BUILDING BRIDGES, BROKERING DIVIDES: CONFRONTING THE LIMITS OF CULTURAL ASSIMILATION
Bridge of Understanding, Bridge of Straw
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La Girl Filipina: Paz Marquez Benitez, Brokering Cultures
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The Quaker, the Primitivist, and the Progressive: Three Cultural Brokers in New Mexico's Quest for Multicultural Harmony
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These essays examine the ways in which individuals have sought to reconcile sociocultural differences between those at the fringes of American society and those at the center. Two concepts embody this effort. One is the bridge concept—the idea that those with dual identities would serve as links between the two sociocultural worlds. The other concept, that of the cultural broker, refers to someone who actively seeks to mediate the differences between the two groups. The essays in this cluster use the two concepts to analyze the ways in which individuals in three disparate places—the American West (California), a U.S. colony across the Pacific (the Philippines), and the American Southwest (New Mexico)—served as bridges and brokers in their efforts to negotiate the imbalance of power between dominant and subordinate groups.
