Cattle ranchers are often presented as the wealthy, violent, and environmentally destructive villains of Amazonia. Ranchers in the state of Acre, Brazil, are viewed in a particularly negative light, due to their perceived association with the assassination of “rainforest martyr” Chico Mendes in 1988. The objective of this paper is to increase our understanding of this enigmatic, powerful group through an ethnographic description of ranchers in relation to features of their villain label: elite status and environmental destruction. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork with Acrean ranchers and other rural groups, I analyze the ways in which the ranchers conform to and challenge classification as an elite group in relation to economic and political power, describe how rancher status is constructed and expressed in social situations, and compare the extent to which other rural social groups agree with perceptions of the ranchers. Understanding the ranchers' perspective, especially with regard to environmental debates, requires an examination of how they perceive their work in relation to history and ideology, and how they have adapted the term to defend their interests and engage current political debates centered on environmental preservation.

Because of a perceived simplicity of its tasks and the recurrent presence of migrants in it, the agricultural labor force in California has been characterized as easily replaceable, composed of transitory unskilled workers. However, the increasing settlement of farmworkers demands new approaches. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in California's Central Valley among farmworkers employed in orange and table grape production, this essay describes some informal labor learning processes and everyday practices of decentralized labor management in order to explore how they are related to modern fresh-food agro-industry, proposing that both elements are of significant importance to the creation of a workforce tailored to fulfill the requirements of the production of high-value crops. The effect of the learning processes in the emerging of new working and life trajectories is also addressed, questioning whether the new context includes the possibility of long careers in farmwork.

This paper discusses the use of the concept of “work rage” in human resource management. “Work rage” is a construct that serves a dual purpose in contemporary personnel management: first, as a means of control and individualization of workers through psychotherapeutic governance, and second, as a way to position human resource managers as providers of expertise on how to limit problems caused by troublesome laborers. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Quebec and the eastern United States.

This article explores the possibilities and challenges of building working-class solidarity by offering an anthropological perspective on the relationships between poor workers’ organizations and formal trade unions in Ontario, Canada. I examine two community-based, poor people's organizations, ACORN Canada and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, in order to document their recent struggles and examine the nature of their linkages with labor unions. The intersections of poor workers’ organizations and unions illustrate key ways solidarity can be and is being put into practice, but also suggest the need for broadening and deepening how solidarity is understood and pursued given the material conditions of poverty and poor people, and the current cultural and ideological terrain.

The goal of this study was to distill from a large body of literature on children learning crafts, such as pottery and weaving, the characteristics of apprenticeship as a distinct phenomenon. Currently, apprenticeship is considered indistinguishable from other, more informal, means of skill transmission. From the literature survey, 11 attributes were identified as belonging to the archetypal apprenticeship. The analysis then advances to consider the genesis or raison d'être for the apprenticeship. The argument is advanced that the apprenticeship is designed to simultaneously train novices in specific craft or trade skills while socializing them to join the social and cultural elite represented by master craftsmen. The article concludes by considering the role of apprenticeship in the evolution of schooling.