http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/201/4359/899.2.full.pdf

Phenomenology of perception.

/pdf/modern-social-imaginaries-3bxtlxvdjy.pdf

Modern Social Imaginaries

http://www.reteccp.org/biblioteca/dossier/handy.pdf

Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies

From climate change, deforestation, and depletion of fossil fuels to overexploited fisheries, species extinction, and poisons in our food and water, our society is unsustainable and it is getting worse fast. Many advocate that overcoming these problems requires the development of systems thinking. We have long been told that the unsustainability of our society arises because we treat the world as unlimited and problems unconnected when we live on a finite “spaceship Earth” in which “there is no away” and “everything is connected to everything else.” The challenge lies in moving from slogans to specific tools and processes that help us understand complexity, design better policies, facilitate individual and organizational learning, and catalyze the technical, economic, social, political, and personal changes we need to create a sustainable society. Here I outline a design for a systems science of sustainability that rises to this challenge. Where the dynamics of complex systems are conditioned by multiple feedbacks, time delays, accumulations, and nonlinearities, our mental models generally ignore these elements of dynamic complexity; where the consequences of our actions spill out across time and space and across disciplinary boundaries, our universities, corporations, and governments are organized in silos that focus on the short term and fragment knowledge. I describe how sustainability research, teaching, and engagement with the policy process can be organized to provide scientifically grounded, reliable knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries, that engages multiple stakeholders, that grapples with unavoidable issues of ethics, values, and purpose, and that leads to action.

http://jsterman.scripts.mit.edu/docs/Sterman%202011%20Sustaining%20Sustainability[1].pdf

Sustaining Sustainability: Creating a Systems Science in a Fragmented Academy and Polarized World

Interest in the lowland Maya collapse is stronger than ever, and there are now hundreds of studies that focus on the era from approximately A.D. 750 to A.D. 1050. In the past, scholars have tended to generalize explanations of the collapse from individual sites and regions to the lowlands as a whole. More recent approaches stress the great diversity of changes that occurred across the lowlands during the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods. Thus, there is now a consensus that Maya civilization as a whole did not collapse, although many zones did experience profound change.

/pdf/what-maya-collapse-terminal-classic-variation-in-the-maya-306wx50t1h.pdf

What Maya Collapse? Terminal Classic Variation in the Maya Lowlands

Part I: Introduction Part II: Defining the Child Part III: Childhood in Practice Part IV: Sacrifice, Violence and the Sanctity of Children Part V: Conclusion.

The social experience of childhood in ancient Mesoamerica

The Pakbeh Regional Economy Program centered at the ancient Maya trading center of Chunchucmil in Yucatan, Mexico, shifted research priorities from a processual program aimed at recovering indicators of ancient ethnic identification to a more community-based program that combines processual methodologies with a local desire for community-based tourism. Initial research goals concerned the elucidation of how a trading economy affected other aspects of the social life of ancient Chunchucmil. As members of the two Yucatec Maya communities on either side of the ruins became more interested in the archaeological research, and as archaeologists grappled with the rise of tourism in Yucatan, a dialogue about who controls and benefits from the production of archaeological knowledge ensued. Currently the project is involved in collaborative development of a 'living museum' where members of local communities and archaeologists will mutually recreate an ancient Maya household on the archaeological site. Some programmatic suggestions for further collaboration between academic archaeologists and local descendant communities in the Maya area are offered.

/pdf/conversations-about-the-production-of-archaeological-2tbfrz65ad.pdf

Conversations about the production of archaeological knowledge and community museums at Chunchucmil and Kochol, Yucatán, México

In this paper we explore how Maya identities have been (mis)represented in the context of heritage tourism across the Mundo Maya and underscore the cultural heterogeneity and historical diversity of Maya speaking people. Our focus is the Yucatan peninsula, where we look at terms used to define social categories and ethnic groups through time. We then examine how tourism can affect notions of self-identify and self-ascription, by presenting our first-hand experience as archaeologists dealing with issues of Maya identity and heritage claims in the context of archaeological tourism development at the sites of Chunchucmil and Yaxuna, Yucatan. We propose the use of a ‘relational approach’ to identify formation processes in contrast to the more common genealogical approach. In addition, we believe that with the help of applied anthropologists archaeologists can be advocates for local communities and mediators among multiple stakeholders in situations where these communities are poised to benefit from tourism.

/pdf/tourism-in-the-mundo-maya-inventions-and-mis-representations-3xg99xozhr.pdf

Tourism in the Mundo Maya: Inventions and (Mis)Representations of Maya Identities and Heritage

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 1. Women and Gender in the Ancient Maya World Chapter 3 2. Gender and Mayan Farming: Chan Noohol, Belize Chapter 4 3. Gender Divisions of Labor and Lowland Terrace Agriculture Chapter 5 4. Spindle Whorls: Household Specialization at Ceren Chapter 6 5. Death Became Her: Imagery of Female Power from Yaxuna Burials Chapter 7 6. Engendering a Dynasty: A Royal Woman in the Margarita Tomb, Copan Chapter 8 7. Lady K'awil, Goddess O, and Maya Warfare Chapter 9 8. Women in Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Texts Chapter 10 9. Women in the Hieroglyphic Inscriptions of Chichen Itza Chapter 11 10. Women-Men (and Men-Women): Classic Maya Rulers and the Third Gender Chapter 12 11. Representations of Women in Postclassic and Colonial Maya Literature and Art Chapter 13 12. Encountering Maya Women Chapter 14 Index Chapter 15 About the Authors

Ancient Maya women

Rome fell, just like the Alamo and the Berlin Wall. Constantinople fell, and so did the Soviet Union. Adam fell, when he ate forbidden fruit. In The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse, David Webster argues Classic Maya civilization took a similar tumble, and his choice of title is not the only place Webster makes clear reference to the moral implications and ambiguities of the fall of Rome or Adam. Webster succeeds at demonstrating the infamous \"Maya Collapse\" was not universal or uni-causal but the result of local processes such as environmental exploitation and the failure of kingship, among other causes. But the reader is left wondering why the terms \"collapse\" and \"fall\" are still used today to describe complex processes of cultural evolution or transformation. As a Mayanist who works primarily in the northern lowlands of Yucatan, perhaps I've never fully appreciated how crucially important the \"collapse\" is to my colleagues working a few hundred kilometers to the south. After all, while there is population decline and reorganization during the so called \"Terminal\" Classic period in the north, there is also revitalization and the invention of new sociopolitical forms at places like Chichen Itza. But I was nonetheless anxious to read Webster's definition of the \"collapse\" and his explanation of its significance, perhaps in order to better appreciate this less than comprehensive catastrophe. Through ten chapters of well-written prose, Webster demonstrates conclusively that there is no single explanation for the collapse of Classic Maya civilization (despite continued efforts to find one) and that a cluster of factors including local political history and environmental resources dictated how and to what degree the collapse manifested at any given Maya site. In one of the best chapters, Webster draws upon substantial breadth of knowledge to synthesize data from four major southern regions: urban Tikal, the small but highly literate western cities centered around Dos Pilas, fortified Becan, and (in perhaps one of the most useful sections of the book) the major eastern centers of the Belize Valley. This chapter makes it abundantly clear that the timing of the collapse, the specific nature of what collapsed (elite institutions vs. entire populations), and even the explanation of these processes, need to be regionally specific. A subsequent chapter on Copan adheres predictably to Webster's earlier writing on this city, and does not integrate the various viewpoints on the end of Classic Copan. This begs the question—What precisely is the socalled \"Maya collapse\"? Webster chronicles the history of the concept, from initial comments of Spanish chroniclers to the emergence of the term in the days of Carnegie Institution sponsored research. He describes how Sylvanus G. Morley charted the disappearance of long count dates in the eighth century, and the subsequent interpretation of these data by J. E. S. Thompson as a period of 100 years of abandonment and collapse. But as data have accumulated since Morley's work in the 1940s, the \"collapse\" has become less convincing as a universal explanation for the abandonment of cities. Certainly Maya people didn't disappear, and some Classic period cities continued to be occupied well into the tenth through twelfth centuries (Lamanai and Mayapan are both discussed briefly). The time is right for a reappraisal of this concept, and a redefinition of what in fact occurred.

The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse. David Webster. Thames & Hudson, London, 2002. 368 pp., maps, photos, illus., $34.95 (cloth).

Traci Ardren

Papers

The social experience of childhood in ancient Mesoamerica

Conversations about the production of archaeological knowledge and community museums at Chunchucmil and Kochol, Yucatán, México

Tourism in the Mundo Maya: Inventions and (Mis)Representations of Maya Identities and Heritage

Ancient Maya women

The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse. David Webster. Thames & Hudson, London, 2002. 368 pp., maps, photos, illus., $34.95 (cloth).