{"id":3807,"date":"2009-12-12T20:36:01","date_gmt":"2009-12-12T20:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=3807"},"modified":"2013-02-09T03:25:25","modified_gmt":"2013-02-09T03:25:25","slug":"maya-ethnolinguistic-identity-violence-cultural-rights-and-modernity-in-highland-guatemala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=3807","title":{"rendered":"Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity: Violence, Cultural Rights, and Modernity in Highland Guatemala"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity: Violence, Cultural Rights, and Modernity in Highland Guatemala<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

University of Arizona Press
\n<\/a>2010
\n192 pages
\n6.0 x 9.0
\nCloth ISBN: 978-0-8165-2767-0<\/p>\n

Brigittine M. French<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
\nGrinnell College<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

In this valuable book, ethnographer and anthropologist Brigittine French mobilizes new critical-theoretical perspectives in linguistic anthropology, applying them to the politically charged context of contemporary Guatemala. Beginning with an examination of the \u201cnationalist project\u201d that has been ongoing since the end of the colonial period, French interrogates the \u201cGuatemalan\/indigenous binary.\u201d In Guatemala, \u201cLadino<\/a>\u201d refers to the Spanish-speaking minority of the population, who are of mixed European, usually Spanish, and indigenous ancestry; \u201cIndian\u201d is understood to mean the majority of Guatemala\u2019s population, who speak one of the twenty-one languages in the Maya linguistic groups<\/a> of the country, although levels of bilingualism are very high among most Maya<\/a> communities. As French shows, the Guatemalan state has actively promoted a racialized, essentialized notion of \u201cIndians\u201d as an undifferentiated, inherently inferior group that has stood stubbornly in the way of national progress, unity, and development\u2014which are, implicitly, the goals of \u201ctrue Guatemalans\u201d (that is, Ladinos).<\/p>\n

French shows, with useful examples, how constructions of language and collective identity are in fact strategies undertaken to serve the goals of institutions (including the government, the military, the educational system, and the church) and social actors (including linguists, scholars, and activists). But by incorporating in-depth fieldwork with groups that speak Kaqchikel<\/a> and K\u2019iche\u2019<\/a> along with analyses of Spanish-language discourses, Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity<\/em> also shows how some individuals in urban, bilingual Indian communities have disrupted the essentializing projects of multiculturalism. And by focusing on ideologies of language, the author is able to explicitly link linguistic forms and functions with larger issues of consciousness, gender politics, social positions, and the forging of hegemonic power relations.<\/p>\n

Read an excerpt here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity: Violence, Cultural Rights, and Modernity in Highland Guatemala University of Arizona Press 2010 192 pages 6.0 x 9.0 Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8165-2767-0 Brigittine M. French, Assistant Professor of Anthropology Grinnell College In this valuable book, ethnographer and anthropologist Brigittine French mobilizes new critical-theoretical perspectives in linguistic anthropology, applying them to the politically charged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,11,21,125,8,17,26,394],"tags":[1488,1489,1486],"class_list":["post-3807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-books","category-latincarib","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-politics","category-socialscience","tag-brigittine-m-french","tag-guatemala","tag-university-of-arizona-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}