Professor Elizabeth Dore

Modern Languages
University of Southampton
Highfield
Southampton
SO17 1BJ

Position: Professor

Location: 65/3023
Extension: 22293
Telephone: (023) 8059 2293
Fax: (023) 8059 3288
Email Professor Elizabeth Dore

Biographical notes

Elizabeth Dore is Professor in Latin American Studies. She is a modern Latin American historian known for her research on memory, class, gender, race and ethnicity in Central America, Cuba and Peru, and for theoretical analysis of development and underdevelopment. Her recent publications focus on historical memory, gender studies, and late capitalist development in Latin America.

Prof Dore received a PhD from Columbia University in Latin American history. She has served on the editorial boards of NACLA's Report on the Americas and Latin American Perspectives. She has worked on the staff of and consulted for numerous NGO's including the Inter-American Foundation and the International Center for Research on Women.

Teaching interests

Elizabeth Dore's courses analyse Historical Memory; the Cuban Revolution; socialism; gender studies, class, ethnicity, and race in modern Latin America.

Research expertise

I encourage applications to do postgraduate research under my supervision in oral history, memory studies and Cuban Studies and Central American history.

Current research projects

Her current research project focuses on Cubans' memories of life in the revolution. The project, carried out by a team of Cuban and British scholars under the direction of Prof Dore, has collected more than one hundred in-depth life history interviews, drawn from a cross-section of men and women throughout the island. For further information visit the project website (www.soton.ac.uk/cuban-oral-history).

• AHRC Case Study: Memories of the Cuban Revolution 
• Women's Hour Interview
  BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour with Jane Garvey, Tues 30 Dec 2008, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. (Requires Real Player).
• 'Cubans’ Memories of the 1960s: The Ecstasies and the Agonies'.
  This article appears in the Winter 2009 issue of 'ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America.'

Current research awards

Elizabeth Dore received two research fellowships for the academic year 2008-09 to complete the book Cubans’ Lives: Voices from the Revolution. From September 2008 to February 2009 she will hold a Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. From March-June 2009 she will be a Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. (www.drclas.harvard.edu)

Research for the book Cubans’ Lives: Voices from the Revolution was funded by the Ford Foundation and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), under the auspices of the project Memories of the Cuban Revolution. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) provided funding to write the book.

Her previous research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, the British Academy, the Fulbright Commission, and the Social Science Research Council (US), among others.

Recent and significant publications

Mongraphs

Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua

(Duke University Press, 2006)

Downloads:

•  Table of contents and introduction 69Kb
• Book jacket front 139Kb
• Book jacket back 162Kb

In Myths of Modernity Elizabeth Dore rethinks Nicaragua's transition to capitalism. Arguing against the idea that the country's capitalist transformation was ushered in by the coffee boom that extended from 1870 to 1930, she maintains that coffee growing gave rise to systems of landowning and labour exploitation that impeded rather than promoted capitalist development. Dore places gender at the forefront of her analysis, which demonstrates that patriarchy was the organizing principle of the coffee economy s debt-peonage system until the 1950s. She examines the gendered dynamics of daily life in Diriomo, a township in Nicaragua's Granada region, tracing the history of the town's Indian community from its inception in the colonial era to its demise in the early twentieth century.

Dore seamlessly combines archival research, oral history, and an innovative theoretical approach that unites political economy with social history. She recovers the bygone voices of peons, planters, and local officials within documents such as labour contracts, court records, and official correspondence. She juxtaposes these historical perspectives with those of contemporary peasants, landowners, activists, and politi­cians who share memories passed down to the present. The reconceptualization of the coffee economy that Dore elaborates has far-reaching implications. The Sandinistas mistakenly believed, she contends, that Nicaraguan capitalism was mature and ripe for socialist revolution, and after their victory in 1979 that belief led them to alienate many peasants by ignoring their demands for land. Thus, the Sandinistas' myths of modernity contributed to their downfall.

"As ideal a combination of fine-grained, historically rich ethnography; astute political economy; and powerful feminist scholarship as one could possibly hope for. A standard to emulate."
- JAMES C SCOTT, Yale University

"In this uniquely researched study, constructed in dialogue with generations of members of the Diriomo community; written records, scholarly debates, and revolutionary policymakers, Elizabeth Dore shows why debt peonage and land privatization in the Nicaraguan coffee boom failed to generate capitalism. Gender is an important element in her argument and one that economic and social historians can no longer afford to ignore."
- MARY KAY VAUGHAN, co-editor of The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico 1920 - 1940

"Myths of Modernity demonstrates why an understanding of history is important to current policy debates and why a misguided analysis of rural class relations contributed to the eventual electoral defeat of the Sandinistas" - CARMEN DIANA DEERE, co-author of Empowering Women: Land and Property Rights in Latin America

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Mitos de Modernidad: Tierra, Peonaje y Patriarcado en Granada, Nicaragua (traducido por Frances Kinloch Tijerino)

(Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centro América, 2008)

Downloads:

• Table of contents and introduction 2Mb
• Book jacket front 185Kb
• Book jacket back 301Kb

En Mitos de Modernidad, Elizabeth Dore analiza los cambios generados por la expansión de la caficultura en los municipios de Granada y Diriomo. Dore constató que la oligarquía cafetalera usó su poder e influencia para apropiarse de las mejores tierras comunales de los indígenas en el volcán Mombacho. Al mismo tiempo, muchos hombres y mujeres del campesinado lograron titular parcelas para la subsistencia familiar, pero se vieron sometidos bajo un régimen de trabajo forzoso – el peonaje endeudado – organizado en torno a los principios del patriarcado. Por tanto, Dore concluye que el auge cafetalero dio lugar al surgimiento de sistemas de tenencia de la tierra y de explotación de la mano de obra que, en vez de impulsar el capitalismo, más bien obstaculizaron su desarrollo.

Las conclusiones de Dore refutan la premisa sostenida por influyentes historiadores sandinistas de que a fines del siglo XIX el auge cafetalero impulsó la transición capitalista en Nicaragua y, en consecuencia, hacia 1979 la mayoría de los trabajadores del campo poseía una conciencia proletaria. Con base en esta idea, el gobierno sandinista les ofreció mejores salarios y condiciones laborales en empresas agropecuarias estatales o cooperativas. Pero, a la vez, rechazó las demandas de tierras a título individual hasta observar – ya tardíamente - un profundo malestar entre el campesinado. Así, los mitos de modernidad contribuyeron a la caída del FSLN del poder en 1990.

No es posible desear una conjugación más idónea que este minucioso estudio etnográfico, rico en información histórica, unido a un hábil análisis económico y político, y a un poderoso enfoque académico feminista. Este libro es un modelo a emular. 
- James C. Scott, Universidad de Yale.

La obra de Elizabeth Dore constituye un aporte original, fundamental y pionero en el campo de la historia de las mujeres y de las relaciones de género en América Latina, ya que nos permite cuestionarnos cuál fue el impacto diferenciado de los procesos de privatización de la tierra y de expansión del café sobre el acceso a la tierra en Nicaragua, y en particular, si las mujeres indígenas fueron las principales perdedoras y cómo se vieron modificadas las relaciones de género en su familia y comunidad.
- Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz, Universidad de Costa Rica.

Mitos de Modernidad ofrece una sofisticada interpretación de los cambios económicos, sociales y culturales asociados con la expansión del café en Nicaragua. Con base en una exhaustiva revisión de fuentes, Dore reconsidera los debates clásicos sobre el origen del capitalismo nicaragüense a partir de una perspectiva que integra las dimensiones étnica y de género. El resultado es una contribución tan fundamental como polémica y, en todos los sentidos, un aporte esencial para comprender la Nicaragua pasada y presente.
- Iván Molina Jiménez, Universidad de Costa Rica. 

Other publications

• Hidden Histories of Gender and the State in Latin America, co-edited with Maxine Molyneux, (Duke University Press, 2000).
• Gender Politics in Latin America: Debates in Theory and Practice, ed., (Monthly Review Press, 1997).
• The Peruvian Mining Industry: Growth, Stagnation and Crisis (Westview Press, 1988).
• Acumulación y crisis en la minería peruana, 1900-1977 (Lima: Editorial Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, 1986).

 
Journal articles and book chapters 

Elizabeth Dore has published articles on current Latin American issues in newspapers and magazines including NACLA's Report on the Americas, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, In These Times. She has appeared on TV and radio in the UK, the US, and Latin America.

Media

In March 2010 she was asked to speak about her knowledge of Chile by BBC journalists covering the earthquake that caused massive damage south of the capital Santiago.

Listen to the interviews:

• Newshour on the World Service interview (mp3. courtesy of BBC World Service)
• The World Tonight on BBC Radio Four interview (mp3. courtesy of BBC Radio Four)

Publications from e–Prints Soton

	Dore, E. (2006) The myths of modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua, Duke University Press, 272pp.
	Dore, E. (2003) Debt peonage in Granada, Nicaragua, 1870-1930. Hispanic American Historical Review, 83, (3), 521-559. (doi:10.1215/00182168-83-3-521)
	Dore, Elizabeth (2003) In the National Interest. NACLA’s Report on the Americas, 36, (4), 20-24.
	Dore, Elizabeth (2003) Patriarchy from above, patriarchy from below, debt peonage on Nicaraguan coffee estates, 1870-1930. In, Clarence-Smith, William Gervase and Topik, Steven (eds.) The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500–1989. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 209-235.
	Dore, Elizabeth (2002) Una historia no modernizadora en la Nicaragua rural: Granada, 1860-1920. In, Ohmstede, Antonio Escobar, Falcón, Romana and Buvé, Raymond (eds.) Pueblos, comunidades y municipios frente a los proyectos modernizadores en América Latina, siglo XIX. Amsterdam: San Luis Potosí: México, Centro de Estudios y Documentación Latinoamericanos, El Colegio de San Luis Potosí, 225-244. (CLAS : CEDLA Latin American studies series ; 88).
	Dore, Elizabeth (2002) Understanding Capitalism in the Third World. In, Saad-Fihlo, Alfredo (ed.) Anti-Capitalism: A Marxist Introduction. London, Pluto Press, 164-174.

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