The Broken Village

Daniel R. Reichman tells the story of a remote village in Honduras that transformed almost overnight from a sleepy coffee-growing community to a hotbed of undocumented migration to and from the United States.

Daniel R. Reichman is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Rochester.

Reichman analyzes human migration and economic globalization via ethnography of a small Honduran village between 2001 and 2006. The book's title evokes the twin dislocations of economic globalization affecting the village—the volatility of coffee markets following the demise of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989 and the upswing in global human migration in the two decades that followed. The book examines migration, religion, and coffee-planting strategies as various potential coping mechanisms for dealing with these dislocations.... Reichman writes briskly and well, making this book useful in undergraduate courses exploring globalization.

Sarah Lyon:

The Broken Village is sure to become obligatory reading for social scientists considering the cultural shifts resulting from neoliberal policies and the retreat of the state in Latin America and beyond. It provides much-needed perspective on the relatively understudied country of Honduras.

Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia:

This is an excellent book. Daniel R. Reichman uses small-town Honduras to give us a big-picture ethnography. At once compassionate and incisive, impressively researched and well written, The Broken Village is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America, in its largest meaning, today.