In Land of Necessity editor Alexis McCrossen has pulled together a collection of compelling chapters using consumption to reinterpret the United States – Mexico borderlands region in meaningful new ways. The collection grew out of a symposium sponsored by the William P. Clements Jr. Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. In addition, McCrossen weaves a riveting photographic essay with extended commentary throughout the volume. McCrossen provides a context for the volume with two introductory essays. The first examines the role of consumption in the social construction of the borderlands region. She counterintuitively argues that even as the border was envisioned as an empty buffer zone and as a means of differentiating the United States from Mexico, economic and social differences across the border and consumption served to tie the two sides of the border together. The second essay explores the globalization of the borderlands and the continued role...

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