Weaving Generations Together: Evolving Creativity in the Maya of Chiapas

This innovative study provides a rare longitudinal study of the cognitive and socialization processes involved in transmitting weaving knowledge across two generations of Zinacantec Maya women in Chiapas. Greenfield's return to the site of her initial fieldwork twenty years later enables her to examine the impact of commercialization and globalization on textile production and sales, acculturation, and female socialization. Her systematic collection of data and range of approaches make this an exemplary work that will be a major contribution to studies of cognition and socialization, the life cycles of material culture, and the anthropology of the Maya. The more than two hundred striking and detailed photographic images of Zinacantec textiles are both informative and a delight to the eye. This book will appeal to both the academic specialist and admirers of Maya weaving and culture more generally.