Watching Lacandon Maya lives / R. Jon McGee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGee, R. Jon, 1955-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lacandon Indians.

Physical Description:

xiv, 194 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston : Allyn and Bacon, [2002]

Summary:

/* 3218L-6, McGee, R. Jon, Watching Lacandon Maya Lives */" In Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, " the author follows three generations of one Lacandon Maya family. Readers track the subjects' lives as they shift through events such as marriage, parenthood, and religious conversion, all set against a backdrop of increased tourism, road construction, and the murders of two people in the community." This book encompasses both ethnography and a critique of ethnographic writing. At one level, the book is about social, agricultural, technological, and religious changes that have occurred in a Lacandon Maya community in Mexico. At a second level, the book is a critique of those who invented a Utopian picture of a "traditional" Lacandon past that never really existed." For cultural anthropologists, or anyone interested in learning more about this Mayan culture.

Contents:

1 Lacandon: The Last Lords of the Rain Forest? 1

Romantic Images 1

Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Chol-Lacandon 4

Eighteenth Century: Yucatec-Lacandon 7

Lacandon in the Nineteenth Century 11

Lacandon in the Twentieth Century 19

Lacandon 1980-2000 26

2 Reconstructing the Traditional Lacandon 28

Who Is Lacandon? 30

What Is a Traditional Lacandon? 31

Lacandon Life from 1790 to 1903 32

Men's and Women's Work 34

Religion 37

Marriage and Household Life 40

The Disappearance of Traditional Religion 44

Selling the Traditional Lacandon 47

Two Case Studies and Concluding Thoughts 48

3 Watching Life in a Lacandon Community 52

An Overview of Women, Men, and Work 53

Men's Work 54

Women's Work 55

Family Examples 57

Chan K?in Viejo: Summer 1983 58

Kohs III and IV: Summer 1986 63

Childbirth and Infant Mortality 67

4 Three Decades of Change: 1970-2000 71

Government, Oil, and Immigration: An Overview 72

Family Relations and Traditional Agriculture 80

Roads, Bows and Arrows, and Tourism 87

Adapting Agriculture to Tourism: Comparing Two Communities 92

Agriculture and Tourism in Naha 92

Agriculture and Tourism in Lacanha 100

Women, Tourism, and Work 104

Traditional Women 104

Women in Commercial Households 106

Widows 110

Some Consequences of Tourism 112

Diet 112

Commerce, Reciprocity, and Status 114

Growing Up in a Changing World: The Cases of K?in and Chan K?in Quinto 120

5 The Decline of Traditional Religious Practices in Naha 125

Cosmology 126

Ritual Places 129

Classic Period Ruins 129

Caves and Rock Shelters 135

God Houses 136

Ritual Implements 138

Types of Offerings 140

Edible Offerings 142

Ritual and Agriculture 144

Healing and Ritual 147

The End of the World 149

The Demise of Religion 150

6 The Decline of Traditional Healing Practices 153

Lacandon Categories of Sickness 153

Curing through Prayer 154

Therapeutic Incantations 156

Curing Strings 157

Medicinal Plants 158

The Decline of Healing Rituals 164

7 Twenty Years among the Lacandon: Some Lessons Learned 166

What Is Lacandon Culture? 166

What People Say Is Different from What They Do 169

Marriage, Fatherhood, and My Position in the Community 169

Involved Objectivity or Why I Ran into a Burning House to Look for Someone Else's Children 171

Appendix Three Generations of Chan K?in Viejo's Family 177.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-189) and index.

ISBN:

0205332188

OCLC:

46918463