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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
All In The Junkab'al: The House In Q'Eqchi' Society, Ashley Kistler
All In The Junkab'al: The House In Q'Eqchi' Society, Ashley Kistler
Faculty Publications
Recent studies examine how individuals create kinship through economic transactions, ritual, and religion. This paper explores how Q’eqchi’ women in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala generate the logics of kinship through marketing. In Chamelco, the Q’eqchi’ construct kinship through the local category of the junkab’al, ‘family’, literally ‘one home’. Members of Q’eqchi’ junkab’als create the substance of kinship through shared residence and participation in daily life. Chamelco’s women use marketing to establish kinship, incorporating market employees into their junkab’als. Since market positions have been passed down in junkab’als for generations and constitute the family estate, market women seek heirs to perpetuate …
The House In The Market: How Q’Eqchi’ Market Women Convert Money And Commodities Into Persons And Personhood, Sarah Ashley Kistler
The House In The Market: How Q’Eqchi’ Market Women Convert Money And Commodities Into Persons And Personhood, Sarah Ashley Kistler
Faculty Publications
Recent research argues that globalization in Latin America sometimes results in the homogenization of culture and loss of indigenous identity. This paper, however, explores how Q’eqchi’-Maya market women in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, generate Q’eqchi’ personhood by embracing the conflicts of value introduced by the confrontation of globalization with longstanding Q’eqchi’ values. I argue that in Chamelco, market women are mediators of value who participate in global capitalism to reinforce the categories that structure indigenous life. Q’eqchi’ women engage in marketing activities not only to accrue capital resources, but also to maintain local values, centered on the junkab’al or “house,” …