Renewing the Maya World

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Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292782519
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis Renewing the Maya World by : Garrett W. Cook

Download or read book Renewing the Maya World written by Garrett W. Cook and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year in the Highland Guatemala town of Santiago Momostenango, Maya religious societies, dance teams, and cofradías perform the annual cycle of rituals and festivals prescribed by Costumbre (syncretized Maya Christian religion), which serves to renew the cosmic order. In this richly detailed ethnography, Garrett Cook explores how these festivals of Jesucristo and the saints derive from and reenact three major ancient Maya creation myths, thus revealing patterns of continuity between contemporary expressive culture and the myths, rituals, and iconography of the Classic and Postclassic Maya. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the 1970s and renewed in the 1990s, Cook describes the expressive culture tradition performed in and by the cofradías and their dance teams. He listens as dancers and cofrades explain the meaning of service and of the major ritual symbols in the cults of the saints and Jesucristo. Comparing these symbols to iconographic evidence from Palenque and myths from the Popol Vuh, Cook persuasively argues that the expressive culture of Momostenango enacts major Maya creation myths—the transformative sunrise, the representation of the year as the life cycle of anthropomorphized nature, and the erection of an axis mundi. This research documents specific patterns of continuity and discontinuity in the communal expression of Maya religious and cosmogonic themes. Along with other recent research, it demonstrates the survival of a basic Maya pattern—the world-creating vegetative renewal cycle—in the highland Maya cults of the saints and Jesucristo.

Renewing the Maya World

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Author :
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 9780292712256
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Renewing the Maya World by : Garrett W. Cook

Download or read book Renewing the Maya World written by Garrett W. Cook and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year in the Highland Guatemala town of Santiago Momostenango, Maya religious societies, dance teams, and cofradías perform the annual cycle of rituals and festivals prescribed by Costumbre (syncretized Maya Christian religion), which serves to renew the cosmic order. In this richly detailed ethnography, Garrett Cook explores how these festivals of Jesucristo and the saints derive from and reenact three major ancient Maya creation myths, thus revealing patterns of continuity between contemporary expressive culture and the myths, rituals, and iconography of the Classic and Postclassic Maya. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the 1970s and renewed in the 1990s, Cook describes the expressive culture tradition performed in and by the cofradías and their dance teams. He listens as dancers and cofrades explain the meaning of service and of the major ritual symbols in the cults of the saints and Jesucristo. Comparing these symbols to iconographic evidence from Palenque and myths from the Popol Vuh, Cook persuasively argues that the expressive culture of Momostenango enacts major Maya creation myths—the transformative sunrise, the representation of the year as the life cycle of anthropomorphized nature, and the erection of an axis mundi. This research documents specific patterns of continuity and discontinuity in the communal expression of Maya religious and cosmogonic themes. Along with other recent research, it demonstrates the survival of a basic Maya pattern—the world-creating vegetative renewal cycle—in the highland Maya cults of the saints and Jesucristo.

The Burden of the Ancients

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Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 1477309977
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (773 download)

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Book Synopsis The Burden of the Ancients by : Allen J. Christenson

Download or read book The Burden of the Ancients written by Allen J. Christenson and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Maya theology, everything from humans and crops to gods and the world itself passes through endless cycles of birth, maturation, dissolution, death, and rebirth. Traditional Maya believe that human beings perpetuate this cycle through ritual offerings and ceremonies that have the power to rebirth the world at critical points during the calendar year. The most elaborate ceremonies take place during Semana Santa (Holy Week), the days preceding Easter on the Christian calendar, during which traditionalist Maya replicate many of the most important world-renewing rituals that their ancient ancestors practiced at the end of the calendar year in anticipation of the New Year’s rites. Marshaling a wealth of evidence from Pre-Columbian texts, early colonial Spanish writings, and decades of fieldwork with present-day Maya, The Burden of the Ancients presents a masterfully detailed account of world-renewing ceremonies that spans the Pre-Columbian era through the crisis of the Conquest period and the subsequent colonial occupation all the way to the present. Allen J. Christenson focuses on Santiago Atitlán, a Tz’utujil Maya community in highland Guatemala, and offers the first systematic analysis of how the Maya preserved important elements of their ancient world renewal ceremonies by adopting similar elements of Roman Catholic observances and infusing them with traditional Maya meanings. His extensive description of Holy Week in Santiago Atitlán demonstrates that the community’s contemporary ritual practices and mythic stories bear a remarkable resemblance to similar cultural entities from its Pre-Columbian past.

Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World

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Publisher : University of New Mexico Press
ISBN 13 : 0826353185
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World by : Garrett W. Cook

Download or read book Indigenous Religion and Cultural Performance in the New Maya World written by Garrett W. Cook and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on more than thirty years of ethnographic fieldwork in Highland Guatemala, this study of Maya diviners, shamans, ritual dancers, and religious brotherhoods describes the radical changes in traditional Maya religious practice wrought by economic globalization and political turmoil. Focusing on the primary participants in the annual festival in the K'iche' Maya village of Santiago Momostenango, the authors show how older religious traditionalists and the new generation of "cultural activist" religious practitioners interact within a single local community, and how their competing agendas for adapting Maya religiosity to a new and continually changing political economy are perpetuating and changing Maya religious traditions.

Re-Creating Primordial Time

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Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1607322218
Total Pages : 534 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Re-Creating Primordial Time by : Gabrielle Vail

Download or read book Re-Creating Primordial Time written by Gabrielle Vail and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-Creating Primordial Time offers a new perspective on the Maya codices, documenting the extensive use of creation mythology and foundational rituals in the hieroglyphic texts and iconography of these important manuscripts. Focusing on both pre-Columbian codices and early colonial creation accounts, Vail and Hernández show that in spite of significant cultural change during the Postclassic and Colonial periods, the mythological traditions reveal significant continuity, beginning as far back as the Classic period. Remarkable similarities exist within the Maya tradition, even as new mythologies were introduced through contact with the Gulf Coast region and highland central Mexico. Vail and Hernández analyze the extant Maya codices within the context of later literary sources such as the Books of Chilam Balam, the Popol Vuh, and the Códice Chimalpopoca to present numerous examples highlighting the relationship among creation mythology, rituals, and lore. Compiling and comparing Maya creation mythology with that of the Borgia codices from highland central Mexico, Re-Creating Primordial Time is a significant contribution to the field of Mesoamerican studies and will be of interest to scholars of archaeology, linguistics, epigraphy, and comparative religions alike.

The Maya World

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351029568
Total Pages : 983 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis The Maya World by : Scott R. Hutson

Download or read book The Maya World written by Scott R. Hutson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-17 with total page 983 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Maya World brings together over 60 authors, representing the fields of archaeology, art history, epigraphy, geography, and ethnography, who explore cutting-edge research on every major facet of the ancient Maya and all sub-regions within the Maya world. The Maya world, which covers Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador, contains over a hundred ancient sites that are open to tourism, eight of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and many thousands more that have been dug or await investigation. In addition to captivating the lay public, the ancient Maya have attracted scores of major interdisciplinary research expeditions and hundreds of smaller projects going back to the 19th century, making them one of the best-known ancient cultures. The Maya World explores their renowned writing system, towering stone pyramids, exquisitely painted murals, and elaborate funerary tombs as well as their creative agricultural strategies, complex social, economic, and political relationships, widespread interactions with other societies, and remarkable cultural resilience in the face of historical ruptures. This is an invaluable reference volume for scholars of the ancient Maya, including archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists.

2000 Years of Mayan Literature

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520271378
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis 2000 Years of Mayan Literature by : Dennis Tedlock

Download or read book 2000 Years of Mayan Literature written by Dennis Tedlock and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-11-04 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronological survey of Mayan literature, covering two thousand years, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to later works using the Roman alphabet.

The 2012 Story

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Publisher : Penguin Group
ISBN 13 : 158542823X
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (854 download)

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Book Synopsis The 2012 Story by : John Major Jenkins

Download or read book The 2012 Story written by John Major Jenkins and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2010-10-14 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the pioneering author who helped introduce the question of 2012 into the global spiritual community comes an epic exploration of the authentic origins and meaning of this portentous date. Drawing from his own groundbreaking research (including his involvement in the modern reconstruction of Mayan 2012 cosmology), John Major Jenkins has created the crucial guide to 2012, surveying its roots in Mayan cosmology, modern astronomy, ancient prophecy, and metaphysical philosophy and exploring why it has become a focal point for millions today.

In this Body

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Publisher : University of New Mexico Press
ISBN 13 : 0826335233
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis In this Body by : Servando Z. Hinojosa

Download or read book In this Body written by Servando Z. Hinojosa and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This account of life in one highland Maya community shows how, among Kaqchikels, spirit expresses itself fundamentally through the body, and not as something entirely separate from the body.

Unmaking Waste

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226826392
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

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Book Synopsis Unmaking Waste by : Sarah Newman

Download or read book Unmaking Waste written by Sarah Newman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-05-26 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Unmaking Waste, Sarah Newman asks what happens when there are disagreements about what constitutes waste and what one should do with it, both at singular moments in time (for example, when ideas about waste collide in emerging colonial contexts) and across time (such as between those who left things behind in the past and the archaeologists who recover them). Newman examines ancient Mesoamerican understandings of waste, Euro-American perceptions of waste in New Spain, and early modern European ideals of civility and Christian understandings of good and bad, expressed metaphorically through cleanliness and filth. These differing perceptions, Newman argues, demands that we rethink centuries of assumptions imposed on other places, times, and peoples: so long as "waste" remains a category misunderstood to be common-sensical and stable, archaeological methods will prove unequal to their task. Newman instead proposes "anamorphic archaeology," an approach that emphasizes the possibility that archaeological objects have multiple physical and conceptual lives"--

The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town

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Author :
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292723989
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town by : Robert S. Carlsen

Download or read book The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town written by Robert S. Carlsen and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling ethnography explores the issue of cultural continuity and change as it has unfolded in the representative Guatemala Mayan town Santiago Atitlán. Drawing on multiple sources, Robert S. Carlsen argues that local Mayan culture survived the Spanish Conquest remarkably intact and continued to play a defining role for much of the following five centuries. He also shows how the twentieth-century consolidation of the Guatemalan state steadily eroded the capacity of the local Mayas to adapt to change and ultimately caused some factions to reject—even demonize—their own history and culture. At the same time, he explains how, after a decade of military occupation known as la violencia, Santiago Atitlán stood up in unity to the Guatemalan Army in 1990 and forced it to leave town. This new edition looks at how Santiago Atitlán has fared since the expulsion of the army. Carlsen explains that, initially, there was hope that the renewed unity that had served the town so well would continue. He argues that such hopes have been undermined by multiple sources, often with bizarre outcomes. Among the factors he examines are the impact of transnational crime, particularly gangs with ties to Los Angeles; the rise of vigilantism and its relation to renewed religious factionalism; the related brutal murders of followers of the traditional Mayan religion; and the apocalyptic fervor underlying these events.

Accidental Gods

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Publisher : Metropolitan Books
ISBN 13 : 1250296889
Total Pages : 435 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Accidental Gods by : Anna Della Subin

Download or read book Accidental Gods written by Anna Della Subin and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE, THE IRISH TIMES AND THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT A provocative history of men who were worshipped as gods that illuminates the connection between power and religion and the role of divinity in a secular age Ever since 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World and was hailed as a heavenly being, the accidental god has haunted the modern age. From Haile Selassie, acclaimed as the Living God in Jamaica, to Britain’s Prince Philip, who became the unlikely center of a new religion on a South Pacific island, men made divine—always men—have appeared on every continent. And because these deifications always emerge at moments of turbulence—civil wars, imperial conquest, revolutions—they have much to teach us. In a revelatory history spanning five centuries, a cast of surprising deities helps to shed light on the thorny questions of how our modern concept of “religion” was invented; why religion and politics are perpetually entangled in our supposedly secular age; and how the power to call someone divine has been used and abused by both oppressors and the oppressed. From nationalist uprisings in India to Nigerien spirit possession cults, Anna Della Subin explores how deification has been a means of defiance for colonized peoples. Conversely, we see how Columbus, Cortés, and other white explorers amplified stories of their godhood to justify their dominion over native peoples, setting into motion the currents of racism and exclusion that have plagued the New World ever since they touched its shores. At once deeply learned and delightfully antic, Accidental Gods offers an unusual keyhole through which to observe the creation of our modern world. It is that rare thing: a lyrical, entertaining work of ideas, one that marks the debut of a remarkable literary career.

Traditional Festivals [2 volumes]

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1851096892
Total Pages : 564 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Traditional Festivals [2 volumes] by : Christian Roy

Download or read book Traditional Festivals [2 volumes] written by Christian Roy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-06-29 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illustrated reference work covers a wide range of festivals that have sacred origins and are, or have been, part of a folk tradition, a world religion, or a major civilization. Traditional Festivals: A Multicultural Encyclopedia travels around the world and across the centuries to uncover an often unexpected richness of meaning in some of the major sacred festivals of the world's religions, the hallowed calendars of ancient civilizations, and the seasonal celebrations of tribal cultures. From Akitu to Yom Kippur, its 150+ entries look at the content and context of these festivals from a number of perspectives (including those relating to theology, anthropology, folklore, and social theory), tracing their historical development and variations across cultures. Readers will get a vivid sense of what each festival means to the people celebrating it; how each captures its culture's beliefs, hopes and fears, founding myths, and redemptive visions; and how each expresses the universal need of humans to connect their lives to a timeless spiritual dimension.

Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala, Fourth Edition

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Author :
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 077358367X
Total Pages : 343 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala, Fourth Edition by : W. George Lovell

Download or read book Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala, Fourth Edition written by W. George Lovell and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala examines the impact of Spanish conquest and colonial rule on the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, a frontier region of Guatemala adjoining the country’s northwestern border with Mexico. While Spaniards penetrated and left an enduring mark on the region, the vibrant Maya culture they encountered was not obliterated and, though subjected to considerable duress from the sixteenth century on, endures to this day. This fourth edition of George Lovell’s classic work incorporates new data and recent research findings and emphasizes native resistance and strategic adaptation to Spanish intrusion. Drawing on four decades of archival foraging, Lovell focuses attention on issues of land, labour, settlement, and population to unveil colonial experiences that continue to affect how Guatemala operates as a troubled modern nation. Acclaimed by scholars across the humanities and social sciences, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala remains a seminal account of the impact of Spanish colonialism in the Americas and a landmark contribution to Mesoamerican studies.

Reckoning

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822389401
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis Reckoning by : Diane M. Nelson

Download or read book Reckoning written by Diane M. Nelson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-03-18 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the 1996 treaty ending decades of civil war, how are Guatemalans reckoning with genocide, especially since almost everyone contributed in some way to the violence? Meaning “to count, figure up” and “to settle rewards and punishments,” reckoning promises accounting and accountability. Yet as Diane M. Nelson shows, the means by which the war was waged, especially as they related to race and gender, unsettled the very premises of knowing and being. Symptomatic are the stories of duplicity pervasive in postwar Guatemala, as the left, the Mayan people, and the state were each said to have “two faces.” Drawing on more than twenty years of research in Guatemala, Nelson explores how postwar struggles to reckon with traumatic experience illuminate the assumptions of identity more generally. Nelson brings together stories of human rights activism, Mayan identity struggles, coerced participation in massacres, and popular entertainment—including traditional dances, horror films, and carnivals—with analyses of mass-grave exhumations, official apologies, and reparations. She discusses the stereotype of the Two-Faced Indian as colonial discourse revivified by anti-guerrilla counterinsurgency and by the claims of duplicity leveled against the Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú, and she explores how duplicity may in turn function as a survival strategy for some. Nelson examines suspicions that state power is also two-faced, from the left’s fears of a clandestine para-state behind the democratic façade, to the right’s conviction that NGOs threaten Guatemalan sovereignty. Her comparison of antimalaria and antisubversive campaigns suggests biopolitical ways that the state is two-faced, simultaneously giving and taking life. Reckoning is a view from the ground up of how Guatemalans are finding creative ways forward, turning ledger books, technoscience, and even gory horror movies into tools for making sense of violence, loss, and the future.

A Beauty That Hurts

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Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 029279293X
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (927 download)

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Book Synopsis A Beauty That Hurts by : W. George Lovell

Download or read book A Beauty That Hurts written by W. George Lovell and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though a 1996 peace accord brought a formal end to a conflict that had lasted for thirty-six years, Guatemala's violent past continues to scar its troubled present and seems destined to haunt its uncertain future. George Lovell brings to this revised and expanded edition of A Beauty That Hurts decades of fieldwork throughout Guatemala, as well as archival research. He locates the roots of conflict in geographies of inequality that arose during colonial times and were exacerbated by the drive to develop Guatemala's resources in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The lines of confrontation were entrenched after a decade of socioeconomic reform between 1944 and 1954 saw modernizing initiatives undone by a military coup backed by U.S. interests and the CIA. A United Nations Truth Commission has established that civil war in Guatemala claimed the lives of more that 200,000 people, the vast majority of them indigenous Mayas. Lovell weaves documentation about what happened to Mayas in particular during the war years with accounts of their difficult personal situations. Meanwhile, an intransigent elite and a powerful military continue to benefit from the inequalities that triggered armed insurrection in the first place. Weak and corrupt civilian governments fail to impose the rule of law, thus ensuring that Guatemala remains an embattled country where postwar violence and drug-related crime undermine any semblance of orderly, peaceful life.

Mayalogue

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438485778
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Mayalogue by : Victor Montejo

Download or read book Mayalogue written by Victor Montejo and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mayalogue, Native Mayan scholar Victor Montejo provides an alternative reading and interpretation of cultures, challenging Western ethnocentric approaches that have marginalized Native knowledge and worldviews in the past. He proposes instead a methodology for studying culture as a unified whole, a radical departure from the compartmentalized sections of knowledge recognized by Western scientific tradition. Offering a strong critique of traditional anthropological studies, with its terms and categories that have denigrated Indigenous cultures throughout the centuries, Montejo's postcolonial work aims to dismantle the colonialist construction of Indigenous cultures, giving way to a Native approach that balances insider and outsider descriptions of a particular culture. Developed from an Indigenous Maya perspective, Mayalogue is a contribution to the dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, students, and general audiences in the social sciences and humanities, and will be an essential text in decolonizing the minds of those who engage in the study of cultures anywhere in the world in the twenty-first century.