The book explores the intricate ways in which language shapes and sustains social relationships. It delves into the mechanisms of communication, highlighting how dialogue and discourse influence social bonds and community dynamics. Through various examples and theoretical frameworks, it illustrates the vital role language plays in fostering connections and understanding among individuals.
"In this slim volume, anthropologist Paul Kockelman showcases, reworks, and extends some of the core resources anthropologists and like-minded scholars have developed for thinking about value. Rather than theorize value head on, he offers a careful interpretation of a Mayan text about an offering to a god that lamentably goes awry. Kockelman analyzes the text, its telling, and the conditions of possibility for its original publication. Starting with a relatively simple definition of value--that which stands at the intersection of what signs stand for and what agents strive for--he unfolds, explicates, and experiments with its variations. Contrary to widespread claims in and around the discipline, Kockelman argues that it is not so-called relations, but rather relations between relations, that are at the heart of the interpretive endeavor."--Page 4 of printed paper wrapper
Focusing on the last twenty years of life in a small Mayan village, this pioneering book offers a natural history of intensity in the age of the Anthropocene. It is designed to bring together not only anthropologists and linguists, but also ecologically oriented readers, critical theorists, and environmental scientists.
In The Chicken and the Quetzal Paul Kockelman tells the cultural history of a village in Guatemala's highland cloud forests and its relation to conservation movements and eco-tourism to create a theoretical framework for understanding the entanglement of values as they are created, interpreted, and reconfigured.