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In contrast to western notions of the soul as the essence or most native part of a human being, the Tzeltal-speaking Indians of Chiapas, Mexico, regard the soul first and foremost as an Other. Made up of beings that personify the antithesis of their native selves—animals such as hummingbirds or jaguars, atmospheric phenomena like lightning bolts or rainbows, or spirits of European appearance such as Catholic priests or evangelical musicians—Tzeltal souls represent the maximum expression of that which is alien. And because their souls enfold that which is outside and Other, the Tzeltal contain within themselves the history of their relationship with Europeans from the beginning of the Spanish conquest to the present time. Thus, to understand the Indian self opens a window into the Tzeltal conception of culture and community, their notions of identity and alterity, and their interpretation of interethnic relations and types of historical memory.

In this pathfinding ethnography, which was originally published in Spanish in 1996 as Ch'ulel: una etnografía de las almas tzeltales and is now extensively rewritten and amplified in English, Pedro Pitarch offers a new understanding of indigenous concepts of the soul, personhood, and historical memory in highland Chiapas. Exploring numerous aspects of indigenous culture and history—medicine and shamanism, geography and cosmology, and politics and kinship among them—he engages in a radical rethinking of classic issues in Mesoamerican anthropology, such as ethnicity and alterity, community and tradition, and change and permanence.

Most recent books about Chiapas, Mexico, focus on political conflicts and the indigenous movement for human rights at the macro level. None has explored those conflicts and struggles in-depth through an individual woman's life story. The Journey of a Tzotzil-Maya Woman of Chiapas, Mexico now offers that perspective in one woman's own words. Anthropologist Christine Eber met "Antonia" in 1986 and has followed her life's journey ever since. In this book, they recount Antonia's life story and also reflect on challenges and rewards they have experienced in working together, offering insight into the role of friendship in anthropological research, as well as into the transnational movement of solidarity with the indigenous people of Chiapas that began with the Zapatista uprising.

Antonia was born in 1962 in San Pedro Chenalhó, a Tzotzil-Maya township in highland Chiapas. Her story begins with memories of childhood and progresses to young adulthood, when Antonia began working with women in her community to form weaving cooperatives while also becoming involved in the Word of God, the progressive Catholic movement known elsewhere as Liberation Theology. In 1994, as a wife and mother of six children, she joined a support base for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Recounting her experiences in these three interwoven movements, Antonia offers a vivid and nuanced picture of working for social justice while trying to remain true to her people's traditions.

Agrarian reforms transformed the Mexican countryside in the late twentieth century but without, in many cases, altering fundamental power relationships. This study of the Tehuacán Valley in the state of Puebla highlights different strategies to manipulate the local implementation of federal government programs. With their very differing successes in the struggle to regain and maintain control of land and water rights, these strategies raise important questions about the meaning of the phrase "locally controlled development."

Because Mexico is dependent on irrigation for 45 percent of its cash crop production, national policy has focused on developing vast government controlled and financed irrigation systems. In the Tehuacán Valley, however, the inhabitants have developed a complex irrigation system without government aid or supervision. Yet, in contrast to most parts of Mexico, water rights can be bought and sold as a commodity, leading to accumulation, stratification, and emergence of a regional elite whose power is based on ownership of land and water. The analysis provides an important contribution to the understanding of local control.

The findings of this study will be important to a wide audience involved in the study of irrigation, local agricultural systems, and the interplay between local power structures and the national government in developing countries. The book also presents unique material on gravity-fed, horizontal wells, known as qanat in the Middle East, which had been unknown in the literature on Latin America before this book.

The history of the Middle Eastern family presents as many questions as there are currently answers. Who lived together in the household? Who married whom and for how long? Who got a piece of the patrimonial pie? These are the questions that Margaret Meriwether investigates in this groundbreaking study of family life among the upper classes of the Ottoman Empire in the pre-modern and early modern period.

Meriwether recreates Aleppo family life over time from records kept by the Islamic religious courts that held jurisdiction over all matters of family law and property transactions. From this research, she asserts that the stereotype of the large, patriarchal patrilineal family rarely existed in reality. Instead, Aleppo's notables organized their families in a great diversity of ways, despite the fact that they were all members of the same social class with widely shared cultural values, acting under the same system of family law. She concludes that this had important implications for gender relations and demonstrates that it gave women more authority and greater autonomy than is usually acknowledged.

An especially comprehensive study of Brazilian Amazonian Indian history, The Last Cannibals is the first attempt to understand, through indigenous discourse, the emergence of Upper Xingú society. Drawing on oral documents recorded directly from the native language, Ellen Basso transcribes and analyzes nine traditional Kalapalo stories to offer important insights into Kalapalo historical knowledge and the performance of historical narratives within their nonliterate society.

This engaging book challenges the familiar view of biography as a strictly Western literary form. Of special interest are biographies of powerful warriors whose actions led to the emergence of a more recent social order based on restrained behaviors from an earlier time when people were said to be fierce and violent.

From these stories, Basso explores how the Kalapalo remember and understand their past and what specific linguistic, psychological, and ideological materials they employ to construct their historical consciousness. Her book will be important reading in anthropology, folklore, linguistics, and South American studies.

The native Maya peoples of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize have been remarkably successful in maintaining their cultural identity during centuries of contact with and domination by outside groups. Yet change is occurring in all Mayan communities as contact with Spanish-speaking Ladino society increases. This book explores change and continuity in one of the most vital areas of Mayan culture—language use.

The authors look specifically at Kaqchikel, one of the most commonly spoken Mayan languages. Following an examination of language contact situations among indigenous groups in the Americas, the authors proceed to a historical overview of the use of Kaqchikel in the Guatemalan Highlands. They then present case studies of three highland communities in which the balance is shifting between Kaqchikel and Spanish. Wuqu' Ajpub', a native Kaqchikel speaker, gives a personal account of growing up negotiating between the two languages and the different world views they encode. The authors conclude with a look at the Mayan language revitalization movement and offer a scenario in which Kaqchikel and other Mayan languages can continue to thrive.

Rural Appalachians in Kentucky call it "The Kentucky Way"—making a living by doing many kinds of paid and unpaid work and sharing their resources within extended family networks. In fact, these strategies are practiced by rural people in many parts of the world, but they have not been studied extensively in the United States. In The Livelihood of Kin, Rhoda Halperin undertakes a detailed exploration of this complex, family-oriented economy, showing how it promotes economic well-being and a sense of identity for the people who follow it.

Using actual life and work histories, Halperin shows how people make a living "in between" the cash economy of the city and the agricultural subsistence economy of the country. In regionally based, three-generation kin networks, family members work individually and jointly at many tasks: small-scale agricultural production, food processing and storage, odd jobs, selling used and new goods in marketplaces, and wage labor, much of which is temporary. People can make ends meet even in the face of job layoffs and declining crop subsidies. With these strategies people win a considerable degree of autonomy and control over their lives.

Halperin also examines how such multiple livelihood strategies define individual identity by emphasizing a person’s role in the family network over an occupation. She reveals, through psychiatric case histories, what damage can result when individuals leave the family network for wage employment in the cities, as increasing urbanization has forced many people to do.

While certainly of interest to scholars of Appalachian studies, this lively and readable study will also be important for economic anthropologists and urban and rural sociologists.

In the early nineteenth century, Lowell, Massachusetts, was widely studied and emulated as a model for capitalist industrial development. One of the first cities in the United States to experience the ravages of deindustrialization, it was also among the first places in the world to turn to its own industrial and ethnic history as a tool for reinventing itself in the emerging postindustrial economy. The Lowell Experiment explores how history and culture have been used to remake Lowell and how historians have played a crucial yet ambiguous role in that process.

The book focuses on Lowell National Historical Park, the flagship project of Lowell's new cultural economy. When it was created in 1978, the park broke new ground with its sweeping reinterpretations of labor, immigrant, and women's history. It served as a test site for the ideas of practitioners in the new field of public history—a field that links the work of professionally trained historians with many different kinds of projects in the public realm. 

The Lowell Experiment takes an anthropological approach to public history in Lowell, showing it as a complex cultural performance shaped by local memory, the imperatives of economic redevelopment, and tourist rituals—all serving to locate the park's audiences and workers more securely within a changing and uncertain new economy characterized by growing inequalities and new exclusions. 

The paradoxical dual role of Lowell's public historians as both interpreters of and contributors to that new economy raises important questions about the challenges and limitations facing academically trained scholars in contemporary American culture. As a long-standing and well-known example of “culture-led re-development,” Lowell offers an outstanding site for exploring questions of concern to those in the fields of public and urban history, urban planning, and tourism studies.

The Maya Tropical Forest, which occupies the lowlands of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, is the closest rainforest to the United States and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Western Hemisphere. It has been home to the Maya peoples for nearly four millennia, starting around 1800 BC. Ancient cities in the rainforest such as Palenque, Yaxchilan, Tikal, and Caracol draw thousands of tourists and scholars seeking to learn more about the prehistoric Maya. Their contemporary descendants, the modern Maya, utilize the forest's natural resources in village life and international trade, while striving to protect their homeland from deforestation and environmental degradation.

Writing for both visitors and conservationists, James Nations tells the fascinating story of how ancient and modern Maya peoples have used and guarded the rich natural resources of the Maya Tropical Forest. He opens with a natural history that profiles the forest's significant animals and plants. Nations then describes the Maya peoples, biological preserves, and major archaeological sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of conservation work in the Maya Tropical Forest, Nations tells first-hand stories of the creation of national parks and other protected areas to safeguard the region's natural resources and archaeological heritage. He concludes with an expert assessment of the forest's future in which he calls for expanded archaeological tourism to create an ecologically sustainable economic base for the region.

One of the most interesting questions that can be raised about the twentieth century world concerns the degree to which industrialization created a common culture for all peoples. Reported here are the results of an empirical investigation designed to produce instruments to measure those personal values that have been central variables in the theory of modernization of societies.

The purpose of Joseph Kahl’s research is primarily methodological: to advance the description and measurement of those value orientations used by men to organize their occupational careers. It seeks to delineate and measure a set of values that represents a “modern” view of work and life.

The working laboratory was Brazil and Mexico, two countries undergoing rapid industrialization. More than six hundred men in Brazil and more than seven hundred in Mexico responded to questionnaires. In addition, over twenty-five men in each country were asked to sit beside a tape recorder and talk freely of their worldviews. The respondents were divided between inhabitants of the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City and those who lived in provincial towns of fewer than ten thousand inhabitants. The samples included manual and nonmanual employees.

The results showed that the main variable predicting whether or not a man would tend toward modernism was his social-class position. Middle-class men were much more modern in outlook than working-class men. Residence in a metropolis rather than in a small town also increased modernism, though to a lesser extent. Differences between Brazil and Mexico (and, indeed, the United States) were found to be surprisingly small, of considerably less weight than position in the social structure in predicting value orientations.

The author addresses himself primarily to sociologists and their students who are themselves studying aspects of socio-economic development. His findings, however, cannot fail to be of interest and benefit to social scientists of various disciplines and to all who are concerned with the process of development—planners at the national and local levels, demographers, and businesspeople.

The Mexican aristocracy today is simultaneously an anachronism and a testimony to the persistence of social institutions. Shut out from political power by the democratization movements of the twentieth century, stripped of the basis of its great wealth by land reforms in the 1930s, the aristocracy nonetheless maintains a strong sense of group identity through the deeply held belief that their ancestors were the architects and rulers of Mexico for nearly four hundred years.

This expressive ethnography describes the transformation of the Mexican aristocracy from the onset of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, when the aristocracy was unquestionably Mexico's highest-ranking social class, until the end of the twentieth century, when it had almost ceased to function as a superordinate social group. Drawing on extensive interviews with group members, Nutini maps out the expressive aspects of aristocratic culture in such areas as perceptions of class and race, city and country living, education and professional occupations, political participation, religion, kinship, marriage and divorce, and social ranking. His findings explain why social elites persist even when they have lost their status as ruling and political classes and also illuminate the relationship between the aristocracy and Mexico's new political and economic plutocracy.

Winner, Khayrallah Migration Studies Prize, Moise Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, 2018

Migration from the Middle East brought hundreds of thousands of people to the Americas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the time the Ottoman political system collapsed in 1918, over a third of the population of the Mashriq, i.e. the Levant, had made the transatlantic journey. This intense mobility was interrupted by World War I but resumed in the 1920s and continued through the late 1940s under the French Mandate. Many migrants returned to their homelands, but the rest concentrated in Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Haiti, and Mexico, building transnational lives.

The Mexican Mahjar provides the first global history of Middle Eastern migrations to Mexico. Making unprecedented use of French colonial archives and historical ethnography, Camila Pastor examines how French colonial control over Syria and Lebanon affected the migrants. Tracing issues of class, race, and gender through the decades of increased immigration to Mexico and looking at the narratives created by the Mahjaris (migrants) themselves in both their old and new homes, Pastor sheds new light on the creation of transnational networks at the intersection of Arab, French, and Mexican colonial modernisms. Revealing how migrants experienced mobility as conquest, diaspora, exile, or pilgrimage, The Mexican Mahjar tracks global history on an intimate scale.

The sufferings of “ordinary” people under harsh economic conditions can eventually lead to the fall of governments. Given this fact, it becomes important to know how “ordinary” people live—what privations they suffer and what strategies they use to survive in times of economic crisis. The Mexican Urban Household provides this information for Mexico near the end of the twentieth century.

Mexico is now a predominantly urban nation, and this study is the definitive work on the strategies of self-defense of its urban households. It is based on surveys of nearly 10,000 households, conducted during twenty years of field work in five very different cities, with the help of a staff of more than twenty Mexican social scientists, engineers, architects, and social workers.

Far from being a compilation of undigested statistics, however, The Mexican Urban Household uses its rich data to vividly reveal how Mexican families use their every resource to defend themselves against a political and economic system that overwhelms and exploits them. It describes how families band together, sometimes with three generations in one small house, to minimize expenses and pool resources. It explores the limited range of available jobs, from secure but scarce bureaucratic positions to more common and less reliable jobs in blue-collar industries and the informal economy. And, most important, it traces the high cost to families, particularly to women, of the endless struggle to make ends meet.

These important findings outline the dimensions of the economic crisis for ordinary Mexicans. It will be crucial reading not only for everyone interested in the future of Mexico but also for students of development throughout the Third World.