34 INTRODUCTION
on world-systems theory, see Chapter 3). Postconquest native Mesoamericans be-
come participants in a worldwide class of exploited peasants and proletariats created
by global capitalism. Even more so than the Cultural Evolutionists who preceded
them, recent Materialists have tended to portray the Mesoamerican cultures as sec-
ondary derivations from behaviors oriented toward physical and political survival.
World-systems studies make it clear that we can no longer study the Mesoamer-
ican cultures as isolated communities, nor can we ignore the impact of external pow-
ers on local Indian groups. Social classes based on the unequal distribution of
economic means have always played an important role in determining the charac-
teristics of the Mesoamerican cultures, both ancient and contemporary. As Schwartz
(1983:355) points out:Identity, tradition, and culture become tactics in a game of power rather than primary ir-
reducible determinants of change and continuity. [The Mesoamerican] tradition is no
longer a manifestation of a particular world view but rather an expression of sectarian in-
terests, a labile adaptation to an environment, and a dependent variable.Nevertheless, cultures are not merely responses to material and political forces;
they have their own internal logics and histories. Good theories should take into ac-
count both material and ideological factors, as well as microsocial and macrosocial
settings. For Mesoamerica, as elsewhere, the “patterns of behavior and choices be-
tween alternatives are... the result of a complex interplay between ideas, rules, psy-
chological and material resources, and situation circumstances” (Schwartz 1983:353;
see also Gossen 1986). (Box A.5 provides a discussion of recent theoretical ap-
proaches to the study of native Mesoamericans in Guatemala.)Box A.5 Recent Approaches to the Study of Mayan Peoples in GuatemalaThe anthropologist John Watanabe (2000) has described the basic changes in theoretical ap-
proaches to Mayan community studies since the l960s. He refers to three dominant “themes” or
directions taken by scholars in more recent Mayan studies, although clearly these three direc-
tions are interrelated and form part of a more general movement away from the study of cultural
continuities toward the study of cultural reconstruction: “Rather than objectifying culture as con-
sisting of essential traits that endure or are lost, anthropologists have come to treat Maya cultures
in Guatemala as strategic self-expressions of Maya identity, motivated... by Maya propensities
and possibilities in the present rather than by pre-Hispanic primordialism” (p. 4). The basic fault
line (“sea change”), then, is between studies that objectified Mayan cultures and traits, seeing
them as enduring, versus studies that focus on the strategic reconstruction of Mayan identity in
the context of the wider, more dynamic political economy in which Mayas find themselves.
One important direction or approach in Mayan studies since the 1960s is the move away from
the idea of persisting Mayan cultures, in favor of studying the changing social contexts in which
they are created, along with the active processes by which Mayas reconstitute their ethnic iden-
tities despite these changes. A closely related theme or direction in Mayan studies emphasizes
the transforming capacity of political economic forces (especially associated with capitalism). For
example, in some accounts, Mayan culture and identity are seen as expressions of determinant
class relationships. A sophisticated version of this approach calls for study not only of the impact
(continued)