Review of The Devil Behind The Mirror

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Steven Gregory’s book entitled The Devil Behind The Mirror is an ethnographical study of the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is in the Caribbean, it occupies the Western half of an island, while Haiti makes up the Eastern portion. Gregory attempts to study and analyze the political, social and cultural aspects of this nation by interviewing and observing both the tourists and locals of two towns Boca Chica and Andres. Gregory’s research centers on globalization and the transnational processes which affect the political and socio-economics of the Dominican Republic. He focuses on the social culture, gender roles, economy, individual and nation identity, also authority and power relations. Several of the major relevant issues facing Dominican society include racism, sexism, and discrimination, economy of resort tourism, sex tourism and the informal economy. The objective of Gregory’s ethnographic research is to decipher exclusionary practices incorporated by resort tourism, how it has affected locals by division of class, gender, and race, increasing poverty and reliance on an informal economy.

During Gregory’s ethnographic research in the Dominican Republic, he encounters many individuals, some tourists, others expatriates, as well as citizens native to the island. One individual by the name of Minaya, discusses changes in the sugar cane industry. In 1988 he became a worker at a sugar mill that his uncle owned, but claimed that the industry became “Capitalized” (Gregory 2007: 15). He explains this capitalization as the industry being leased out to private corporations, which incurred poor working conditions and minimal wages upon the laborers. Minaya also expresses the fact he has no formal education, a big factor...

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... as the Dominican Republic.

Works Cited

Ferguson, James. The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development”, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Print.

Freeman, Carla. “Designing Women: Corporate Discipline and Barbados's Off-Shore Pink-Collar Sector.” Cultural Anthropology 8.2 (1993) 169-186. Web. 12 Nov 2010.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/656469

Gregory, Steven. The Devil Behind The Mirror: Globalization and Politics in the Dominican Republic. California: University of California Press, 2007. Print.

Kearney, M. “The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24, 1995: 547-565.

Meier, V. “Cut-flower production in Colombia—a major development success story for women?” Environment and Planning 31, 1999: 273-289.

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