| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
SAKURAI Mieko Osaka University of Economics, Faculty of Human Sciences, Professor, 人間科学部, 教授 (90235226)
HATSUTANI Joji Tenri University, Faculty of International Cultural Studies, Professor, 国際文化学部, 教授 (10180895)
SUZUKI Motoi Chiba University, Faculty of Letters, Associate Professor, 文学部, 助教授 (40282438)
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| Research Abstract |
This research project was aimed at exploring the ways and the modes of "producing" and "consuming" images on Mayan people and their cultures, initiating from the Conquest by the Spaniards in the 16th century until now. In using the terms "producing" and "consuming", we intended to include various forms of exploitation and consumption such as conquest, colonial domination, evangelization, education, tourism, academic research, etc.
In analyzing the discources on the Maya used in the historical chronicles, travel diaries, academic researches, oral hitstories, etc., we have mainly focused our investigation on the sociocultural contexts and the socially shared ethnic biases which might have helped to formalize those discources on the Maya. And we have also paid attention to the modes by which the "Mayan" people themselves have responded to those external "image" intervention so as to maintain their socio-cultural autonomy in using their own "images".
On discussing the Mayan people and their
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cultures, the researchers have failed to read in a critical mode the colonial documents into which the authors' ethnocentrism might have been slipped. So the historian Joji Hatsutani has tried to relativize the ethnically stereotyped discources on the Mayan rebellion againt the colonial regime, treating particularly on the Canek rebellion in the 18 century. On the other hand, the historian Tsubasa Okoshi has tried to reveal the original intentions on producing colonial documents and their later interpretations made by the Mayan and the Spanish religious and administrative officers.
The anthropologist Shigeto Yoshida analyzed the Mexican Primary Health Care programs and its effects on the practices of tradional healers. The anthropologist Mieko Sakurai treated the Guatemalan Mayan cultural revivalism, in which images on the Mayan are consumed by the Other and produced by the Mayan themselves. And in a same way, the anthropologist Shigeki Shakuya examined the changing situations of some archaeological parks in the northern coastal area of the State of Quintana Roo in Mexico, in order to reveal the uses of Mayan images in the tourism. Meanwhile, the anthropologist Motoi Suzuki, focusing on a Maya literature workshop in a rural community in the State of Yucatan, Mexico, described a process of Mayan images formation in the continual interaction between the workshop organizer and the four major consumers of Mayan images, i. e. state institutions in charge of indigenous culture, tourists, academic scholars, and the Maya fellows in the same community. Less
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