Dissertation Research: Religious Conversion Among the Tzotzil Maya in Highland Chiapas, Mexico

本项目支持一位来自纽约城市大学文化人类学专业学生的论文研究。 学生将研究导致一些农村玛雅印第安人被驱逐出墨西哥南部恰帕斯州的传统社区的因素。 学生将衡量改宗，政治冲突，贫困，边缘化，疾病和酗酒的影响，作为宗教转换的原因在这个社区。 通过对一个重新安置的印第安人社区的调查，在他们的原籍社区以及他们的居住社区的人种学研究相结合，学生将估计导致宗教转换的不同因素的优势以及转换的重要性与驱逐中的政治派别相比。 这项研究很重要，因为它将增加我们对世界这一重要领域的专业知识，并揭示导致宗教变化，地方社区冲突和欠发达社会城市化的多种因素。 这一个案研究对于这些问题的一般理论建构具有重要的价值。

This project supports the dissertation research of a student of cultural anthropology from the City University of New York. The student will study the factors leading to the expulsion of some rural Mayan Indians from their traditional communities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The student will measure the impacts of proselytization, political conflict, poverty, marginality, illness and alcoholism as causes of religious conversion in this one community. Using a combination of a survey of a community of resettled Indians, ethnographic research in their community of origin as well as their community of residence, the student will estimate the strengths of the distinct factors leading to religious conversion as well as the importance of conversion compared with political factionalism in the expulsions. This research is important because it will add to our expertise about this important area of the world, as well as shed light on the multiple factors leading to religious changes, local community conflict and urbanization in an under-developed society. This case study will be valuable for the construction of general theory on these issues.