Circulating Culture

Exploring
the movements of Cuban material objects and digital content across borders
Despite decades of diplomatic hostilities and economic
sanctions, the border between Cuba and the United States--arguably one of the
most politicized in the world--is in a state of constant flux. Tracing the flows
of people, material items, and digital content between Havana and Miami, as
well as between Cuba and Panama, Guyana, and Mexico, Circulating Culture explores how and why these circuits are a part
of everyday life for millions of Cubans who negotiate extraordinary
circumstances daily.

Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in these
locations, Jennifer Cearns highlights groups of Cuban society that are often
overlooked, considering what Cuban culture and identity mean in a transnational
setting. Weaving evocative vignettes into her discussion of these larger
questions, Cearns pieces together the story of the creators of an emerging and
dynamic network that punctures geopolitical boundaries and has outlasted a
period of rapid social change--from the Obama administration through the death
of Fidel Castro and into the Trump administration.

Ultimately, by focusing on everyday objects and the
strategies used to move them across borders, this book reveals how new cultural
forms can develop from the cracks in societies often seen as "broken." It
demonstrates the worldmaking of marginalized Cuban communities who have long
been building their own infrastructures of possibility.

A volume in the series New World Diasporas, edited by Kevin
A. Yelvington

Publication
of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American
Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.