Zapotec Women

Zapotec Women PDF

Author: Lynn Stephen

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2005-10-17

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0822387514

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this extensively revised and updated second edition of her classic ethnography, Lynn Stephen explores the intersection of gender, class, and indigenous ethnicity in southern Mexico. She provides a detailed study of how the lives of women weavers and merchants in the Zapotec-speaking town of Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, have changed in response to the international demand for Oaxacan textiles. Based on Stephen’s research in Teotitlán during the mid-1980s, in 1990, and between 2001 and 2004, this volume provides a unique view of a Zapotec community balancing a rapidly advancing future in export production with an entrenched past anchored in indigenous culture. Stephen presents new information about the weaving cooperatives women have formed over the last two decades in an attempt to gain political and cultural rights within their community and standing as independent artisans within the global market. She also addresses the place of Zapotec weaving within Mexican folk art and the significance of increased migration out of Teotitlán. The women weavers and merchants collaborated with Stephen on the research for this book, and their perspectives are key to her analysis of how gender relations have changed within rituals, weaving production and marketing, local politics, and family life. Drawing on the experiences of women in Teotitlán, Stephen considers the prospects for the political, economic, and cultural participation of other indigenous women in Mexico under the policies of economic neoliberalism which have prevailed since the 1990s.

Zapotec Women

Zapotec Women PDF

Author: Lynn Stephen

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

"What happens when indigenous culture is packaged for sale in the United States? How does capital accumulation affect relations between men and women, local politics, kinship, and reciprocal exchanges of goods and labor? In this innovative study of several Zapotec communities in and around Oaxaca, Mexico, Lynn Stephen explores these questions, looking at how commercial weaving for export has altered the lives of women since the Mexican Revolution." "Drawing on firsthand insights gleaned during two and a half years of fieldwork, Stephen shows that the expansion of capitalism has affected Zapotec women in different ways. She demonstrates how class and ethnicity as well as gender determine women's roles and standing in the community. Individual life histories complement her data, showing how women may hold a position of importance in one area (ritual life, weaving production, or local politics), while occupying a subservient position in another. She also compares Zapotec women's participation in local politics with that of other peasant women in Mexico." "Stephen concludes that while the commercialization of Zapotec weaving has produced class differentiation - as classic economic theories predict - it has also reinforced kin-based institutions that support a strong sense of local ethnic identity. These findings offer important new insights for the fields of economic and political anthropology, Latin American and Third World studies, and women's studies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Weaving the Past

Weaving the Past PDF

Author: Susan Kellogg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2005-09-02

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780198040422

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Weaving the Past offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary history of Latin America's indigenous women. While the book concentrates on native women in Mesoamerica and the Andes, it covers indigenous people in other parts of South and Central America, including lowland peoples in and beyond Brazil, and Afro-indigenous peoples, such as the Garifuna, of Central America. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, it argues that change, not continuity, has been the norm for indigenous peoples whose resilience in the face of complex and long-term patterns of cultural change is due in no small part to the roles, actions, and agency of women. The book provides broad coverage of gender roles in native Latin America over many centuries, drawing upon a range of evidence from archaeology, anthropology, religion, and politics. Primary and secondary sources include chronicles, codices, newspaper articles, and monographic work on specific regions. Arguing that Latin America's indigenous women were the critical force behind the more important events and processes of Latin America's history, Kellogg interweaves the region's history of family, sexual, and labor history with the origins of women's power in prehispanic, colonial, and modern South and Central America. Shying away from interpretations that treat women as house bound and passive, the book instead emphasizes women's long history of performing labor, being politically active, and contributing to, even supporting, family and community well-being.

Of Mice and Women

Of Mice and Women PDF

Author: Kaj Bjorkqvist

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 1483288161

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is a comprehensive compilation and discussion of research findings on female aggression from anthropology, social psychology, animal research, case studies, and representations in literature. This multidisciplinary approach will address such questions as: 'Are females less aggressive than males?' 'Is female aggressive behavior perhaps quantitatively, different than male aggressive behavior?' The book also discusses patterns of agression, the role of hormones in aggression, cultural differences, and how human aggression differs from aggression within animal species.

A World Full of Women

A World Full of Women PDF

Author: Martha C. Ward

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-10-14

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 131734247X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Takes a cross-cultural approach to the study of women A World Full of Women, 6/e, combines descriptive ethnography, gender theory, and international statistics to present a comprehensive picture of the lives of women. Readers will better comprehend and contextualize women’s issues and experiences in today’s world. This title explores the diversity of women’s lives from class to culture, with examples ranging from women’s work to marriage patterns, health issues, violence against women, and grassroots organizing.

Becoming an Ancestor

Becoming an Ancestor PDF

Author: Anya Peterson Royce

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2011-11-17

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1438436793

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Powerful and beautifully written, this is the story of the Isthmus Zapotecs of southern Mexico and their unbroken chain of ancestors and collective memory over the generations. Mortuary beliefs and actions are collective and pervasive in ways not seen in the United States, a resonant deep structure across many domains of Zapotec culture. Anthropologist Anya Peterson Royce draws upon forty years of participant research in the city of Juchitán to offer a finely textured portrait of the vibrant and enduring power of death in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec of Mexico. Focusing especially on the lives of Zapotec women, Becoming an Ancestor highlights the aesthetic sensibility and durability of mortuary traditions in the past and present. An intricate blending of Roman Catholicism and indigenous spiritual tradition, death through beliefs and practices expresses a collective solidarity that connects families, binds the living and dead, and blurs the past and present. A model of ethnographic research and presentation, Becoming an Ancestor not only reveals the luminescent heart of Zapotec culture but also provides important clues about the cultural power and potential of mortuary traditions for all societies.