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In the Museum of Maya Culture: Touring Chichen Itza
Author(s): Quetzil E. Castaneda (Author)
- Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr
- Publication Date: January 1, 1996
- Language: English
- Print length: 336 pages
- ISBN-10: 0816626731
- ISBN-13: 9780816626731
Book Description
Castaneda, Quetzil
E.In the museum of Maya culture
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-5 166-2672-3 (hc)
ISBN 0-8166-2673-1 (pb)
1. Chichen Itza Site (Mexico) 2. Piste (Mexico) 3. Mayas-Ethnic
identity. 4. Mayas-Antiquities. 5. Ethnology-Mexico-Yucatan
(State) 6. Tourist trade-Mexico-Yucatan (State)
F1435.1.CSC37 1996
972l.65
Quetzil E. Castaneda.I. Title.- dc20 96-4583
E.In the museum of Maya culture
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-5 166-2672-3 (hc)
ISBN 0-8166-2673-1 (pb)
1. Chichen Itza Site (Mexico) 2. Piste (Mexico) 3. Mayas-Ethnic
identity. 4. Mayas-Antiquities. 5. Ethnology-Mexico-Yucatan
(State) 6. Tourist trade-Mexico-Yucatan (State)
F1435.1.CSC37 1996
972l.65
Quetzil E. Castaneda.I. Title.- dc20 96-4583
Editorial Reviews
Review
“…a cleverly written, deeply probing “archaeology” of the physical, rhetorical, textual, symbolic, and cultural creation of one of Mexico’s premier archaeological and tourist sites.” Lynn Stephen
“This historical ethnography provides a refreshing perspective on the strategic relationships among anthropology, tourism, and Maya culture(s)…is truly a brilliant endeavor, one that should spark debate for years to come.” James Todd
“Castañeda writes one of the most honest and searching descriptions of the power relations inherent in carrying out ethnography… is a rich, multifaceted book that will appeal to a wide range of readers.”
–L. Stephen
From the Inside Flap
In this innovative study, Castaneda argues that notions of “impact,” whether of tourism or of anthropology, are inadequate to comprehend the ways in which Maya culture is known, represented, and experienced in the everyday worlds of tourism, anthropology, and Maya society. Instead of “impact,” Castaneda contends that the invention of the Maya as a culture derives from the historical complicities between Maya peoples, anthropological practices, tourist businesses, regional politics, nation building, New Age spiritualists, and international relations between Mexico and the United States.
From the Back Cover
“This extraordinary book offers a new way to do and to write anthropology, and indeed a new way to read it. Castaiieda employs the best of recentpostmodern theory and writing conventions to put the text in multiple contexts that he explores by intensive ethnographic fieldwork in Yucatan and in other fields of power and meaning in which anthropology and anthropologists are relativized along with Mayans and tourists, and the author himself. The results are a pathbreaking account of how anthropology constructs and quiteliterally reconstructs its subjects and itself.” — Michael Kearney, University California Riverside.
“In the Museum of Maya Culture interrogates the science and the art ofethnography. At Chichen Itza, Castaneda raises the ethnographic mirror to field work as a privileged way of knowing and calls on anthropologists toconfront the transnationalism inherent in their portrayals of Mayan culture. His analysis offers a fresh look at the ‘invention’ of culture and the politics of science and development.” — Kay Warren, Princeton University
“In the Museum of Maya Culture interrogates the science and the art ofethnography. At Chichen Itza, Castaneda raises the ethnographic mirror to field work as a privileged way of knowing and calls on anthropologists toconfront the transnationalism inherent in their portrayals of Mayan culture. His analysis offers a fresh look at the ‘invention’ of culture and the politics of science and development.” — Kay Warren, Princeton University
About the Author
Quetzil E. Castañeda (Ph.D. 1991, Anthropology University at Albany, SUNY) works on the intersections of tourism, anthropology, archaeology, indigenous communities, and the state. His book In the Museum of Maya Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1996) is a landmark in the study of archaeological heritage tourism and the ethnography of archaeology. With Jeff Himpele (Princeton), he co-produced the first ethnographic film treatments of New Age spiritualism, Incidents of Travel in Chichén Itzá, as expressed in pilgrimage tourism to Maya heritage sites. He has also collaborated with historians, sociologists, art historians, and archaeologists in research and publications on anthropology of art, Indigenous identity politics, history of archaeology. In the 1990s Castañeda developed an alternative theory and practice of experimental ethnography in the context of research and training field school program in the communities near Chichén Itzá, México. He continues to pioneer innovative ethnography methods and theoretical conceptions of fieldwork as in his current development of ethnographic methods tailored for use in and as part of archaeological research. In 2003, Castañeda founded the independent, non-degree anthropology training program, Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology (osea-cite.org). OSEA is a research and teaching institute developing community action initiatives. For publications visit Castaneda’s profile on academica.edu. Castañeda’s areas of expertise include Latin America, Mesoamerica, and México, the politics of heritage, tourism studies, sociopolitical histories of anthropology and archaeology, and the theoretical and practical development of new forms of ethnography, including the development of ethnographic methods for archaeology. At Indiana University, Castaneda is a lecturer in History, Latino Studies, Latin America and Caribbean Studies and Research Associate in Anthropology.
