Global Maya: Work and Ideology in Rural Guatemala (review)

Over the last decade, ethnographers have written an increasing number of economic analyses to explain how Guatemalans fit into the global economy. This, most likely, reflects three trends in Guatemalan-oriented ethnography—that scholars and Guatemalans are coming out from under the overwhelming weight of decades of political and civil strife to think about other problems; that ethnographers are renewing long-standing economic discussions that have characterized anthropological research in Guatemala since at least the 1930s; and that Guatemala offers an important site from which to engage debates about globalization's impacts on indigenous people, ethnicity, and development.

This book represents Goldín's twenty-eight-year ethnographic engagement with Maya economic practices, although it focuses primarily on the years from 1990 to 2007. The book is a bold analysis of the interrelationships among economic practices, ideology, and identity. Other studies on these themes focus on a particular town looking at a range of economic practices; still others address a particular economic activity (vending, production, agriculture) across a region. Goldín, however, conducted ethnographic research in five distinct regions in eight communities with Spanish, K'iche', and Kaqchikel speakers. She analyzes diverse economic actors and entities, including entrepreneurs, small-scale industrial and agricultural commodity producers, nontraditional producers of export crops, and wage laborers. As she acknowledges in the book's conclusion, she does not address artisanal production and there is little about markets, so those interested in her analyses of these economic activities should turn to her other publications.

The monograph to a great extent is a tour of economic theory from a critical perspective. Goldín converses with a broad range of economic theory, as well as with historical and ethnographic research that has been conducted in Guatemala over the last 80 years. She argues effectively that economic practice is linked to ideology and shows how their dialectical relationship results in some surprising changes in both. She uses oral histories to illustrate how some Mayan economic concepts have changed over time while others persist. Her discussion of socioeconomic class in Maya communities adds a nuanced understanding of how they perceive economic differentiation and explain successes and failures. She challenges scholarship that maintains that religion changes Mayan economic ideologies and practices, arguing convincingly that economic practices have the greatest impact on changes in economic ideology, not religion.

Goldín addresses a number of economic practices that relate to many countries of the Global South. The brief discussion about pacas—used clothing that is shipped to Guatemala, often in the guise of humanitarian aid—shows how this practice has served to devalue local textile products. She analyzes how migration does not necessarily lead to economic success for Mayas and can actually contribute to negative social consequences. She also addresses some negative impacts of the post-peace period (after 1996) in Guatemala, in which demilitarization and economic development has opened niches for maras (violent gangs) to extort money from factory workers who leave and return from their rural, isolated homes in the dark with little means to protect themselves.

It is because of her long-term ethnographic engagement and experience in the regions studied that Goldín is able to document and explain how and why people's economic ideologies change in some cases and stay the same in others. And while this book may be considered a specialized monograph, it is a longitudinal, multi-sided ethnography that is accessible and well argued.