Gossip is often a source of misinformation that tells more about the person doing the gossiping than about the subject of the gossip. This must be universal in all societies, whether it be among Mexican Indians who confide (often eagerly) their social comments to the inquiring ethnographer or among members of the ethnographer’s own society.
The author of this well-written book takes native gossip of the Zinacantan Indians as his source of data, keeping “gossip notes” instead of field notes. His chief objective is to study normative behavior rather than cultural dynamics.
From the start of the Harvard Chiapas Project, there has been an emphasis on demonstrating one’s closeness to the natives, on developing competence in some areas of Zinacantecan life that seems to approach that of the natives. While gossip is readily available to ethnographers, even quite early in the field, Haviland clearly demonstrates closeness to the scene in Zinacantan through the prodigious quantity of material gathered. The book is a welcome contribution to the steady accumulation of ethnographic data on Zinacantan and other highland Chiapas Mayan peoples.
