Watching Lacandon Maya Lives

(Hardback, Second Edition)

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Although romanticized as the last of the ancient Maya living isolated in the forest, several generations of the Lacandon Maya have had their lives shaped by the international oil economy, tourism, and political unrest.

Watching Lacandon Maya Lives is an examination of dramatic cultural changes in a Maya rainforest farming community over the last forty years, including changes to their families, industries, religion, health and healing practices, and gender roles. The book contains several discussions of anthropological theory in accessible, jargon-free language, including how the use of different theoretical perspectives impacts an ethnographers fieldwork experience. While relating his own mishaps, experiences of community strife, and conflicts, Jon McGee encourages students to shed the romantic veil through which ethnographies are usually viewed and think more deeply about how events in our own lives influence how we understand the behavior of people around us.

New to the Second Edition:
Revised Introduction incorporates the authors recent work with the Lacandon and discussions of anthropological writing, culture theory, and how events in the authors personal life have changed his approach to anthropological fieldwork.Revised chapter, Finding an Income in the Lacandon Jungle focuses on families who have shifted from a subsistence farming economy to earning revenue by renting facilities to tourists, owning small community stores, working as hired labor for archaeologists, or make use of a variety of government rural aid programs created in the last two decades (Chapter 5).New chapter, Forty Years Among the Lacandon: Some Lessons Learned, discusses what the authors 40 years of experience as an ethnographer has taught him about the discipline of anthropology and the concept of culture (Chapter 8)

Reviews

Watching Lacandon Maya Lives presents a pithy account of the northern Lacandones written from the heart of a scholar who demystifies truths of a hitherto enigmatic people, candidly and unapologetically inserting himself into the narrative. As such, the book should appeal to the general reader and anyone else who is captivated by the Mayans past and present. -- Suzanne Cook, University of Victoria
Watching Lacandn Lives highlights the lucid observations that Jon McGee gleaned from decades of research among Lacandn Maya families in Mexicos tropical rainforest. Through his perceptive description of continuing change in Lacandn communitiesand within himselfhe has produced a book filled with friendship, insight, and authenticity. -- James D. Nations, author of Lacandn Maya: The Language and Environment
After the exceptional first edition of Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, anthropologist Jon McGee returns with an even more enduring and insightful text reflecting on his forty years of ethnographic work in a Lacandan community. In this engaging work, readers are taken on a journey through the lives of three generations of one large extended family in the community of Nah and through the authors personal, informal-yet-academically driven writing style, witness the transformative social change in one indigenous culture. From an economy based upon swidden horticulture to one based upon a mixed economy of tourism and government aid, this text offers an insightful view on how economic changes can have sweeping ramifications felt over time, and on multiple levels of cultural practice. McGee draws upon his ethnographic field experience and invites readers in to discover, as he did, how it is that who we are, what we experience, informs how we understand and interact those with whom we share the world. -- Bonnie Hewlett, Washington State University
McGee's second edition to Watching Lacandon Maya Lives provides an honest and valuable insight into Lacandon lifeways from the past to the present. Through the description of his personal experience among three generations of one extended family in a Lacandon village, the author shows how the natives adapted to cultural and environmental changes, underlining the importance of extensive anthropological field work and personal commitment. -- Alice Balsanelli, Centro de Estudios Mayas of Mexico City
In this new edition, McGee invites readers to consider the nature of social change as he reflects on more than 40 years of fieldwork among Lacandon Maya families. Ethnographically driven, theoretically informed, and accessibly written, the text offers a welcome update to an anthropological classic. -- Ruth Gomberg-Muoz, Loyola University Chicago
Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, 2e is the best detailed treatise of Northern Lacandon Maya domestic life and social interaction in rural Chiapas, Mexico to date. McGees long-term and thoughtful insights on field research, cultural interpretations, gender issues, social change, and peoples individual perspectives and actions make Watching Lacandon Maya Lives anthropologically significant. I very much recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about Lacandon Maya society and the discipline of anthropology. -- Joel W. Palka, Arizona State University
The revised edition of Watching Lacandon Maya Lives will be useful to scholars and students as an honest introduction to the realities of anthropological fieldwork: the early awkwardness of entering a new environment and living among people who hold a different vision of the universe and the delight, frustration, and self-doubts that come from watching other peoples lives and trying to understand why they act the way they do. Most importantly, McGee describes how he, as an anthropologist and an individual, has reacted to the lessons of field research and how those lessons have affected his work and life. In highlighting the changes he has witnessed during four decades of watching Lacandn Maya lives, and in acknowledging the changes he has observed in himself, McGee has brought us a book filled with insight, understanding, and authenticity. * Indigenous Religious Traditions *

Author Bio

Reece Jon McGee is a professor of Anthropology at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. He is the author of numerous works on the Lacandon including Life, Ritual and Religion Among the Lacandon Maya and is also the coauthor of the texts Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History (Rowman and Littlefield), Sacred Realms: Essays in Religious Practices, Beliefs and Culture (Oxford University Press), and Introduction to Cultural Anthropology: An Interactive Approach (National Social Science Press). McGee is also the managing editor for Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia (Sage Publishing Company).