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

该项目支持纽约城市大学文化人类学专业学生的学位论文研究。这名学生将研究导致墨西哥南部恰帕斯州一些玛雅印第安人被驱逐出传统社区的因素。学生将衡量在这个社区中，改变宗教信仰、政治冲突、贫困、边缘化、疾病和酗酒作为宗教皈依原因的影响。结合对重新定居的印第安人社区的调查，对他们的原籍社区和居住地社区的民族志研究，学生将估计导致宗教皈依的独特因素的优势，以及与驱逐中的政治派别主义相比，皈依的重要性。这项研究很重要，因为它将增加我们对世界上这一重要领域的专业知识，并阐明在不发达社会中导致宗教变化、当地社区冲突和城市化的多种因素。这一案例研究将对这些问题的一般理论的构建有价值。

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.