{"product_id":"the-company-they-kept-migrants-and-the-politics-of-gender-in-caribbean-costa-rica-18701960","title":"The Company They Kept: Migrants and the Politics of Gender in Caribbean Costa Rica  1870-1960","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the late nineteenth century  migrants from Jamaica  Colombia  Barbados  and beyond poured into Caribbean Central America  building railroads  digging canals  selling meals  and farming homesteads. On the rain-forested shores of Costa Rica  U.S. entrepreneurs and others established vast banana plantations. Over the next half-century  short-lived export booms drew tens of thousands of migrants to the region. In Port Limn  birthplace of the United Fruit Company  a single building might house a Russian seamstress  a Martinican madam  a Cuban doctor  and a Chinese barkeep  together with stevedores  laundresses  and laborers from across the Caribbean.  Tracing the changing contours of gender  kinship  and community in Costa Ricas plantation region  Lara Putnam explores new questions about the work of caring for children and men and how it fit into the export economy  the role of kinship as well as cash in structuring labor  the social networks that shaped migrants lives  and the impact of ideas about race and sex on the exercise of power. Based on sources that range from handwritten autobiographies to judicial transcripts and addressing topics from intimacy between prostitutes to insults between neighbors  the book illuminates the connections between political economy  popular culture  and everyday life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44964079566901,"sku":"ByrdShop_0807854069","price":33.13,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780807854068.jpg?v=1770448069","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-company-they-kept-migrants-and-the-politics-of-gender-in-caribbean-costa-rica-18701960","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}