Commoners: Cooperation, Fairness, and Resource Management in Changing Tzotzil-Maya Communities, Southern Mexico

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Commoners: Cooperation, Fairness, and Resource Management in Changing Tzotzil-Maya Communities, Southern Mexico TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES LIST OF TABLES ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: SCOPE, GOALS, AND METHODS 1. The “People in Common” 1.1. Chenalhó, Chiapas 1.2. Social Change and Institutional Diversity 1.3. Equity, Decision-Making, and Commons Management 2. Research Design and Study Groups 2.1. Measuring Change 2.2. Study Groups 2.3. Process, Complexity, and Causality 3. Methods (Field and Writing) 3.1. Overview 3.2. Formal Methods and Ethnographic Research 3.3. Validation in Ethnography 3.4. Serendipity in Discovery and Writing 3.5. Approaching Culture Statistically 3.6. Impossibilities CHAPTER 2. CLASHING OVER SAN PEDRO: ETHNICITY, COMPETITION, AND COOPERATION 1. Circumstantial Enemies 1.1. The Ejido San Pedro 1.2. A Matter of Class? 1.3. A Revolt Against Middlemen 1.4. Ethnic Change 1.5. Ethnic Essentialism 2. Deep Ethnicity: Symmetry in the Emergence of Intergroup Differences 2.1. Of Hospitality Norms 2.2. Of Treasure Tales 2.3. The ‘Past President’ 2.4. Fighting for the Right to Party 3. Experiments in Cooperation 3.1. Prosociality and Ethnic Favoritism 3.2. Reluctance to Punish 3.3. Intergenerational Changes 3.4. Fairness and Rhetoric: Explaining Allocations CHAPTER 3. REASONING ABOUT INEQUALITY: HIERARCHIES AND THE STRUCTURE OF EQUITY NORMS 1. Equitable Distribution 1.1. The Egalitarian Model 1.2. Equity and Inequality in Food Distribution 1.3. The Tzotzil Reputation System 1.4. Absence of Dominance Hierarchies 2. Politics Without Dominance 2.1. ‘Kind’ Leaders: Maximizing Social Cohesion 2.2. Limits to Scale: Community Fissioning 2.3. Communal Assemblies 3. From Reputation- to Need-based Equity: Experimental Allocation Games 3.1. Resource Allocation Game 3.2. Tax Allocation 4. Conclusion CHAPTER 4. KINSHIP AND THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSFER GAME 1. Through the Patriline 1.1. The Pariah 1.2. A Young Man’s Plight 2. Facets of Change 2.1. Terminological Changes 2.2. Marriage Patterns 2.3. Land Tenure Systems 3. Erasing Maya Kinship 3.1. Institutional Replacement 3.2. Role of the Catholic Church 3.3. The Persistence of Patrilocality CHAPTER 5. THE CARGO MATCHING GAME 1. Giving Burdens 1.1. A Game with Winners and Losers 1.2. The SEDESOL Officials 1.3. Candy, Coke, and Cookies 1.4. No Sense of Honor 1.5. Reluctant Acceptance (Countersignaling) 1.6. Language, Coercion, and Coping 2. Rethinking Cargos 2.1. A Self-organizing Matching Market 2.2. Cargos and The Roots of Cooperation 2.3. Weaving Family Ties 3. Conceptual Organization 3.1. Folk Categories of Work 3.2. Ranking Cargos 3.3. Conceptual Salience 3.4. Cost Awareness 4. Decision-making: Collective and Individual 4.1. Distributing Burdens Collectively 4.2. To Sway a Crowd 4.3. Modeling Agency 5. Conclusion CHAPTER 6. NATIVIST CYCLES: RITUAL COSTS, DEBT, AND THE REINVENTION OF TRADITIONS 1. Returns to Tradition 1.1. Chenalhó’s Three Police Forces 1.2. When Modernization Backfires 1.3. Nativist Cycles 2. The 1940-1970 Reputation Bubble 2.1. Broke Elders 2.2. Quantifying Ritual Costs 2.3. Alternative Explanations 2.4. Prestige, Forecasting, and Reputation as an Asset 3. On Maya Finance: Adaptations 3.1. Hiding Money (and Other Capital Preservation Strategies) 3.2. Borrowing to Repay Loans 4. The Indebtedness Problem 4.1. Subsidized Credit in Chiapas 4.2. Interest Rates and the Dawn of Rent-seeking 4.3. Burst of the Bubble 5. Conclusion CHAPTER 7. THE CHALLENGE OF AUTONOMY: DECENTRALIZATION AND PUBLIC GOODS PROVISION 1. No Master Mind 1.1. “Without Pressure” 1.2. A Contractor’s Viewpoint 1.3. Free to Choose 1.4. Drawbacks of Decentralization 1.5. A Resilient Structure? 2. To Each According to Their Prestige 2.1. The Hierarchical Cooperative 2.2. ‘Merit’ and the Rise of Tzotzil Bureaucracy 2.3. Petitioning 2.4. Reciprocity as Reputation Leveling 3. Conclusion CHAPTER 8. SOME BROADER IMPLICATIONS 1. Fairness and Equity: Evolving 2. A Note on Methodological Consilience APPENDIX: TRACKING RITUAL SPENDING OVER TIME 1. Historical Sources 2. Reliability of Sources 3. Compound Annual Growth Rates REFERENCES