With Our Heads Bowed: The Dynamics of Gender in a Maya Community

by Brenda Rossenbaum

"Brenda Rosenbaum has succeeded in capturing the daily routines of San Juan Chamula men and women in such a way as to reveal the gender subordination implicit in the fabric of this society. Since few of the monographs on this much studied area have addressed the issue of gender relations, this volume is a welcome and valuable addition to the field. Few ethnographers have explored the ambiguous link between ideology and social role performance in as great a depth as Brenda Rosenbaum. With her long commitment to fieldwork in San Juan Chamula she is able to demonstrate how women have been able to overreach a constraining model of behavior defined by men."- June Nash; Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; City University of New York

239 pages, Paperback

First published December 7, 1993

Reviews

[David Leroy]

I enjoyed this book, and found it very easy to read, and that is remarkable given the extremely complex social structure of Chamulan culture. The book was researched and written close to the time period of the Zapatesta revolution. In the context of modern times, that uprising might seem unusual, however the book illustrates clearly that civil unrest has a long history in this community with the outside world. Even though I have been to Chamula, and San Cristobal de la Casas, I learned so much through this book that I feel like it is only now that I have experienced that culture. So, if you are looking for a good primer on this social, political, and religious culture set in modern times, this is the book to read.