
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2012
Garcia, Angela
Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety Journal Article
In: American Anthropologist, vol. 114, no. 1, 2012.
@article{Garcia2012,
title = {Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.1111/j.1548-1433.2011.01413_4.x},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-03-03},
urldate = {2012-03-03},
journal = {American Anthropologist},
volume = {114},
number = {1},
keywords = {},
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tppubtype = {article}
}
2010
Garcia, Angela
The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande Journal Article
In: The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande, 2010.
@article{Garcia2010,
title = {The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande},
author = {Angela Garcia},
year = {2010},
date = {2010-06-08},
urldate = {2010-06-08},
journal = {The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande},
abstract = {The Pastoral Clinic takes us on a penetrating journey into an iconic Western landscape-northern New Mexico's Española Valley, home to the highest rate of heroin addiction and fatal overdoses in the United States. In a luminous narrative, Angela Garcia chronicles the lives of several Hispano addicts, introducing us to the intimate, physical, and institutional dependencies in which they are entangled. We discover how history pervades this region that has endured centuries of material and cultural dispossession, and we come to see its heroin problem as a contemporary expression of these conditions, as well as a manifestation of the human desire to be released from them. Lyrically evoking the Española Valley and its residents through conversations, encounters, and recollections, The Pastoral Clinic is at once a devastating portrait of addiction, a rich ethnography of place, and an eloquent call for a new ethics of care.
},
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The Pastoral Clinic takes us on a penetrating journey into an iconic Western landscape-northern New Mexico's Española Valley, home to the highest rate of heroin addiction and fatal overdoses in the United States. In a luminous narrative, Angela Garcia chronicles the lives of several Hispano addicts, introducing us to the intimate, physical, and institutional dependencies in which they are entangled. We discover how history pervades this region that has endured centuries of material and cultural dispossession, and we come to see its heroin problem as a contemporary expression of these conditions, as well as a manifestation of the human desire to be released from them. Lyrically evoking the Española Valley and its residents through conversations, encounters, and recollections, The Pastoral Clinic is at once a devastating portrait of addiction, a rich ethnography of place, and an eloquent call for a new ethics of care.
Garcia, Angela
The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande Book
University of California Press, 2010, ISBN: 9780520947825.
@book{Garcia2010b,
title = {The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande},
author = {Angela Garcia},
doi = {10.1525/9780520947825},
isbn = {9780520947825},
year = {2010},
date = {2010-06-08},
urldate = {2010-06-08},
publisher = {University of California Press},
abstract = {The Pastoral Clinic takes us on a penetrating journey into an iconic Western landscape—northern New Mexico’s Española Valley, home to the highest rate of heroin addiction and fatal overdoses in the United States. In a luminous narrative, Angela Garcia chronicles the lives of several Hispano addicts, introducing us to the intimate, physical, and institutional dependencies in which they are entangled. We discover how history pervades this region that has endured centuries of material and cultural dispossession, and we come to see its heroin problem as a contemporary expression of these conditions, as well as a manifestation of the human desire to be released from them. Lyrically evoking the Española Valley and its residents through conversations, encounters, and recollections, The Pastoral Clinic is at once a devastating portrait of addiction, a rich ethnography of place, and an eloquent call for a new ethics of care.},
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The Pastoral Clinic takes us on a penetrating journey into an iconic Western landscape—northern New Mexico’s Española Valley, home to the highest rate of heroin addiction and fatal overdoses in the United States. In a luminous narrative, Angela Garcia chronicles the lives of several Hispano addicts, introducing us to the intimate, physical, and institutional dependencies in which they are entangled. We discover how history pervades this region that has endured centuries of material and cultural dispossession, and we come to see its heroin problem as a contemporary expression of these conditions, as well as a manifestation of the human desire to be released from them. Lyrically evoking the Española Valley and its residents through conversations, encounters, and recollections, The Pastoral Clinic is at once a devastating portrait of addiction, a rich ethnography of place, and an eloquent call for a new ethics of care.