BiblioVault - Books about Indigenous Studies

The Value of Things

Prehistoric to Contemporary Commodities in the Maya Region

Edited by Jennifer P. Mathews and Thomas H. Guderjan

University of Arizona Press, 2017

Jade, stone tools, honey and wax, ceramics, rum, land. What gave these commodities value in the Maya world, and how were those values determined? What factors influenced the rise and fall of a commodity’s value? The Value of Things examines the social and ritual value of commodities in Mesoamerica, providing a new and dynamic temporal view of the roles of trade of commodities and elite goods from the prehistoric Maya to the present.

Editors Jennifer P. Mathews and Thomas H. Guderjan begin the volume with a review of the theoretical literature related to the “value of things.” Throughout the volume, well-known scholars offer chapters that examine the value of specific commodities in a broad time frame—from prehistoric, colonial, and historic times to the present. Using cases from the Maya world on both the local level and the macro-regional, contributors look at jade, agricultural products (ancient and contemporary), stone tools, salt, cacao (chocolate), honey and wax, henequen, sugarcane and rum, land, ceramic (ancient and contemporary), and contemporary tourist handicrafts.

Each chapter author looks into what made their specific commodity valuable to ancient, historic, and contemporary peoples in the Maya region. Often a commodity’s worth goes far beyond its financial value; indeed, in some cases, it may not even be viewed as something that can be sold. Other themes include the rise and fall in commodity values based on perceived need, rarity or overproduction, and change in available raw materials; the domestic labor side of commodities, including daily life of the laborers; and relationships between elites and nonelites in production.

Examining, explaining, and theorizing how people ascribe value to what they trade, this scholarly volume provides a rich look at local and regional Maya case studies through centuries of time.

Contributors:

Rani T. Alexander
Dean E. Arnold
Timothy Beach
Briana Bianco
Steven Bozarth
Tiffany C. Cain
Scott L. Fedick
Thomas H. Guderjan
John Gust
Eleanor Harrison-Buck
Brigitte Kovacevich
Samantha Krause
Joshua J. Kwoka
Richard M. Leventhal
Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach
Jennifer P. Mathews
Heather McKillop
Allan D. Meyers
Gary Rayson
Mary Katherine Scott
E. Cory Sills

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Vernacular Sovereignties

Indigenous Women Challenging World Politics

Manuela Lavinas Picq

University of Arizona Press, 2018

Indigenous women continue to be imagined as passive subjects at the margins of political decision-making, but they are in fact dynamic actors who shape state sovereignty and domestic and international politics. Manuela Lavinas Picq uses the case of Kichwa women successfully advocating for gender parity in the administration of Indigenous justice in Ecuador to show how Indigenous women can influence world politics.

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Voices of Indigenuity

Michelle Montgomery

University Press of Colorado, 2023

Voices of Indigenuity collects the voices of the Indigenous Speaker Series and multigenerational Indigenous peoples to introduce best practices for traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). In this edited collection, presenters from the series, both within and outside of the academy, examine the ways they have utilized TEK for inclusive teaching practices and in environmental justice efforts.

Advocating for and providing an expansion of place-based Indigenized education that infuses Indigenous epistemologies for student success in both K–12 and higher education curricula, these essays explore topics such as land fragmentation, remote sensing, and outreach through the lens of TEK, demonstrating methods of fusing learning with Indigenous knowledge (IK). Contributors emphasize the need to increase the perspectives of IK within institutionalized knowledge beyond being co-opted into non-Indigenous frameworks that may be fundamentally different from Indigenous ways of thinking.

Decolonizing current harmful pedagogical curricula and research training about the natural world through an Indigenous- guided approach is an essential first step to rebuilding a healthy relationship with our environment while acknowledging that all relationships come with an ethical responsibility. Voices of Indigenuity captures the complexities of exploring the contextu- alized meanings for why TEK should be integrated into Western environmental science processes and frameworks while rooted in Indigenous studies programs.

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