Household ecology: economic change and domestic life among the Kekchi Maya in Belize

Abstract

Through a study of the effects of agricultural change on household organisation, offers a critique of the evolutionary and schematic models of cultural change that flow from both modernisation and dependency theory. By showing how households adapt to very localised economic and ecological settings, the author argues that the transformation of the rural economy and of Maya culture proceeds through the conjunction of global and local processes. Chapters cover: the theme of the household in social evolution; the use and abuse of the term "household'; Kekchi history and cultural geography; their productive systems (with emphasis on labour); agricultural change; labour groups and cooperative production; structural change in the household; and the broader relevance of the Kekchi case for understanding rural life in Latin America. -M.Amos