This award provides support to the Department of Anthropology at City College of the City University of New York to continue a Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site Project which will involve undergraduates in the study of contemporary socio- cultural change among the highland Maya and Mexican national communities of Chiapas, southeastern Mexico. The PI, who has studied work and gender in Latin America for the past thirty years, will direct the project. Students will live with families in Indian villages during a part of the week, coming in to the research center in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas for seminars, Maya language lessons, and discussion with the PI. Group trips to handicraft production cooperatives, experimental agricultural stations, and government offices will take place periodically in accord with the research needs of the project. Students will learn basic censusing techniques, extensive interviewing and oral narrative accounts, participant observation, and apprenticeship training to learn the socialization process in handicraft production. They will write daily diaries and submit a summary report at the end of the project. The observations of students located in families in different communities will add up to an account of coping strategies in the debt crisis Mexico is undergoing. The PI will be assisted by colleagues presently working in Chiapas who have devoted their scholarly careers to investigations of indigenous culture in the area.
