African Studies and African Country Resources @ Pitt: Cape Verde

Offering insights into social science methodology and practice, this book employs critical ethnography and discourse analysis to explore what Cape Verdeans have to say about women’s lives in the era of twenty-first century globalization.  The authors investigate economic and personal the difficulties they face. They also examine the ways women resist the challenges globalization has brought to them especially through cultural expressions ofbatuku dancing and Creole language. Using the framework of Patricia Hill Collins' intersectionality theory, this book concludes that scholars need to make central the links among the concepts of oppression, resistance, culture, and gender in order to "see" the lives of women and especially in order to identify the bridges to political change.

Lima studies the socialization of young, male Cape Verdean immigrants. Families, schools and neighborhoods play an important role. The fact that many parents did not speak English and could not ¿read¿ their society, led the young men to become cultural and language brokers at home. Those who found social support in school were those who eventually graduated. Those who did not do well academically could trace their failure to early negative experiences in school. Lima¿s work supports the idea that what immigrant families bring from the home country and what they find in their host country plays an important role in how their acculturation.