"In Watching Lacandon Maya Lives, the author follows three generations of one Lacandon Maya family. Readers track the subjects' lives as they shift through events such as marriage, parenthood, and religious conversion, all set against a backdrop of increased tourism, road construction, and the murders of two people in the community. This book encompasses both ethnography and a critique of ethnographic writing. At one level, the book is about social, agricultural, technological, and religious changes that have occurred in a Lacandon Maya community in Mexico. At a second level, the book is a critique of those who invented a Utopian picture of a "traditional" Lacandon past that never really existed. For cultural anthropologists, or anyone interested in learning more about this Mayan culture"--
Part 1. Historical Foundations of Anthropological Theory. Nineteenth-century evolutionism: Herbert Spencer, The social organism (1860) ; Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, The science of culture (1871) ; Lewis Henry Morgan, Ethnical periods (1877) ; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Feuerbach : opposition of the materialist and idealist outlook (1846) -- The foundations of sociological thought: Émile Durkheim, What is a social fact? (1895) ; Marcel Mauss, Extracts from The gift (1925) ; Max Weber, Class, status, party (1922) -- Part 2. Culture Theory in the Early Twentieth Century. The Boasians: Franz Boas, The methods of ethnology (1920) ; A.L. Kroeber, On the principle of order in civilization as exemplified by changes of fashion (1919) ; Ruth Benedict, The science of custom : the bearing of anthropology on contemporary thought (1929) ; Margaret Mead, Introduction to coming of age in Samoa (1928) ; Zora Neale Hurston, Of mules and men, chapter IV (1935) ; Benjamin L. Whorf, The relation of habitual thought and behavior to language (1941) -- Functionalism: Bronislaw Malinowski, The essentials of the Kula (1922) ; A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, On joking relationships (1940) -- Part 3. Theory at Mid-century: The reemergence of evolutionary thought: Leslie White, Energy and the evolution of culture (1943) ; Julian Steward, The patrilineal band (1955) -- Neomaterialism: Marvin Harris, The cultural ecology of India's sacred cattle (1966) ; Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual regulation of environmental relations among a New Guinea people (1967) -- Structure, language, and cognition: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Four Winnebago myths : a structural sketch (1960) ; James Spradley, A bucket full of tramps (1970) -- Part 4. Late-Twentieth-Century Developments: Sociobiology and behavioral ecology: Edward O. Wilson, The morality of the gene (1975) ; Rebecca Bliege Bird, Eric Alden Smith, and Douglas W. Bird, The hunting handicap: costly signaling in human foraging strategies (2001) -- Feminist anthropology: Sally Slocum, Woman the gatherer : male bias in anthropology (1975) ; Eleanor Leacock, Interpreting the origins of gender inequality : conceptual and historical problems (1983) -- Symbolic and interpretive anthropology: Mary Douglas, External boundaries (1966) ; Victor Turner, Symbols in Ndembu ritual (1967) ; Clifford Geertz, Deep play : notes on the Balinese Cockfight (1972) -- French social thought: postmodernism and practice: Pierre Bourdieu, Structures, habitus, practices (1980) ; Michel Foucault, The incitement to discourse (1976) -- Post modernism: Renato Rosaldo, Grief and a headhunter's rage (1989) ; Allan Hanson, The making of the Maori : culture invention and its logic (1989) -- Globalization: Eric R. Wolf, Facing power-old insights, new questions (1990) ; Arjun Appadurai, Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy (1990) ; Theodore C. Bestor, Kaiten-zushi and Konbini: Japanese food culture in the age of mechanical reproduction (2006) -- Part 5. Trends in Contemporary Anthropology. Gender: Lila Abu-Lughod, A tale of two pregnancies (1995) ; Tom Boellstorff, The emergence of political homophobia in Indonesia: masculinity and national belonging (2004) ; Lynn Kwiatkowski, Feminist anthropology: approaching domestic violence in northern Việt Nam (2016) -- Agency and Structure: Philippe Bourgois, From Jíbaro to crack dealer : confronting the restructuring of capitalism in el barrio (1995) ; Sherry Ortner, Power and projects : reflections on agency (2006) ; Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Willing to work : agency and vulnerability in an undocumented immigrant network (2010) -- The Anthropology of the Good: Veena Das, Engaging the life of the other : love and everyday life (2010) ; Cheryl Mattingly, Luck, friendship, and the narrative self (2014).
