Ueli Hostettler

NEW INEQUALITIES: CHANGING MAYA ECONOMY AND SOCIAL LIFE IN CENTRAL QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO

In this paper I explore how members of rural Maya households in central Quintana Roo (Mexico) interact with the wider social system and cope with long-term transformations in productive relations since c. 1840. Maya householders integrate elements of capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production. Through particular cultural forms they regulate internal uses of wealth and their relationships with the larger capitalist world. Social and economic stratification is a fundamental feature of life among Maya householders today as it was in the past. While disparities between wealth strata within the local context have increased, the community is far from disintegrating into antagonistic groups.

End of Life in Prison: Talking Across Disciplines and Across Countries

What a good end of life means is a particularly relevant question in the context of confinement and prison. Most of the questions and issues raised by end of life for those living in liberty also apply to the correctional setting. However, the institutional particularities and logics of the prison create unique barriers and make it difficult in practice to reconcile concerns in regard to end of life—like care and comfort—with the mandate of corrections—confinement and punishment. At present, the literature on end of life in prison is dominated by U.S. contributions. We have therefore invited researchers from various disciplines in various countries to analyze the topic from their disciplinary perspectives and within the respective institutional frames of their national contexts.

Inmate Violence and Correctional Staff Burnout: The Role of Sense of Security, Gender, and Job Characteristics.

Violence in the workplace has serious consequences for employees and organizations. Based on a survey in early 2012 among employees from all work areas of 89 of the total 112 correctional facilities in Switzerland resulting in a sample of 2,045 employees (response rate 48.5%), this study (a) analyzed whether victimization has an impact on correctional staff burnout, (b) tested the hypothetical mediating role of sense of security in the relationship between victimization and burnout, and (c) included gender and job characteristics because work experiences and exposure to violence of staff differ strongly with gender and work tasks. Two different forms of violence were considered: (a) experienced violence (inmates-on-staff) and (b) observed violence (inmate-on-inmate). Analysis was carried out using structural equation modeling. Results show that victimization and witnessing violence between inmates negatively affect the personal sense of security and increase correctional staff burnout. In addition, the sense of security mediated the effect from experienced and observed violence on burnout. Gender and job characteristics also proved to be important. This is especially true for staff working as correctional officers and for employees working with young inmates and with inmates awaiting trial who reported a greater exposure to violence and a lower sense of security. The study adds to the knowledge on violence and its outcomes in corrections and contributes to the literature on the consequences of workplace violence in general and, specifically, in social service occupations.

Conducting commissioned research in neoliberal academia: The conditions evaluations impose on research practice

The article deals with the unease we experience during various commissioned research projects. On the one hand, as social scientists, we feel committed to conducting ‘good research’ that acknowledges quality criteria such as flexibility and transparency and in particular allows for musing and reflexivity to ‘discover’ new aspects of our research topic. On the other hand, we are situated in the context of present-day neoliberal academia. This means that our work is assessed according to a culture of audit characteristic for neoliberal management of universities that values publication indexes and fundamental research. At the same time, universities strive increasingly for third-party funding that favors commissioned research. This article discusses how commissioned research conditions our evaluations and research practice and how these conditions might conflict with the ‘good research’ we hope to conduct.

Ethnographic Perspectives in Maya Studies: Trends in Writing about Mayas in Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize

La estructura y evolución demográfica de un sistema campesino: La población de Guatemala. By John D. Early. Translated by Anne M. Luna and Eddy H.Gaytán. Prologue by Ricardo Falla. (Miami, fl, and SouthWoodstock, vt: Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica [cirma] and PlumsockMesoamerican Studies, 2000. xxii + 250 pp., prefaces, bibliography, tables, illustrations, photographs, index maps.

End of Life in High-Security Prisons in Switzerland: Overlapping and Blurring of “Care” and “Custody” as Institutional Logics

22.00 paper.)

Feldforschung im Justizvollzug: Erfahrungen und Überlegungen zu Fragen des Zugangs zum Feld und zu den Forschungsteilnehmenden

Similar to other institutions, the Swiss prison system faces a growing number of elderly prisoners, trends toward securitization, and, in consequence, more prisoners who will spend the end-of-life (EOL) period of time in prison. By law, prisoners should have the same access to care as the rest of the population. However, custody makes meeting the demands of medical and palliative care difficult. This article focuses on the organizational challenges related to EOL care. Based on ethnographic and documentary research, it examines the institutional logic of the prison and the competing “new” logic emerging with EOL care. It illustrates the ambivalences within these logics and the blurred distinction between “care” and “custody” and evaluates how prison staff interpret this overlap and the effects in shaping everyday practices.

Lay Summary: End-of-Life in Swiss Prisons: Legal Context, Institutions and Actors

Dieser Beitrag beschreibt Herausforderungen der ethnografischen Forschungspraxis im Kontext der Anthropologie des Justizvollzugs und darunter zwei zentrale Phasen: jene des Zugangs zum Feld und des Zugangs zu Forschungsteilnehmenden innerhalb des Felds, also zu Gefangenen sowie Mitarbeitenden in Justizvollzugsanstalten. Zugang ist eng mit dem Aufbau von Beziehungen und dem Vertrauen zwischen Forschenden und Forschungsteilnehmenden verbunden und eine Voraussetzung fur die Forschungspraktiken der teilnehmen- den Beobachtung und formeller und informeller Gesprache, die in dieser Forschung – neben der Analyse von Dokumenten – zum Einsatz kamen.

The Chamula Rebellion, 1867-1870: A Maya "Caste War" Revisited (Köhler's Der Chamula-Aufstand in Chiapas, Mexiko: Aus der Sicht heutiger Indianer und Ladinos)

People in prison are not free to choose how and where they die. This means that the issue of dying with dignity requires special attention in the prison setting. This study examines what it means to die in prison and what ethical, legal and security-related issues are important.

Milpa agriculture and economic diversification : socioeconomic change in a Maya peasant society of central Quintana Roo, 1900-1990s

in Chiapas, Mexiko ) Der ChamulaAufstand in Chiapas, Mexiko: Aus der Sicht heutiger Indianer und Ladinos by Ulrich Khler Review by: Ueli Hostettler Current Anthropology, Vol. 44, No. 1 (February 2003), pp. 135-136 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/345691 . Accessed: 17/03/2013 19:19The frequency and magnitude of indigenous rebellions in the Maya area—the “Caste War of Yucatán” (1847–1901) probably being the best-known among them—have for centuries intrigued government officials, kept soldiers busy, inspired public debate among contemporary politicians and intellectuals, and, increasingly, captured the interest of scholars. The most recent incident in a long series, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) uprising of January 1994, spurred this interest to the extent that Chiapas became synonymous with a new paradigm in social struggles for autonomy and self-determination of indigenous people worldwide. Ulrich Köhler writes about a less well-known religious movement centered upon the cult of a new santo (a deity whose name is derived from that of a Catholic saint). This cult first developed peacefully in Chamula, a Tzotzil Maya community in highland Chiapas, in 1867 but later led to a series of armed confrontations between Mayan Mexicans from Chamula and government forces for the most part consisting of Ladinos (i.e., non-Mayan Mexicans) before the movement was defeated in 1870. Between 1970 and 1982 Köhler collected 22 accounts of these events from present-day Tzotzil-speakers living in Chamula and neighboring communities. He tape-recorded these narratives and transcribed them word for word, thus preserving their local Tzotzil idioms. The good news here is that, whereas Köhler’s concern is mainly with the historical content, linguists may find the material useful as well. Less fortunate, however, is the fact that, although some of the translations have probably gone through a Spanish stage, they are rendered only in German. Only two additional narratives, collected from Ladino residents of San Cristóbal Las Casas (the former government seat and today Chiapas’s most important highland town), appear in both German and Spanish. The 24 accounts, reproduced together with