Embodying Ecological Heritage in a Maya Community

Kristina Baines is assistant professor at Guttman Community College, CUNY and an applied social anthropologist.

This short book describes concepts of health, wellness, and illness among the Mopan Maya of Belize and their behavior in response to health challenges. They are in transition from a local, tradition-based society to a world of international biomedicine, Evangelical churches, public schools (which do not teach necessary farming and forest skills), wage work, chemical fertilizers, and too much sugar and white flour. Diabetes and other illnesses come with new lifeways, but infectious disease and accidents can now be treated at modern clinics. Bush medicine is still practiced. Beliefs that illness comes from sudden cold (especially cold water), 'bad winds,' fright, and similar causes are still universal. Local foods are known to be more healthful than purchased ones, with tortillas best. Agriculture, especially growing maize, is the proper activity; men raise it, and women process it into tortillas. Anthropologist Baines’s theoretical perspective combines phenomenology, cognitive anthropology, and ethnography of practice to focus on embodied environmental knowledge, especially knowledge of environmental effects on health and how to eat right and act right to maintain health in a changing world. For anyone interested in Native American medical knowledge or in health and development in rural areas. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

• List of FiguresChapter 1. Beginning at the End: “he is nearly dead”Chapter 2. The Mopan Maya in Belize: “They do it different across”Chapter 3. Nutrition as Tradition: “It’s what Indian people eat”Chapter 4. Bodies at Work, Bodies at Rest: “we boss ourselves”Chapter 5. Educating Well: “they are lazy to learn it now”Chapter 6. Changing Spaces, Changing Faces: “I could not live where there is no jippy jappa”Chapter 7. Alone, Together: “you are not afraid?”Chapter 8. Ending at the Beginning: “the past is the future”ReferencesAbout the Author