Edward F. Fischer

Resocializing Suffering Neoliberalism, Accusation, and the Sociopolitical Context of Guatemala's New Violence

An ethnographic account of the putative shift away from state-sponsored violence and the emergence of new patterns of violence in postwar Guatemala challenges liberal political and moral models that narrowly interpret violence in terms of individual suffering and/or culpability. Such models converge with a resurgence of right-wing political activity. The origins and outcomes of violence are more usefully and accurately conceived in terms of structural and societal conditions. Guatemalas new violence (e.g., crime, gang activity, and vigilantism) is not the chaos of media accounts but a manifestation of enduring legacies of state violence and the social and economic insecurities brought on by structural adjustment policies.

Non-Traditional Agricultural Exports in Highland Guatemala: Understandings of Risk and Perceptions of Change

Through a case study of small-scale Kaqchikel Maya farmers involved in non-traditional export agriculture (NTAX) in the Central Guatemalan highlands, this article examines the tensions between the mostly positive perceptions of farmers and the negative assessments of many who study NTAX production. In a context of severe political-economic structural inequalities and potentially high social and cultural costs, quantitative household survey results demonstrate a modest decrease in concentration of land in favour of Maya smallholders; more gender-egalitarian relations of production than expected; and largely positive local perceptions of economic and social change. Qualitative analysis interprets these findings in light of Maya-affective ties to land, preferences for continuity in traditional labor organization and subsistence maize production, perceptions of risk, and the transfer of traditional marketing skills. We find that Kaqchikeles are shaping alternative modernities as they deal with new sets of political-economic and social constraints.

Maya Farmers and Export Agriculture in Highland Guatemala

In highland Guatemala, the production of fruits and vegetables for export has been dominated by small-scale, mostly Maya growers for over 20 years. Adoption of these crops was promoted in the 1970s and 1980s by international development agencies as a poverty-reduction strategy, partly because it was felt that farmers with very little land could exploit the one comparative advantage they held—abundant household labor—to produce laborintensive, high-value crops. The expectation was that not only farmers but also those employed in processing, transportation, marketing, and inputsupply operations would benefit from the introduction of nontraditional export crops. In this article we examine the social, economic, and cultural impacts of household employment in nontraditional agriculture for several Kaqchikel Maya communities in the central Guatemalan highlands. Our findings are based on quantitative household surveys and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Kaqchikel region from 1998 to 2004. Overall, the effects of nontraditional agricultural export production on smallholding Maya farmers are mixed. There are growing concerns about the toxicity of the high levels of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers that such production requires, and earnings from it have led to class differentiation that can erode community solidarity. Finally, farmers growing nontraditional crops for export find

Multidimensional Poverty in Rural Mozambique: A New Metric for Evaluating Public Health Interventions

Background Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon and unidimensional measurements have proven inadequate to the challenge of assessing its dynamics. Dynamics between poverty and public health intervention is among the most difficult yet important problems faced in development. We sought to demonstrate how multidimensional poverty measures can be utilized in the evaluation of public health interventions; and to create geospatial maps of poverty deprivation to aid implementers in prioritizing program planning. Methods Survey teams interviewed a representative sample of 3,749 female heads of household in 259 enumeration areas across Zambézia in August-September 2010. We estimated a multidimensional poverty index, which can be disaggregated into context-specific indicators. We produced an MPI comprised of 3 dimensions and 11 weighted indicators selected from the survey. Households were identified as “poor” if were deprived in >33% of indicators. Our MPI is an adjusted headcount, calculated by multiplying the proportion identified as poor (headcount) and the poverty gap (average deprivation). Geospatial visualizations of poverty deprivation were created as a contextual baseline for future evaluation. Results In our rural (96%) and urban (4%) interviewees, the 33% deprivation cut-off suggested 58.2% of households were poor (29.3% of urban vs. 59.5% of rural). Among the poor, households experienced an average deprivation of 46%; thus the MPI/adjusted headcount is 0.27 ( = 0.58×0.46). Of households where a local language was the primary language, 58.6% were considered poor versus Portuguese-speaking households where 73.5% were considered non-poor. Living standard is the dominant deprivation, followed by health, and then education. Conclusions Multidimensional poverty measurement can be integrated into program design for public health interventions, and geospatial visualization helps examine the impact of intervention deployment within the context of distinct poverty conditions. Both permit program implementers to focus resources and critically explore linkages between poverty and its social determinants, thus deriving useful findings for evidence-based planning.

STATES OF HEART

This article examines early colonial Kaqchikel Maya notions of the self, souls, and the heart. By integrating ethnohistorical data and contemporary ethnographic observations, we show that Kaqchikeles viewed the self as contingent on a dynamic balance of cosmic forces acting on the individual. The ways in which these forces are seen to effect one’s state of being are documented through an extensive discussion of Kaqchikel metaphors of the heart and soul. We conclude by noting the importance of understanding processes of continuity (as well as change) in cultural constructions and argue for the continued utility of such approaches in ethnohistorical research. The present article examines Kaqchikel Maya notions of the self (and its physical and metaphysical referents) based on both ethnohistoric sources and contemporary ethnographic data. We document the semantic categories most closely associated with early Colonial-period Kaqchikel notions of the self, elucidating their significance through comparison with data from other parts of the Mesoamerican culture area and from modern Kaqchikel concepts. From texts recorded on Classic-era (a.d. 250–900) stelae and pottery and from surviving Postclassic (a.d. 900–61550) codices, we know that the pre-Columbian Maya considered earthly existence (both individual and collective) to be closely connected to the cosmic realm; the primordial events which gave life to humankind and set the cosmos in motion were played out both on earth and in the celestial sphere. The animizing force behind Maya creation and life is in turn linked to the eternal cycles of time as measured by the movement of the sun, moon, and stars.1 This cosmic force (often rendered in English as “god”) is at once a plurality and a unity of forces; Edmonson (1993:67; see also Monaghan 2000) writes that “the Mayan idea of god was explicitly unitary. God was called the Unified God (Hunanku), an expression capturing with precision this deity’s essence as singular and plural at the same time.” Conceived of in its perfect unitary state, the cosmic order is one of perfect harmony and balance between natural and metaphysical forces. As Mark King (1996:5) has observed, “the fundamental problem in the Mesoamerican universe is one of balance” (see also Freidel et al. 1993; Monaghan 1995). It is seen as the duty of (Maya) humans to approximate cosmic harmony on earth. Collectively this is realized through adherence to rituals scripted to approximate cosmic equilibrium. Individually, the Kaqchikel Maya strive for equilibrium of cosmic forces acting through the self. Edmonson (1993:70) writes that, Like god, the human being exists in his or her self, his or her uniqueness (t u ba, t u hunal ). The self (ba) or thingness (baal ) of god and the human being lies in their relation to each other (t u ball ba), and this reciprocity is the inmost part (ol ) of each. In various contexts this is identified with the heart, breath, mouth, eye or face, head, belly or womb, blood or semen, flesh and bone, but it is the center (ol ) that is the seat of feeling, of thought, and of the soul ( pixan). The Kaqchikel Maya recognize three primary centers in the body through which cosmic forces worked, and the state of balance which holds between these forces is fundamental to Maya notions of self. Below, we describe each of the three forces associated with the Kaqchikel self, natub, uxla’, and k’u’x. We analyze the relative influence of each on the self through an examination of their respective semantic domains and contextualized instances of usage. We employ both internal diachronic comparisons of the semantic domains of natub, uxla’, and k’u’x in Colonial and modern Kaqchikel Maya texts and comparative data on cognate concepts from other parts of Mesoamerica. In the maintenance of cosmic equilibrium within the confines of the self, we find the concept of k’u’x (often glossed as “heart”) to be of particular importance to both the Colonial and modern Kaqchikel Maya. Culturally constituted notions of the self and of how thought processes and emotions occur increasingly are becoming part of ethnographic descriptions (Cohen 1994; Reddy 1997). Much of the interest that has developed over the last twenty or so years traces its inspiration to a series of seminal articles published by Hallowell (1954a, 1954b, 1960). Though not receiving the recognition they merited at the time, these articles are today recognized as one of the charters of cognitive anthropology, generally, and ethnopsychology, in particular (White and Kirkpatrick 1985:7–9). 1 Fischer is grateful to William Harrison for sharing his extensive knowledge on the mythological data contained in Maya iconographic representations, specifically the creation myths referred to here; see also Freidel et al. (1993) on the origin of the Maya cosmos. Ancient Mesoamerica, 10 (1999), 317–332 Copyright