"Rather than a coherent worldview, a symbolic system or structure
of values enshrined in tales about the underworld, nagualismo, and
Catholic images, what we find here is a varied and ambiguous
language of power—an idiom—to talk about power differences and
their contradictions. Such language—just as that of “politics” and
the “State”—generates not a closed social theory but an open field of
expression and reflection that allows for uncertainties to be
addressed. Moreover, this field is reproduced because the world is in
fact experienced, both in the finca and in the ejido, as a hierarchical
yet changing and contested space of constant dangers and struggles
characterized by scarcity and need"
(ESCALONA, 2008, Politics and Memories in Rural Chiapas,
of values enshrined in tales about the underworld, nagualismo, and
Catholic images, what we find here is a varied and ambiguous
language of power—an idiom—to talk about power differences and
their contradictions. Such language—just as that of “politics” and
the “State”—generates not a closed social theory but an open field of
expression and reflection that allows for uncertainties to be
addressed. Moreover, this field is reproduced because the world is in
fact experienced, both in the finca and in the ejido, as a hierarchical
yet changing and contested space of constant dangers and struggles
characterized by scarcity and need"
(ESCALONA, 2008, Politics and Memories in Rural Chiapas,
Identities
Global Studies in Culture and Power
Volume 15, 2008 - Issue 5: Anthropological Perspectives on Indigenous Resurgence in Chiapas, p. 567
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