Stanley H. Brandes

Anthropology at Berkeley

Anthropology Faculty
Research Interests

For more than thirty years, I have been immersed in the study of European and Latin American ethnography. My work has focused about equally on Spain and Mexico, although I have also written on the United States and Guatemala. During the course of my career, I have turned my attention to a wide variety of topics, including peasant society and culture, demographic anthropology (particularly issues revolving around migration and nuptiality), folklore (particularly jokes, banter, and humor of all kinds), the life course (including, most importantly, middle age), symbolism, ritual and religion, food and drink, and, most recently, visual anthropology. While abroad, I have lived and worked in both rural and urban settings and believe that, whether writing about Spain, Mexico, or the United States, my work is grounded in direct observations of a given people and reflects a sensitivity to regional, ethnic, class, and gender diversity. I believe strongly in the ethnographic field tradition.
I am currently engaged in three topics of investigation. First is Mexico's Day of the Dead, which I write about from an historical and ethnographic perspective, and includes material from Latin America, Europe, and the U.S. Second is Alcoholics Anonymous in Mexico City, an intensive study over nearly two years of a single group of recuperating alcoholic men, all from working class, migrant backgrounds. Third is photography and anthropology, particularly the ways in which ethnographic photographs, intentionally or not, have communicated information and impressions about the Other. Most of my research on this last topic has been carried out in the context of Spain.
Representative Publications

2002. Staying Sober in Mexico City. University of Texas Press.

1999. El desenlace de los cuentos populares: un nuevo test etnopsiquiatrico. Investigacion en Salud (Guadalajara) 1:81-86.

1999. The Perilous Potato and Terrifying Tomato. In Consequences of Cultivar Diffusion. L. Ploticov, ed. Pp. 85-96. Ethnology, Special Monograph 17. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

1998. Iconography in Mexico's Day of the Dead: Origins and Meaning. Ethnohistory 45:181-218.

1998. The Day of the Dead, Halloween, and the Quest for Mexican National Identity. Journal of American Folklore 111:359-380.

1997. Photographic Imagery in the Ethnography of Spain. Visual Anthropology Review 13:1-13.

1992. Maize as a Culinary Mystery. Ethnology 31:331-336.

1988. Power and Persuasion: Ritual and Social Control in Rural Mexico. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1985. Forty: The Age and the Symbol. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

1980. Metaphors of Masculinity: Sex and Status in Andulusian Folklore. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

1975. Migration, Kinship, and Community: Tradition and transition in a Spanish Village. New York: Academic Press.

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