ProQuest Dissertations - The University of Arizona Campus Repository

ethnographic elaborations on women's lives by summarizing socio-economic and religio-
cultural aspects of the local Mennonites from a historical perspective. This history - as all
history - has been written from the perspectives of particular biases, and I will analyze
the representational politics of those who have written about the Chihuahuan
Mennonites' past and present. Several theoretical approaches have been useful in making
sense of the complex issues addressed in this dissertation. Woven into the chapters, I
outline each of these theoretical approaches, as they have been influential to my work. In
summary, this dissertation leads the reader on a journey from historical glimpses of the
Mennonites in general, and the Mexican Mennonite groups in particular, to issues of
representation, before it focuses on contemporary Mennonite women's everyday lives,
and concludes with an overview of the ways in which Mennonite social structures and
processes impact upon Mennonite women's lives. In the remainder of this chapter. I
provide a brief preview of what follows in this dissertation.
PART I (MENNONITES IN MEXICO: HISTORY AND REPRESENTATIONS)
explores the history and representations of those Mennonite groups who migrated from
The Netherlands to Prussia, Russia, Canada and later Mexico. North American
Mennonite scholars have generated the majority of literature pertaining to the Mennonite
groups now located near Cuauhtemoc in Chihuahua, Mexico.
In Chapter 1 (Strangers and Pilgrims: A History of the Mennonite Groups of
Chihuahua), I summarize these documented five centuries of history, group formation
and identity. This summary is carried by political economy approaches in the tradition of
Chapter I.