Reseña de "Corn is Our Blood: Culture and Ethnic Identity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village" de Alan Sandstrom

Reseña de Author: CARLOS GARMA NAVARRO
Publisher:
ISBN:
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Languages : en
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Reseña de "Corn is Our Blood: Culture and Ethnic Identity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village" de Alan Sandstrom

Reseña de Author: CARLOS GARMA NAVARRO
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Corn is Our Blood

Corn is Our Blood PDF Author: Alan R. Sandstrom
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806124032
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Almost a million Nahua Indians, many of them descendants of Mexico's ancient Aztecs, continue to speak their native language, grow corn, and practice religious traditions that trace back to pre-Hispanic days. This ethnographic sketch, written with a minimum of anthropological jargon and illustrated with color photographs, explores the effects of Hispanic domination on the people of Amatlan, a pseudonymous remote village of about six hundred conservative Nahuas in the tropical forests of northern Veracruz. Several key questions inspired anthropologist Alan R. Sandstrom to live among the Nahuas in the early 1970s and again in the 1980s. How have the Nahuas managed to survive as a group after nearly five hundred years of conquest and domination by Europeans? How are villages like Amatlan organized to resist intrusion, and what distortions in village life are caused by the marginal status of Mexican Indian communities? What concrete advantages does being a Nahua confer on citizens of such a community? Sandstrom describes how Nahua culture is a coherent system of meanings and at the same time a subtle and dynamic strategy for survival. In the 1980s, however, the villagers presented themselves as less Indian because increased urban wage imigration[sic] and profound changes in local economic conditions diminished the value of the Indian identity. Long-term participant-observation research has yielded new information about village-level Nahua society, culture change, magico-religious beliefs and practices, Protestantism among Mesoamerican Indians, and the role of ethnicity in maintaining and transforming traditional culture. Where possible, the villagers' own words are used in telling their history and culture.

The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs

The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs PDF Author: Deborah L. Nichols
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199341966
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 785

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, the first of its kind, provides a current overview of recent research on the Aztec empire, the best documented prehispanic society in the Americas. Chapters span from the establishment of Aztec city-states to the encounter with the Spanish empire and the Colonial period that shaped the modern world. Articles in the Handbook take up new research trends and methodologies and current debates. The Handbook articles are divided into seven parts. Part I, Archaeology of the Aztecs, introduces the Aztecs, as well as Aztec studies today, including the recent practice of archaeology, ethnohistory, museum studies, and conservation. The articles in Part II, Historical Change, provide a long-term view of the Aztecs starting with important predecessors, the development of Aztec city-states and imperialism, and ending with a discussion of the encounter of the Aztec and Spanish empires. Articles also discuss Aztec notions of history, writing, and time. Part III, Landscapes and Places, describes the Aztec world in terms of its geography, ecology, and demography at varying scales from households to cities. Part IV, Economic and Social Relations in the Aztec Empire, discusses the ethnic complexity of the Aztec world and social and economic relations that have been a major focus of archaeology. Articles in Part V, Aztec Provinces, Friends, and Foes, focuses on the Aztec's dynamic relations with distant provinces, and empires and groups that resisted conquest, and even allied with the Spanish to overthrow the Aztec king. This is followed by Part VI, Ritual, Belief, and Religion, which examines the different beliefs and rituals that formed Aztec religion and their worldview, as well as the material culture of religious practice. The final section of the volume, Aztecs after the Conquest, carries the Aztecs through the post-conquest period, an increasingly important area of archaeological work, and considers the place of the Aztecs in the modern world.

Rethinking the Aztec Economy

Rethinking the Aztec Economy PDF Author: Deborah L. Nichols
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816535515
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
"Rethinking the Aztec Economy provides new perspectives on the society and economy of the ancient Aztecs by focusing on goods and their patterns of circulation"--Provided by publisher.

Indigenous Science and Technology

Indigenous Science and Technology PDF Author: Kelly S. McDonough
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816550409
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
This is a book about how Nahuas—native⁠ speakers of Nahuatl, the common language of the Aztec Empire and of more than 2.5 million Indigenous people today—have explored, understood, and explained the world around them in pre-invasion, colonial, and contemporary time periods. It is a deep dive into Nahua theoretical and practical inquiry related to the environment, as well as the dynamic networks in which Nahuas create, build upon, and share knowledges, practices, tools, and objects to meet social, political, and economic needs. In this work, author Kelly S. McDonough addresses Nahua understanding of plants and animals, medicine and ways of healing, water and water control, alphabetic writing, and cartography. Interludes between the chapters offer short biographical sketches and interviews with contemporary Nahua scientists, artists, historians, and writers, accompanied by their photos. The book also includes more than twenty full-color images from sources including the Florentine Codex, a sixteenth-century collaboration between Indigenous and Spanish scholars considered the most comprehensive extant source on the pre-Hispanic and early colonial Aztec (Mexica) world. In Mexico today, the terms “Indigenous” and “science and technology” are rarely paired together. When they are, the latter tend to be framed as unrecoverable or irreparably damaged pre-Hispanic traditions⁠, relics confined to a static past. In Indigenous Science and Technology, McDonough works against such erroneous and racialized discourses with a focus on Nahua environmental engagements and relationalities, systems of communication, and cultural preservation and revitalization. Attention to these overlooked or obscured knowledges provides a better understanding of Nahua culture, past and present, as well as the entangled local and global histories in which they were—and are—vital actors.

The Perfection of Nature

The Perfection of Nature PDF Author: Mackenzie Cooley
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226822281
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
"The Renaissance is celebrated for the belief that individuals could fashion themselves to greatness, but, as Mackenzie Cooley uncovers in this timely book, there is a dark parallel to this fãeted era. Those same men and women who were offering profound advancements in our understanding of the human condition-and laying the foundations of the Scientific Revolution-were also obsessed with controlling that condition and the wider natural world. Cooley traces how the Renaissance world, from the Mediterranean to Mexico City to the high mountains of the Andes, was marked by a lingering fascination with breeding. While one strand of the Renaissance celebrated a liberal view of human potential, another limited it by biology, reducing man to beast and prince to stud. 'Race,' Cooley explains, first referred to animal stock honed through breeding. And, to those who invented the concept, race was not inflexible but the fragile result of reproductive work. She follows these early modern breeders' work with Italian horses, Mesoamerican dogs, Andean camelids, and other creatures, discussing it in tandem with natural philosophers' efforts to make sense of inheritance, modification, and the new concept of race. In doing so, she shows how, as the Spanish empire expanded, the concept of race moved from nonhuman to human animals"

Mesoamerican Healers

Mesoamerican Healers PDF Author: Brad R. Huber
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029277964X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Healing practices in Mesoamerica span a wide range, from traditional folk medicine with roots reaching back into the prehispanic era to westernized biomedicine. These sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing practices have attracted attention from researchers and the public alike, as interest in alternative medicine and holistic healing continues to grow. Responding to this interest, the essays in this book offer a comprehensive, state-of-the-art survey of Mesoamerican healers and medical practices in Mexico and Guatemala. The first two essays describe the work of prehispanic and colonial healers and show how their roles changed over time. The remaining essays look at contemporary healers, including bonesetters, curers, midwives, nurses, physicians, social workers, and spiritualists. Using a variety of theoretical approaches, the authors examine such topics as the intersection of gender and curing, the recruitment of healers and their training, healers' compensation and workload, types of illnesses treated and recommended treatments, conceptual models used in diagnosis and treatment, and the relationships among healers and between indigenous healers and medical and political authorities.

Sorcery in Mesoamerica

Sorcery in Mesoamerica PDF Author: Jeremy D. Coltman
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607329549
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Approaching sorcery as highly rational and rooted in significant social and cultural values, Sorcery in Mesoamerica examines and reconstructs the original indigenous logic behind it, analyzing manifestations from the Classic Maya to the ethnographic present. While the topic of sorcery and witchcraft in anthropology is well developed in other areas of the world, it has received little academic attention in Mexico and Central America until now. In each chapter, preeminent scholars of ritual and belief ask very different questions about what exactly sorcery is in Mesoamerica. Contributors consider linguistic and visual aspects of sorcery and witchcraft, such as the terminology in Aztec semantics and dictionaries of the Kaqchiquel and K’iche’ Maya. Others explore the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, including the incorporation by indigenous sorcerers in the Mexican highlands of European perspectives and practices into their belief system. Contributors also examine specific deities, entities, and phenomena, such as the pantheistic Nahua spirit entities called forth to assist healers and rain makers, the categorization of Classic Maya Wahy (“co-essence”) beings, the cult of the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl, and the recurring relationship between female genitalia and the magical conjuring of a centipede throughout Mesoamerica. Placing the Mesoamerican people in a human context—as engaged in a rational and logical system of behavior—Sorcery inMesoamerica is the first comprehensive study of the subject and an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Mesoamerican culture and religion. Contributors: Lilián González Chévez, John F. Chuchiak IV, Jeremy D. Coltman, Roberto Martínez González, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Cecelia F. Klein, Timothy J. Knab, John Monaghan, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Alan R. Sandstrom, Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, David Stuart

The Serpent's Plumes

The Serpent's Plumes PDF Author: Adam W. Coon
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438497792
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
The Serpent's Plumes analyzes contemporary Nahua cultural production, principally bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish xochitlajtoli, or "poetry," written from the 1980s to the present. Adam W. Coon draws on Nahua perspectives as a decolonizing theoretical framework to argue that Nahua writers deploy unique worldviews—namely, ixtlamatilistli ("knowledge with the face," which highlights the value of personal experiences); yoltlajlamikilistli ("knowledge with the heart," which underscores the importance of affective intelligence); and tlaixpan ("that which is in front," which presents the past as lying ahead of a subject rather than behind). The views of ixtlamatilistli, yoltlajlamikilistli, and tlaixpan are key in Nahua struggles and effectively challenge those who attempt to marginalize Native knowledge production.

The Huasteca

The Huasteca PDF Author: Katherine A. Faust
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806149574
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In The Huasteca: Culture, History, and Interregional Exchange, a range of authorities on art, history, archaeology, and cultural anthropology bring long-overdue attention to the region’s rich contributions to the pre-Columbian world. They also assess how the Huasteca fared from colonial times to the present. The authors call critical, even urgent attention to a region highly significant to Mesoamerican history but long neglected by scholars.