Mayordomo

Mayordomo
Author: Stanley Crawford
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1993-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780826314451

This memoir of the author's experience as a mayordomo, or ditch boss, is the first record of the life of an acequia by a community participant.

Cultural Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology
Author: Stephen A. Grunlan
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1988
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780310363811

This important resource covers such topics as anthropology and missions; man, culture, and society; verbal and nonverbal communication; technology and economics; and anthropology and the Bible. It is designed for classroom use with diagrams, discussion questions, and suggested readings.

Acequia Culture

Acequia Culture
Author: José A. Rivera
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2005-01-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0826327206

Conflicts between Hispanic farmers and developers made for compelling reading in The Milagro Beanfield War, the famous novel of life in a northern New Mexico village in which tradition triumphs over modernity. But as cities grow and industries expand, are acequias, or community irrigation ditches, a wise and efficient use of water in the arid Southwest? José Rivera presents the contemporary case for the value of acequias and the communities they nurture in the river valleys of southern Colorado and New Mexico. Recognizing that "water is the lifeblood of the community," Rivera delineates an acequia culture based on a reciprocal relationship between irrigation and community. The acequia experience grows out of a conservation ethic and a tradition of sharing that should be recognized and preserved in an age of increasing competition for scarce water resources. "A worthwhile contribution to the future management of water resources."--Professor Michael C. Meyer

The Village Is Like a Wheel

The Village Is Like a Wheel
Author: Roger Magazine
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2012-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816599386

In this modern-day anthropological manifesto, Roger Magazine proposes a radical but commonsense change to the study of people whose understanding of the world differs substantially from our own. Specifically, it argues for a major shift in the prevailing approach to the study of rural highland peoples in Mexico. Using ethnographic material, Roger Magazine builds a convincing case that many of the discipline’s usual topics and approaches distract anthropologists from what is truly important to the people whose lives they study. While Western anthropologists have usually focused on the production of things, such as community, social structure, cultural practices, identities, and material goods—since this is what they see as the appropriate objective of productive action in their own lives—residents of rural highland communities in Mexico (among others) are primarily concerned with what Magazine calls the production of active subjectivity in other persons. According to Magazine, where Western anthropologists often assume that persons are individuals capable of acting on their own to produce things, rural highland Mexicans see persons as inherently interdependent and in need of others even to act. He utilizes the term “active subjectivity” to denote the fact that what they produce in others is not simply action but also a subjective state or attitude of willingness to perform the action. The author’s goals are to improve understandings of rural highland Mexicans’ lives and to contribute to a broader disciplinary effort aimed at revealing the cultural specificity or ethnocentricity of our supposedly universally applicable concepts and theories.

Catechizing Culture

Catechizing Culture
Author: Andrew Orta
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2004
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231130694

A groundbreaking study of the contemporary encounter between Catholic missionaries and Aymara Indians in highland Bolivia, this book is the first ethnography to focus both on the evangelizers and the evangelized. Elucidating the workings of that original global institution, the Catholic Church, Andrew Orta explores the pastoral shift away from liberation theology that dominated Latin American missionization up until the mid-1980s to the recent "theology of inculturation."

Contours of a Biblical Reception Theory

Contours of a Biblical Reception Theory
Author: Víctor Manuel Morales Vásquez
Publisher: V&R unipress GmbH
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2012
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 389971895X

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Chester/University of Liverpool, 2007.

Native American Spirituality

Native American Spirituality
Author: Lee Irwin
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0803206291

This volume offers a stimulating, multidisciplinary set of essays by noted Native and non-Native scholars that explore the problems and prospects of understanding and writing about Native American spirituality in the twenty-first century. Considerable attention is given to the appropriateness and value of different interpretive paradigms for Native religion, including both traditional religion and Native Christianity. The book also investigates the ethics of religious representation, issues of authenticity, the commodification of spirituality, and pedagogical practices. Of special interest is the role of dialogue in expressing and understanding Native American religious beliefs and practices. A final set of essays explores the power of and reactions to Native spirituality from a long-term, historical perspective.

Crafting Tradition

Crafting Tradition
Author: Michael Chibnik
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0292782667

Since the mid-1980s, whimsical, brightly colored wood carvings from the Mexican state of Oaxaca have found their way into gift shops and private homes across the United States and Europe, as Western consumers seek to connect with the authenticity and tradition represented by indigenous folk arts. Ironically, however, the Oaxacan wood carvings are not a traditional folk art. Invented in the mid-twentieth century by non-Indian Mexican artisans for the tourist market, their appeal flows as much from intercultural miscommunication as from their intrinsic artistic merit. In this beautifully illustrated book, Michael Chibnik offers the first in-depth look at the international trade in Oaxacan wood carvings, including their history, production, marketing, and cultural representations. Drawing on interviews he conducted in the carving communities and among wholesalers, retailers, and consumers, he follows the entire production and consumption cycle, from the harvesting of copal wood to the final purchase of the finished piece. Along the way, he describes how and why this "invented tradition" has been promoted as a "Zapotec Indian" craft and explores its similarities with other local crafts with longer histories. He also fully discusses the effects on local communities of participating in the global market, concluding that the trade in Oaxacan wood carvings is an almost paradigmatic case study of globalization.