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Making Market Women tells of the initial success and failure of a liberationist Catholic women’s cooperative in central Ecuador. Jill DeTemple argues that when gender and religious identities are capitalized, they are made vulnerable. Using archival and ethnographic methods, she shares the story of the women involved in the cooperative, producing cheese and knitted goods for local markets, and places their stories in the larger context of both the cooperative and the community. DeTemple explores the impact of gender roles, the perception of women, the growing middle class, and the changing mode of Catholicism in their community. Although the initial success of the cooperative may have been due to the group’s cohesion and Catholic identity, the ultimate failure of the enterprise left many women less secure in these ties. They keep their Catholic identity but blame the institutional church in some ways for the failure and are less confident in their ability as women to compete successfully in market economies. Because DeTemple examines not only the effects of gender and religion on development but also the effects of development, successful or unsuccessful, on the identities of those involved, this book will interest scholars of international development, religious studies, Latin American studies, anthropology, and women’s studies.
"DeTemple’s study remains accessible to a readership beyond think-tanks or anthropologists. By applying evidence from over a hundred interviews, she enlivens her scholarly narrative. In five chapters, DeTemple uses the rise and fall of the local cheese factory to illustrate how religious praxis and economic development competed rather than cooperated, from 1998 to 2006." —Reading Religion
Through the lens of the cheese cooperative women, DeTemple demonstrates the dissonance of the new world order, weaving the processes of liberation theology and its economic nemesis, neoliberalism, through a story that is at once both universal and particular." —The Americas
“DeTemple’s thoughtful case study illuminates how global projects like liberation theology, charismatic Catholicism, and neoliberalism are understood, enacted, transformed, and resisted in a local context. Making Market Women offers an important and nuanced case study that will be invaluable for researchers and students interested in religion, anthropology, and economic development.” —Laurie A. Occhipinti, author of Making a Difference in a Globalized World
“One of the most important contributions of Making Market Women is to place issues of gender and religious identity at the heart of its analysis of this economic development project.” —Randall Styers, author of Making Magic
Jill DeTemple is associate professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University. She is the author of Cement, Earthworms, and Cheese Factories: Religion and Community Development in Rural Ecuador (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).