Outgrowth of a symposium at the 2006 Society for American Archaeology meetings in San Juan, and of a seminar at the Amerind Foundation. Cf. pref.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- Introduction: Eerie -- 1 Calamity, 1945-1952 -- 2 Elimination, 1952 -- 3 Fighting mood, 1952-1960 -- 4 Admonition, 1960-1961 -- 5 Bleak, 1961-1989 -- 6 Ass of the world, 1961-1989 -- Epilogue: Dream -- Bibliography -- Index

Photographs and simple text describe what daily life is like for Maya villagers, showing how they prepare meals, weave clothing, make roofs, and create art and music.

The Villagers is a story of the ruthless exploitation and extermination of an Indian village of Ecuador by its greedy landlord. First published in 1934, it is here available for the first time in an authorized English translation. A realistic tale in the best tradition of the novels of social protest of Zola, Dosto­evsky, José Eustasio Rivera, and the Mexican novels of the Revolution, The Villagers (Huasipungo) shocked and horrified its readers, and brought its author mingled censure and acclaim, when it was first published in 1934. Deeply moving in the dramatic intensity of its relentless evolution and stark human suffering, Icaza's novel has been translated into eleven foreign languages, including Russian and Chinese, and has gone through numerous editions in Spanish, including a revised and enlarged edition in 1953, on which this translation is based, but it has never before been authorized for translation into English. His first novel, but not his first published work, The Villagers is still considered by most critics as Icaza's best, and it is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant works in contemporary Latin American literature. Thirty years after its original publication in Ecuador, The Villagers still carries a powerful message for the contemporary world and an urgent warning. The conditions here portrayed prevail in these areas, even today. The Villagers is an indictment of the latifundista system and a caustic picture of the native worker who, with little expectation from life, finds himself a victim of an antiquated feudal system aided and abetted by a grasping clergy and an indifferent govern­ment.

This is a book for the Zoomers and Millennials who are extremely online.

Over the last half century, China has evolved from a poor rural country to a geopolitical powerhouse. Rapid urbanization has been at the heart of that transformation, and as migrant laborers have left their villages, what has become of the rural communities that were once the center of economic, social, and cultural life? And how do contemporary Chinese scholars understand those changes? These are the questions that this compelling book answers. Lengshuigou village, located near the Shandong provincial capital of Jinan, was first studied by Japanese social scientists in the early 1940s and then again in the 1980s and 1990s. Building on these rich surveys, this book traces changes from the early twentieth century to the present day in family and lineage, social stratification, personal networks, annual and life cycle rituals, village politics, and elite formation. Drawing on their own large-scale survey of contemporary village households, the authors analyze the physical and institutional changes that have altered the community, as well as the shifts in interpersonal relations and attitudes that have upended centuries-old systems of patriarchy and generational order. This important book presents, for the first time in English, analysis by Chinese sociologists on the radical transformation of Chinese rural society.