Fear as a Way of Life [Paperback]

Linda Green (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231100337 | ISBN-13: 978-0231100335 | Publication Date: August 15, 1999 0

Between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, the people of Guatemala were subjected to a state-sponsored campaign of political violence and repression designed to not only defeat a left-wing, revolutionary insurgency but also destroy Mayan communities and culture. The Mayan Indians in the western highlands were labeled by the government as revolutionary sympathizers, and many Mayan women lost husbands, sons, and other family members who were brutally murdered or who simply "disappeared."

Based on years of field research conducted in the rural highlands, Fear as a Way of Life traces the intricate links between the recent political violence and repression and the long-term systemic violence connected with class inequalities and gender and ethnic oppression----the violence of everyday life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Now, as forensic evidence from the mountains of the dead in the western highlands of Guatemala adds material evidence to the narrations of terror suffered by Mayas in the twenty years of civil war, Linda Green provides us with an analysis of how it is to live with fear. The new body counts in the low-intensity warfare waged against indigenous peoples must include the 80,000 widows and 250,000 orphans who survived. In her analysis of the reconstruction of their lives and communities, we find new insights into the relations of contradiction between structural and political violence, domination, and resistance of a people who have struggled against subordination of their culture and society for almost five hundred years. -- June Nash author of In the Eyes of the Ancestors: Belief and Behavior in a Maya Community

Violence--from massive assault to microscopic humiliation--plays a crucial role in the constructions of race, gender, class, and nation. The power and success of Fear as a Way of Life begins with the ways it shows Mayan women building, and constantly rebuilding, lives within and against situations of totalizing and inescapable violence. Equally important, Linda Green maps new ways for anthropology to reach, and to reach out to, people in such circumstances. In situations where just sympathy scarcely matters, this book is a major contribution to the construction of an anthropology able to understand, to help, and to heal. -- Gerald Sider coeditor of Between History and Histories: The Making of Silence and Commemorations

Review

Now, as forensic evidence from the mountains of the dead in the western highlands of Guatemala adds material evidence to the narrations of terror suffered by Mayas in the twenty years of civil war, Linda Green provides us with an analysis of how it is to live with fear. The new body counts in the low-intensity warfare waged against indigenous peoples must include the 80,000 widows and 250,000 orphans who survived. In her analysis of the reconstruction of their lives and communities, we find new insights into the relations of contradiction between structural and political violence, domination, and resistance of a people who have struggled against subordination of their culture and society for almost five hundred years.

(June Nash, author of In the Eyes of the Ancestors: Belief and Behavior in a Maya Community )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (August 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231100337
• ISBN-13: 978-0231100335
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #675,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > History > Americas > Central America > Guatemala