Basically a selection, condensation, and reorientation of information contained in the author’s earlier comprehensive study, this excellent little book is a welcome addition to the popular series of brief ethnographic reports known as the Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology, a series designed for students but of interest to the professional as well.
Drawing the relevant materials from his full length (700 pp.) ethnographic description, Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the Highlands of Chiapas, Evon Vogt has skillfully recast them in The Zinacantecos of Mexico so as to present a balanced, tightly woven, and most interesting picture of life in a Tzotzil community. The book’s coherence is partly the result of his emphasis on the ways that the Zinacanteco belief system relates to other aspects of the culture, particularly through pervasive ceremonialism and the replication of forms and ideas. In part it derives from his use of the “ethnographic present” to describe the culture by minimizing temporal and behavioral variations. Nevertheless the author’s concern with time and periodicity is plainly evident in his organization of chapters around such themes as the social cycle, the economic cycle, the life cycle, and the ritual cycle. A historical dimension is also implicit in descriptions of the many areas of Zinacanteco life that demonstrate surface incoiporation of Hispanic features into an essentially Mayan cultural system.
