Rights, Resources, Culture, and Conservation in the Land of the Maya PDF Download

Author: Betty Bernice Faust
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Essays alerting readers to issues of human rights and political ecology vital for understanding culture and conservation in Maya communities.

Author: B. Baumgarten
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137385790
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
This volume introduces and compares different concepts of culture in social movement research. It assesses their advantages and shortcomings, drawing links to anthropology, discourse analysis, sociology of emotions, narration, spatial theory, and others. Each contribution's approach is illustrated with recent cases of mobilization.

Author: Leslie Main Johnson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857456326
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Although anthropologists and cultural geographers have explored "place" in various senses, little cross-cultural examination of "kinds of place," or ecotopes, has been presented from an ethno-ecological perspective. In this volume, indigenous and local understandings of landscape are investigated in order to better understand how human communities relate to their terrestrial and aquatic resources. The contributors go beyond the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) literature and offer valuable insights on ecology and on land and resources management, emphasizing the perception of landscape above the level of species and their folk classification. Focusing on the ways traditional people perceive and manage land and biotic resources within diverse regional and cultural settings, the contributors address theoretical issues and present case studies from North America, Mexico, Amazonia, tropical Asia, Africa and Europe.

Author: Sarah R. Taylor
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607327724
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
On Being Maya and Getting By is an ethnographic study of the two Ek’Balams—a notable archaeological site and adjacent village—of the Yucatán Peninsula. When the archaeological site became a tourist destination, the village became the location of a community-based tourism development project funded by the Mexican government. Overt displays of heritage and a connection to Maya antiquity became important and profitable for the modern Maya villagers. Residents of Ek’Balam are now living in a complex ecosystem of natural and cultural resources where the notion and act of “being Maya” is deeply intertwined with economic development. The book explores how Ek’Balam villagers negotiate and maneuver through a web of social programs, tourists, volunteers, and expectations while living their daily lives. Focusing on the active processes in which residents choose to participate, author Sarah R. Taylor provides insights into how the ideological conflicts surrounding economic development play out in the negotiations between internal community politics and external social actors. The conflicts implicit to conceptions of “community” as a target for development are made explicit through the systematic questioning of what exactly it means to be a member of a local, indigenous, or sustainable community in the process of being developed. On Being Maya and Getting By is a rich description of how one community is actively negotiating with tourism and development and also a call for a more complex analysis of how rural villages are connected to greater urban, national, and global forces.

Author: Lisa Benton-Short
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136244948
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Cities and Nature connects environmental processes with social and political actions. The book reconnects science and social science to demonstrate how the city is part of the environment and how it is subject to environmental constraints and opportunities. This second edition has been extensively revised and updated with in-depth examination of theory and critical themes. Greater discussion is given to urbanization trends and megacities; the post-industrial city and global economic changes; developing cities and slums; urban political ecology; the role of the city in climate change; and sustainability. The book explores the historical relationship between cities and nature, contemporary challenges to this relationship, and attempts taken to create more sustainable cities. The historical context situates urban development and its impact on the environment, and in turn the environmental impact on people in cities. This provides a foundation from which to understand contemporary issues, such as urban political ecology, hazards and disasters, water quality and supply, air pollution and climate change. The book then considers sustainability and how it has been informed by different theoretical approaches. Issues of environmental justice and the role of gender and race are explored. The final chapter examines the ways in which cities are practicing sustainability, from light "greening" efforts such as planting trees, to more comprehensive sustainability plans that integrate the multiple dimensions of sustainability. The text contains case studies from around the globe, with many drawn from cities in the developing world, as well as reviews of recent research, updated and expanded further reading to highlight relevant films, websites and journal articles. This book is an asset to students and researchers in geography, environmental studies, urban studies and planning and sustainability.

Author: William Leonard Fash
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780884023449
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The Art of Urbanism explores how the royal courts of powerful Mesoamerican centers represented their kingdoms in architectural, iconographic, and cosmological terms. Through an investigation of the ecological contexts and environmental opportunities of urban centers, the contributors consider how ancient Mesoamerican cities defined themselves and reflected upon their physicalâe"and metaphysicalâe"place via their built environment. Themes in the volume include the ways in which a kingdomâe(tm)s public monuments were fashioned to reflect geographic space, patron gods, and mythology, and how the Olmec, Maya, Mexica, Zapotecs, and others sought to center their world through architectural monuments and public art. This collection of papers addresses how communities leveraged their environment and built upon their cultural and historical roots as well as the ways that the performance of calendrical rituals and other public events tied individuals and communities to both urban centers and hinterlands. Twenty-three scholars from archaeology, anthropology, art history, and religious studies contribute new data and new perspectives to the understanding of ancient Mesoamericansâe(tm) own view of their spectacular urban and ritual centers.

Author: E N Anderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315432471
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
How can cultural forms motivate people to care about their environment? While important scientific data about ecosystems is mushrooming, E. N. Anderson argues in this powerful new book that putting effective conservation into practice depends primarily on social solidarity and emotional factors. Marshaling decades of research on cultures across several continents, he shows how societies have been more or less successful in sustainably managing their environments based on collective engagements such as religion, art, song, myth, and story. This provocative and deeply felt book by a leading writer and scholar in human ecology and anthropology will be read and debated widely for years to come.

Author: Peter Fibiger Bang
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197532748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume I: The Imperial Experience is dedicated to synthesis and comparison. Following a comprehensive theoretical survey and bold world history synthesis, fifteen chapters analyze and explore the multifaceted experience of empire across cultures and through the ages. The broad range of perspectives includes: scale, world systems and geopolitics, military organization, political economy and elite formation, monumental display, law, mapping and registering, religion, literature, the politics of difference, resistance, energy transfers, ecology, memories, and the decline of empires. This broad set of topics is united by the central theme of power, examined under four headings: systems of power, cultures of power, disparities of power, and memory and decline. Taken together, these chapters offer a comprehensive and unique view of the imperial experience in world history.

Author: José E. Martínez-Reyes
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816534624
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Forests are alive, filled with rich, biologically complex life forms and the interrelationships of multiple species and materials. Vulnerable to a host of changing conditions in this global era, forests are in peril as never before. New markets in carbon and environmental services attract speculators. In the name of conservation, such speculators attempt to undermine local land control in these desirable areas. Moral Ecology of a Forest provides an ethnographic account of conservation politics, particularly the conflict between Western conservation and Mayan ontological ecology. The difficult interactions of the Maya of central Quintana Roo, Mexico, for example, or the Mayan communities of the Sain Ka’an Biosphere, demonstrate the clashing interests with Western biodiversity conservation initiatives. The conflicts within the forest of Quintana Roo represent the outcome of nature in this global era, where the forces of land grabbing, conservation promotion and organizations, and capitalism vie for control of forests and land. Forests pose living questions. In addition to the ever-thrilling biology of interdependent species, forests raise questions in the sphere of political economy, and thus raise cultural and moral questions. The economic aspects focus on the power dynamics and ideological perspectives over who controls, uses, exploits, or preserves those life forms and landscapes. The cultural and moral issues focus on the symbolic meanings, forms of knowledge, and obligations that people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and classes have constructed in relation to their lands. The Maya Forest of Quintana Roo is a historically disputed place in which these three questions come together.

Author: E. N. Anderson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The world environmental and social justice crises brought on by our high-throughput global economy can be ameliorated only if we adapt the pragmatic ethics of social cohesion in traditional societies to the modern world. Traditional societies have much to teach the modern world about conservation and environmental management. The Pursuit of Ecotopia: Lessons from Indigenous and Traditional Societies for the Human Ecology of Our Modern World argues that the root of our environmental crisis is that we have not devised modern ways to induce people with diverse interests to think and act cooperatively to secure shared interests. We take a short-term, narrow view of resource management and ethical conduct instead of a long-term, global view of "ecotopia"—a conception in which the destructive corollaries of consumerism are curbed by emotionally grounded policies and ethics of sustainability, social justice, and stewardship. In this controversial and brilliantly written book, author E. N. Anderson maintains that the world can escape impending ecological disaster only by embracing a political and ethical transformation that will imbue modern societies with the same shared sense of emotional rationality practiced by traditional cultures. He draws lessons from ecologically successful traditional societies—and also draws cautionary tales from traditional societies that have responded maladaptively to disruption and failed ecologically as a result.