Nazario, Iigo Ricardo Alphonse R.

SA 104

15 December 2014
Book review

Honduran Violence and Its Surroundings

Adrienne Pine conducted her ethnographic research from the late 1990s to the early 2000s in the Honduras. She initially intended this ethnography as an exploration of the maquiladora-run businesses and the
whole industry surrounding it. As she furthered into her research, she realized that the industry is part of a
system that basically has run the modern-day Hondurans life, and how their thinking aects the way they
respond to these systems, and how these systems aect their reasoning. Furthermore, she also expounded
on how all of these produce a kind of systemic violence which has also evolved into a symbolic violence.
All of these she compiled into a book that she titled Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in the Honduras.
Violence in the Honduras pervades the whole ethnographic research. It is formed in two ways:
systemic violence and symbolic violence. Violence, in this duality, becomes normalized in Honduran life
and it becomes their subjectivity. It is seen at homes, in work, on free times, with friends, with families,
with the media, with the government, and throughout their entire lives. What was once seen to be explicitly feared by Hondurans is now implicitly feared, which feels like it is transferred into the back of ones
head, but nonetheless exists and even dictates how one thinks and acts in Honduran society. In this book,
Pine focuses on violence in general, and then how it is perpetuated through alcohol consumption and the
maquiladora-run industries.
Alcohol, for Hondurans, as it is explained in the book, is a way of simply telling the truth. Pine
describes alcohol as an agent that peels away a some sort of symbolic veil that reveals the true nature of the
person and how they feel about their society. Although some may say that alcohol is a touchy subject, for
the Hondurans, alcohol is an open subject which does not need much rapport to be talked about comfortably. As a result, Honduran alcoholism is very prevalent. Alcoholism is dealt with in two ways:
through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and the Evangelical Church. AA sees alcoholism as a problem that
needs a form of replacement; the drinking buddies need to be replaced by non-drinking buddies and other
AA members. The church, on the other hand, sees alcoholism as a disease that needs to be cured. For

many Hondurans, they see the church as more eective because they remove something instead of just
replacing something; they take away a problem rather than substitute it with another possible problem.
However, both of these processes (and even bars included) produce a form of systemic violence in which
Hondurans no longer see themselves as being able to progress with the rest of the world.
Maquiladoras, Pine explained, were a result of an influx of foreign influence on privatization
which lead to the countrys high debt situation. As a consequence, many Hondurans have become stuck
with being employed in these industries and have nowhere to go to but to work in these settings. Pine also
explained that, for Hondurans, being stuck in an employment is a form of violence just as much as the
violence seen in the government and media, albeit more orderly. This orderliness of violence, however,
gives the Honduran an experience of orderly subjugation which makes resistance to this form of violence
even more dicult than it is perceived on the surface.
As a book review, this should not delve in too much on the details of the book, but rather this
should serve as an overview of what the book can oer. Overall, the book provides a thorough detailing of
the everyday Hondurans life and how the society that they live in is violent in many ways, to the point
where Honduras has been experiencing a lagging-behind from other countries of the region. However,
what I did notice in this book was the over-consideration of Bourdieus theory and a lack of consideration
of Marxist theory applied throughout the book. Concepts such as capitalism (especially from the mentioning of the International Monetary Fund and the maquiladoras), privatization, globalization, and U.S.
imperialism were prevalent throughout the book and were even very obvious, but Pine failed to highlight
these aspects of the Honduran life, instead simply focusing on the resulting violence that these processes
have come to realize. It almost seemed as if she wanted to discourage readers from reading further into the
story with something that they probably may have been taught of negatively. Nevertheless, I found the
book to be easy to read for many readers, and the lessons that can be picked up from this book can be
applied almost universally in this day and age.