Economics, women, and work in the Lacandon Jungle

Frontiers

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 175-189

  McGee, R Jon ^a   Gonzaléz, Belisa ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033473766     PISSN: 01609009     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3347023     Document Type: Review

References (30)

1. The term "petty commodity producers" was coined by Frank Cancian and refers to individuals who produce things for sale or who live by trading in local markets. Frank Cancian, "Economic Behavior in Peasant Communities," in Economic Anthropology, ed. Stuart Plattner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989), 127-70.
2. For example, see Tracy B. Ehlers, Silent Looms: Women and Production in a Guatemalan Town (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1990); Brenda Rosenbaum, With Our Heads Bowed: The Dynamics of Gender in a Maya Community (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); and Merielle K. Flood, "Changing Gender Relations in Zinacantán, Mexico," in Research in Economic Anthropology 15 (1994): 145-73.
3. For example, see Tracy B. Ehlers, Silent Looms: Women and Production in a Guatemalan Town (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1990); Brenda Rosenbaum, With Our Heads Bowed: The Dynamics of Gender in a Maya Community (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); and Merielle K. Flood, "Changing Gender Relations in Zinacantán, Mexico," in Research in Economic Anthropology 15 (1994): 145-73.
4. For example, see Tracy B. Ehlers, Silent Looms: Women and Production in a Guatemalan Town (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1990); Brenda Rosenbaum, With Our Heads Bowed: The Dynamics of Gender in a Maya Community (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993); and Merielle K. Flood, "Changing Gender Relations in Zinacantán, Mexico," in Research in Economic Anthropology 15 (1994): 145-73.
5. Frank Cancian, "Proletarianization of Zinacantan, 1960 to 1983," in Household Economies and Their Transformation, ed. Morgan D. Machlaclan (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 131-42; George A. Collier, "Changing Inequality in Zinacantan: The Generations of 1918 and 1942," in Ethnographic Encounters in Southern Mesoamerica: Essays in Honor of Evon Zartman Vogt, Jr., ed. Victoria R. Bricker and Gary H. Gossen, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 111-24; Flood, "Changing Gender Relations," 145-73; and Ana Juarez, "Epochs of Colonialism: Race, Class, and Gender Among Caste War Mayas in Quintana Roo, Mexico" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1996).
6. Frank Cancian, "Proletarianization of Zinacantan, 1960 to 1983," in Household Economies and Their Transformation, ed. Morgan D. Machlaclan (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 131-42; George A. Collier, "Changing Inequality in Zinacantan: The Generations of 1918 and 1942," in Ethnographic Encounters in Southern Mesoamerica: Essays in Honor of Evon Zartman Vogt, Jr., ed. Victoria R. Bricker and Gary H. Gossen, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 111-24; Flood, "Changing Gender Relations," 145-73; and Ana Juarez, "Epochs of Colonialism: Race, Class, and Gender Among Caste War Mayas in Quintana Roo, Mexico" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1996).
7. Frank Cancian, "Proletarianization of Zinacantan, 1960 to 1983," in Household Economies and Their Transformation, ed. Morgan D. Machlaclan (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 131-42; George A. Collier, "Changing Inequality in Zinacantan: The Generations of 1918 and 1942," in Ethnographic Encounters in Southern Mesoamerica: Essays in Honor of Evon Zartman Vogt, Jr., ed. Victoria R. Bricker and Gary H. Gossen, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 111-24; Flood, "Changing Gender Relations," 145-73; and Ana Juarez, "Epochs of Colonialism: Race, Class, and Gender Among Caste War Mayas in Quintana Roo, Mexico" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1996).
8. Frank Cancian, "Proletarianization of Zinacantan, 1960 to 1983," in Household Economies and Their Transformation, ed. Morgan D. Machlaclan (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 131-42; George A. Collier, "Changing Inequality in Zinacantan: The Generations of 1918 and 1942," in Ethnographic Encounters in Southern Mesoamerica: Essays in Honor of Evon Zartman Vogt, Jr., ed. Victoria R. Bricker and Gary H. Gossen, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 111-24; Flood, "Changing Gender Relations," 145-73; and Ana Juarez, "Epochs of Colonialism: Race, Class, and Gender Among Caste War Mayas in Quintana Roo, Mexico" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1996).
9. Among the many good sources for such accounts are Jan de Vos, La Paz de Dios y del Rey: La Conquista de la Selva Lacandona, 1525-1821 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988); and Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson, "Waxen Idols and a Sacrificial Rite of the Lacandones," Carnegie Institution Notes on Middle American Anthropology and Ethnology 4:109 (1952): 193-95 , and Maya History and Religion (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970).
10. Among the many good sources for such accounts are Jan de Vos, La Paz de Dios y del Rey: La Conquista de la Selva Lacandona, 1525-1821 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988); and Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson, "Waxen Idols and a Sacrificial Rite of the Lacandones," Carnegie Institution Notes on Middle American Anthropology and Ethnology 4:109 (1952): 193-95 , and Maya History and Religion (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970).
11. Among the many good sources for such accounts are Jan de Vos, La Paz de Dios y del Rey: La Conquista de la Selva Lacandona, 1525-1821 (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1988); and Sir John Eric Sidney Thompson, "Waxen Idols and a Sacrificial Rite of the Lacandones," Carnegie Institution Notes on Middle American Anthropology and Ethnology 4:109 (1952): 193-95 , and Maya History and Religion (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970).
12. Robert H. Barlow, "The Lacandon of the 1790s," Tlalocan: A Journal of Source Materials on the Native Cultures of Mexico 1:2 (1943): 158-59; and Nicholas M. Hellmuth, "Progreso y Notas Sobre la Investigacion Etnohistórica de las Tierras Bajas Mayas de los Siglos XVI a XIX," America Indígena: Organo Oficial del Instituto Indigenista Interamericano 32:1 (1972): 179-240.
13. Robert H. Barlow, "The Lacandon of the 1790s," Tlalocan: A Journal of Source Materials on the Native Cultures of Mexico 1:2 (1943): 158-59; and Nicholas M. Hellmuth, "Progreso y Notas Sobre la Investigacion Etnohistórica de las Tierras Bajas Mayas de los Siglos XVI a XIX," America Indígena: Organo Oficial del Instituto Indigenista Interamericano 32:1 (1972): 179-240.
14. Alfred M. Tozzer, A Comparative Study of the Mayas and Lacandones (1907, reprint New York: AMS Press, 1978); and Phillip Baer and William R. Merrifield, Two Studies on the Lacandones of Mexico, Summer Institute of Linguistics, no. 33 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1971).
15. Alfred M. Tozzer, A Comparative Study of the Mayas and Lacandones (1907, reprint New York: AMS Press, 1978); and Phillip Baer and William R. Merrifield, Two Studies on the Lacandones of Mexico, Summer Institute of Linguistics, no. 33 (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1971).
16. Judith K. Brown, "A Note on the Division of Labor by Sex," American Anthropologist 72:5 (1970): 1073-78.
17. Lynn Stephen, Zapotec Women (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991).
18. Baer and Merrifield, Two Studies on the Lacandones of Mexico; and Alfonso Villa Rojas, The Maya of East Central Quintana Roo, pub. no. 559 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1945).
19. Susan C. Bourque and Kay Barbara Warren, Women of the Andes: Patriarchy and Social Change in Two Peruvian Towns (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981); and Ehlers, Silent Looms.
20. Gary H. Gossen, Chamulas in the World of the Sun: Time and Space in a Maya Oral Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), and "Temporal and Spatial Equivalents in Chamula Ritual Symbolism," in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, ed. William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 116-29.
21. Gary H. Gossen, Chamulas in the World of the Sun: Time and Space in a Maya Oral Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), and "Temporal and Spatial Equivalents in Chamula Ritual Symbolism," in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, ed. William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 116-29.
22. June C. Nash, In the Eyes of the Ancestors: Belief and Behavior in a Maya Community (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1985), 272.
23. R. Jon McGee, Life, Ritual, and Religion Among the Lacandon Maya (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1990), 104.
24. Tozzer, A Comparative Study of the Mayas and Lacandones; and McGee, Life, Ritual, and Religion, 80.
25. Tozzer, A Comparative Study of the Mayas and Lacandones; and McGee, Life, Ritual, and Religion, 80.
26. Balché is a ritual mead made from water, honey, and the bark of the balché tree. Fermented for only a few days, the drink has a low alcohol content. However, balché is believed to be spiritually purifying and so was made for most communal rituals. The inebriated state brought on by drinking many gourd bowls of balché is supposed to have enabled Lacandon men to communicate with their gods.
27. McGee, Life, Ritual, and Religion, 57.
28. Polygyny was formerly common among the Lacandon. James D. Nations interviewed twelve polygynous families in Nahá in the 1970s (James D. Nations, "Population Ecology of the Lacandon Maya" [Ph.D. diss., Southern Methodist University, 1979]). Today the practice is rare. We have direct knowledge of only three polygynous households. This decline in polygyny may be related to the increase of female-headed households in Nahá.
29. McGee, Life, Ritual, and Religion, 27.
30. It has been pointed out to us that a less positive interpretation of Anna's behavior could be that she is simply maintaining control over her daughter's labor by encouraging the girl to remain single. I know Lacandon fathers who kept their sons single and at home by postponing their marriages.