Development Processes in Maya Communities

该奖项为纽约城市学院人类学系提供支持，以继续开展一个本科生研究经验现场项目，该项目将使本科生参与研究墨西哥东南部恰帕斯高地玛雅和墨西哥民族社区的当代社会文化变化。PI在过去30年中一直在研究拉丁美洲的工作和性别问题，他将指导该项目。学生将在一周的一部分时间与印度村庄的家庭生活在一起，来到圣克里斯托瓦尔德拉斯卡萨斯市的研究中心参加研讨会，玛雅语言课程，并与PI讨论。雅阁项目的研究需要，将定期组织团体参观手工业生产合作社、实验农业站和政府办公室。学生将学习基本的人口普查技术，广泛的采访和口头叙述，参与观察和学徒培训，学习手工艺生产的社会化过程。他们将每天写日记，并在项目结束时提交一份总结报告。对来自不同社区家庭的学生的观察将有助于了解墨西哥正在经历的债务危机的应对策略。PI将得到目前在恰帕斯工作的同事的协助，他们的学术生涯致力于该地区土著文化的调查。

This award provides support to the Department of Anthropology at City College of the City University of New York to continue a Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site Project which will involve undergraduates in the study of contemporary socio- cultural change among the highland Maya and Mexican national communities of Chiapas, southeastern Mexico. The PI, who has studied work and gender in Latin America for the past thirty years, will direct the project. Students will live with families in Indian villages during a part of the week, coming in to the research center in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas for seminars, Maya language lessons, and discussion with the PI. Group trips to handicraft production cooperatives, experimental agricultural stations, and government offices will take place periodically in accord with the research needs of the project. Students will learn basic censusing techniques, extensive interviewing and oral narrative accounts, participant observation, and apprenticeship training to learn the socialization process in handicraft production. They will write daily diaries and submit a summary report at the end of the project. The observations of students located in families in different communities will add up to an account of coping strategies in the debt crisis Mexico is undergoing. The PI will be assisted by colleagues presently working in Chiapas who have devoted their scholarly careers to investigations of indigenous culture in the area.