Download or read book Lacand n Maya in the Twenty First Century written by James D. Nations and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancient traditions of the Lacandón Maya comes an Indigenous model for a sustainable future Having lived for centuries isolated within Mexico’s largest remaining tropical rainforest, the Indigenous Lacandón Maya now live at the nexus of two worlds—ancient and modern. While previous research has focused on documenting Lacandón oral traditions and religious practices in order to preserve them, this book tells the story of how Lacandón families have adapted to the contemporary world while applying their ancestral knowledge to create an ecologically sustainable future. Drawing on his 49 years of studying and learning from the Lacandón Maya, James Nations discusses how in the midst of external pressures such as technological changes, missionary influences, and logging ventures, Lacandón communities are building an economic system of agroforestry and ecotourism that produces income for their families while protecting biodiversity and cultural resources. Nations describes methods they use to plant and harvest without harming the forest, illustrating that despite drastic changes in lifestyle, respect for the environment continues to connect Lacandón families across generations. By helping with these tasks and inheriting the fables and myths that reinforce this worldview, Lacandón children continue to learn about the plants, animals, and spiritual deities that coexist in their land. Indigenous peoples such as the Lacandón Maya control one-third of the intact forest landscapes left on Earth, and Indigenous knowledge and practices are increasingly recognized as key elements in the survival of the planet’s biological diversity. The story of the Lacandón Maya serves as a model for Indigenous-controlled environmental conservation, and it will inform anyone interested in supporting sustainable Indigenous futures. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Download or read book Lacand n Maya in the Twenty First Century written by James D. Nations and published by . This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancient traditions of the Lacandón Maya comes an Indigenous model for a sustainablefuture Having lived for centuries isolated within Mexico'slargest remaining tropical rainforest, the Indigenous Lacandón Maya now live atthe nexus of two worlds--ancient and modern. While previous research has focusedon documenting Lacandón oral traditions and religious practices in order topreserve them, this book tells the story of how Lacandón families have adaptedto the contemporary world while applying their ancestral knowledge to create anecologically sustainable future. Drawing onhis 49 years of studying and learning from the Lacandón Maya, James Nations discusseshow in the midst of external pressures such as technological changes, missionaryinfluences, and logging ventures, Lacandón communities are building an economicsystem of agroforestry and ecotourism that produces income for their familieswhile protecting biodiversity and cultural resources. Nations describes methodsthey use to plant and harvest without harming the forest, illustrating that despitedrastic changes in lifestyle, respect for the environment continues to connect Lacandónfamilies across generations. By helping with these tasks and inheriting thefables and myths that reinforce this worldview, Lacandón children continue tolearn about the plants, animals, and spiritual deities that coexist in theirland. Indigenouspeoples such as the Lacandón Maya control one-third of the intact forestlandscapes left on Earth, and Indigenous knowledge and practices areincreasingly recognized as key elements in the survival of the planet'sbiological diversity. The story of the Lacandón Maya serves as a model for Indigenous-controlled environmental conservation, and it will inform anyone interestedin supporting sustainable Indigenous futures. A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

Download or read book Lacandon Maya written by James Nations and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-08-30 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lacand�n Maya are heirs to a wealth of traditional knowledge gleaned from hundreds of years of daily life in the rainforest of southern Mexico. Lacand�n Maya: The Language and Environment is a grammar and vocabulary of their native tongue, as well as a pathway into the tropical ecosystems that surround them.

Download or read book Kosher Feijoada and Other Paradoxes of Jewish Life in S o Paulo written by Misha Klein and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being Jewish in Brazil--the world's largest Catholic country--is fraught with paradoxes, and living in São Paulo only amplifies these vivid contradictions. The metropolis is home to Jews from over 60 countries of origin, and to the Hebraica, the world’s largest Jewish athletic and social club. Jewish identity is rooted in layered experiences of historical and contemporary dispersal and border crossings. Brazil is famously tolerant of difference but less understanding of longings for elsewhere. Celebrating both Carnival and the High Holidays is but one example of how Jews in São Paulo hold themselves together as a community in the face of the forces of assimilation. Misha Klein’s fascinating ethnography reveals the complex intertwining of Jewish and Brazilian life and identity.

Download or read book The Anthropology of Marriage in Lowland South America written by Paul Valentine and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Foremost scholars of indigenous Amazonia explore the vast and interesting gap between rules and practice, demonstrating how sociocultural systems endure and even prosper due to the flexibility, creativity, and resilience of the people within them."--Jeremy M. Campbell, author of Conjuring Property: Speculation and Environmental Futures in the Brazilian Amazon "A landmark volume and a major contribution to the study of kinship and marriage in Amazonian societies, an area of the world that has been pivotal to our understanding of the biocultural dimensions of cousin marriage and polygamy."--Nancy E. Levine, author of The Dynamics of Polyandry: Kinship, Domesticity, and Population on the Tibetan Border This volume reveals that individuals in Amazonian cultures often disregard or reinterpret the marriage rules of their societies—rules that anthropologists previously thought reflected practice. It is the first book to consider not just what the rules are but how people in these societies negotiate, manipulate, and break them in choosing whom to marry. Using ethnographic case studies that draw on previously unpublished material from well-known indigenous cultures, The Anthropology of Marriage in Lowland South America defies the tendency to focus only on the social structure of kinship and marriage that is so common in kinship studies. Instead, the contributors to this volume examine the people that conform to or deviate from that structure and their reasons for doing so. They look not only at deviations in kinship behavior motivated by gender, economics, politics, history, ecology, and sentimentality but also at how globalization and modernization are changing the ancestral norms and values themselves. This is a richly diverse portrayal of agency and individual choice alongside normative kinship and marriage systems in a region that has long been central to anthropological studies of indigenous life. Paul Valentine is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of East London. Stephen Beckerman is adjunct professor at the University of Utah. Together, Valentine and Beckerman have coedited Revenge in the Cultures of Lowland South America and Cultures of Multiple Fathers: The Theory and Practice of Partible Paternity in Lowland South America. Catherine Alès is director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research, Paris, and is the author of Yanomami, l’ire et le désir.

Download or read book Developing the Dead written by Diana Espírito Santo and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its powerful influence on Cuban culture, Espiritismo has often been overlooked by scholars. Developing the Dead is the first in-depth exploration of contemporary Espiritismo in Cuba. Based on extensive fieldwork among religious practitioners and their clients in Havana, this book makes the surprising claim that Spiritist practices are fundamentally a project of developing the self. When mediums cultivate relationships between the living and the dead, argues Diana Espírito Santo, they develop, learn, sense, dream, and connect to multiple spirits (muertos), expanding the borders of the self. This understanding of selfhood is radically different from Enlightenment ideas of an autonomous, bounded self and holds fascinating implications for prophecy, healing, and self-consciousness. Developing the Dead shows how Espiritismo’s self-making process permeates all aspects of life, not only for its own practitioners but also for those of other Afro-Cuban religions.

Download or read book Yo Soy Negro written by Tanya Maria Golash-Boza and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yo Soy Negro is the first book in English--in fact, the first book in any language in more than two decades--to address what it means to be black in Peru. Based on extensive ethnographic work in the country and informed by more than eighty interviews with Peruvians of African descent, this groundbreaking study explains how ideas of race, color, and mestizaje in Peru differ greatly from those held in other Latin American nations. The conclusion that Tanya Maria Golash-Boza draws from her rigorous inquiry is that Peruvians of African descent give meaning to blackness without always referencing Africa, slavery, or black cultural forms. This represents a significant counterpoint to diaspora scholarship that points to the importance of slavery in defining blackness in Latin America as well as studies that place cultural and class differences at the center of racial discourses in the region.

Download or read book Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty First Century written by Margarita Hidalgo and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-08-22 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the reversing language shift (RLS) theory in the Mexican scenario from various viewpoints: The sociohistorical perspective delves into the dynamics of power that emerged in the Mexican colony as a result of the presence of Spanish. It examines the processes of external and internal Indianization affecting the early European protagonists and the varied dimensions of language shift and maintenance of the Mexican colonial period. The Mexican case sheds light upon language contact from the time in which Western civilization came into contact with the Mesoamerican peoples, for the encounter began with a demographic catastrophe that motivated a recovery mission. While the recovery of Mexican indigenous languages (MIL) was remarkable, RLS ended after fifty years of abundant productivity in MIL. Since then, the slow process of recovery is related to demographic changes, socioreligious movements, rebellion, confrontation, and survival strategies that have fostered language maintenance with bilingualism and language shift with culture preservation. The causes of the Chiapas uprising are analyzed in connection with the language attitudes of the indigenous peoples, while language policy is discussed in reference to the new Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples (2003). A quantitative classification of the MIL is offered with an overview of their geographic distribution, trends of macrosocietal bilingualism, use in the home domain, and permanence in the original Mesoamerican settlements. Innovative models of bilingual education are presented along with relevant data on several communities and the philosophies and methodologies justifying the programs. A model of Mazahua language use is presented along the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale.

Download or read book Trance and Modernity in the Southern Caribbean written by Keith E. McNeal and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Provides us with a masterful account of how socially marginalized segments of the African and Indian communities of Trinidad and Tobago developed trance-based religious cults linked with differing cultural heritages. Penetrating deeply into these two different communities with his careful fieldwork, he then places them within a brilliant account of the overall cultural history of this island nation."--Paul Younger, author of New Homelands: Hindu Communities in Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, South Africa, Fiji, and East Africa This comparative study of African and Hindu popular religions in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago charts the development of religion in the Caribbean by analyzing the ways ecstatic forms of worship, enacted through trance performance and spirit mediumship, have adapted to capitalism and reconfigured themselves within the context of modernity. Showing how diasporic traditions of West African Orisha Worship and South Asian Shakti Puja converged in their ritual adaptations to colonialism in the West Indies, as well as diverged politically within the context of postcolonial multiculturalism, Keith McNeal reveals the unexpected ways these traditions of trance performance have become both globalized and modernized. The first book-length work to compare and contrast Afro- and Indo-Caribbean materials in a systematic and multidimensional manner, this volume makes fresh and innovative contributions to anthropology, religious studies, and the historiography of modernity. By giving both religious subcultures and their intersections equal attention, McNeal offers a richly textured account of southern Caribbean cultural history and pursues important questions about the history and future of religion.

Download or read book In the Lands of Fire and Sun written by Michele McArdle Stephens and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Huichols (or Wixárika) of western Mexico are among the most resilient and iconic indigenous groups in Mexico today. In the Lands of Fire and Sun examines the Huichol Indians as they have struggled to maintain their independence over two centuries. From the days of the Aztec Empire, the history of west-central Mesoamerica has been one of isolation and a fiercely independent spirit, and one group that maintained its autonomy into the days of Spanish colonization was the Huichol tribe. Rather than assimilating into the Hispanic fold, as did so many other indigenous peoples, the Huichols sustained their distinct identity even as the Spanish Crown sought to integrate them. In confronting first the Spanish colonial government, then the Mexican state, the Huichols displayed resilience and cunning as they selectively adapted their culture, land, and society to the challenges of multiple new eras. By incorporating elements of archaeology, anthropology, cultural geography, and history, Michele McArdle Stephens fills the gaps in the historical documentation, teasing out the indigenous voices from travel accounts, Spanish legal sources, and European ethnographic reports. The result is a thorough examination of one of the most vibrant, visible societies in Latin America.

Download or read book The Big Drum Ritual of Carriacou written by Lorna McDaniel and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Big Drum is the lively ancient dance rite of the small island of Carriacou, Grenada. This book introduces 120 of the song texts & dances that call & entertain the ancestors who are central to Carriacou religious experience. Performed since the early 1700s, the Big Drum dance reveals an African-Caribbean religion at its inception as practiced by enslaved people & in its current expression as a vital, living aspect of Carriacou society. No other Caribbean ritual like it still exists. The author maintains that the nine coded rhythms of the boula drums hold the history of the nine African "nations" that inhabited early Carriacou, keeping alive their memories of Africa & of family lineage. In discussion of the spiritual bases of the Yoruba dances of Grenada, Trinidad, Cuba, & Jamaica, the author illustrates the connection between the liturgical symbols of danced religions & the ancient myth of "The Flying Africans." The author concludes with an analysis of a single calypso that memorializes the 1983 invasion of Grenada & illustrates the history-keeping function of the calypso & Big Drum. She uncovers a structural relationship between ancient praisesongs & modern political songs & suggests the continuing impact of music on the memory of the Caribbean people.

Download or read book Hidden Powers of State in the Cuban Imagination written by Kenneth Routon and published by . This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together anthropology and history in the study of power, this book looks at the magical elan of politics in revolutionary Cuba, paying particular attention to the roles of memory and history in the construction and contestation of shared political imaginaries. --Book Jacket.

Download or read book Ancient Maya Politics written by Simon Martin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With new readings of ancient texts, Ancient Maya Politics unlocks the long-enigmatic political system of the Classic Maya.

Download or read book Chocolate in Mesoamerica written by Cameron L. McNeil and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New models of research and analysis, as well as breakthroughs in deciphering Mesoamerican writing, have recently produced a watershed of information on the regional use and importance of cacao, or chocolate as it is commonly called today. McNeil brings together scholars in the fields of archaeology, history, art history, linguistics, epigraphy, botany, chemistry, and cultural anthropology to explore the domestication, preparation, representation, and significance of cacao in ancient and modern communities of the Americas, with a concentration on its use in Mesoamerica. Cacao was used by many cultures in the pre-Columbian Americas as an important part of rituals associated with birth, coming of age, marriage, and death, and was strongly linked with concepts of power and rulership. While Europeans have for hundreds of years claimed that they introduced “chocolate” as a sauce for foods, evidence from ancient royal tombs indicates cacao was used in a range of foods as well as beverages in ancient times. In addition, the volume’s authors present information that supports a greater importance for cacao in pre-Columbian South America, where ancient vessels depicting cacao pods have recently been identified. From the botanical structure and chemical makeup of Theobroma cacao and methods of identifying it in the archaeological record, to the importance of cacao during the Classic period in Mesoamerica, to the impact of European arrival on the production and use of cacao, to contemporary uses in the Americas, this volume provides a richly informed account of the history and cultural significance of chocolate.

Download or read book Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas brings together 15 archaeological case studies that offer new perspectives on colonial period interactions in the Caribbean and surrounding areas through a specific focus on material culture and indigenous agency.

Download or read book Maya Roads written by Mary Jo McConahay and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2011-08 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Maya Roads, McConahay draws upon her three decades of traveling and living in Central America's remote landscapes to create a fascinating chronicle of the people, politics, archaeology, and species of the Central American rainforest, the cradle of Maya civilization. Captivated by the magnificence and mystery of the jungle, the author brings to life the intense beauty, the fantastic locales, the ancient ruins, and the horrific violence. She witnesses archaeological discoveries, the transformation of the Lacandon people, the Zapatista indigenous uprising in Mexico, increased drug trafficking, and assists in the uncovering of a war crime. Over the decades, McConahay has witnessed great changes in the region, and this is a unique tale of a woman's adventure and the adaptation and resolve of a people.

Download or read book Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty first Century written by Richard Stahler-Sholk and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2008 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This clearly written and comprehensive text examines the uprising of politically and economically marginalized groups in Latin American societies. Specialists in a broad range of disciplines present original research from a variety of case studies in a student-friendly format. Part introductions help students contextualize the essays, highlighting social movement origins, strategies, and outcomes. Thematic sections address historical context, political economy, community-building and consciousness, ethnicity and race, gender, movement strategies, and transnational organizing, making this book useful to anyone studying the wide range of social movements in Latin America.