Zapotec Science by Roberto Gonzlez
Zapotec farmers in the northern sierra of Oaxaca, Mexico, are highly successful in providing their families with abundant, nutritious food in an ecologically sustainable fashion, although the premises that guide their agricultural practices would be considered erroneous by the standards of most agronomists and botanists in the United States and Europe. In this book, Roberto Gonz lez convincingly argues that in fact Zapotec agricultural and dietary theories and practices constitute a valid local science, which has had a reciprocally beneficial relationship with European and United States farming and food systems since the sixteenth century.Gonz lez bases his analysis upon direct participant observation in the farms and fields of a Zapotec village. By using the ethnographic fieldwork approach, he is able to describe and analyze the rich meanings that campesino families attach to their crops, lands, and animals. Gonz lez also reviews the history of maize, sugarcane, and coffee cultivation in the Zapotec region to show how campesino farmers have intelligently and scientifically adapted their farming practices to local conditions over the course of centuries. By setting his ethnographic study of the Talea de Castro community within a historical world systems perspective, he also skillfully weighs the local impact of national and global currents ranging from Spanish colonialism to the 1910 Mexican Revolution to NAFTA. At the same time, he shows how, at the turn of the twenty-first century, the sustainable practices of traditional subsistence agriculture are beginning to replace the failed, unsustainable techniques of modern industrial farming in some parts of the United States and Europe.
"cite>Zapotec Science is a major triumph of ethnographic insights in the understanding of farming practices" Sustainable Communities Review
Roberto J. GonzÁlez is a professor of anthropology at San JosÉ State University.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780292728325 |
| ISBN 10 | 0292728328 |
| Title | Zapotec Science |
| Author | Roberto J González |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | University of Texas Press |
| Year published | 2001-08-01 |
| Number of pages | 342 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |