Search

The cultivation and veneration of corn is central to all Mesoamerican cultures. Long before the Spaniards arrived indigenous people worshiped corn and pleaded for each harvest to be as good as the preceding one. Today's Nahuas consider corn sacred and never permit it to lie on the ground: it must always be protected and sheltered. The Nahuas of Chicontepec, Veracruz continue to dance and pray to the corn deity, Chicomexochitl “Seven Flower”. This paper reveals the continuity of ritual practices and symbolism relating to the worship of maize in Nahua culture from prehispanic times to the present. It is based on the sixteenth- -century written sources, recent anthropological studies, and my own fieldwork associated with the Chicomexochitl ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this bioarchaeological study of Classic Maya subsistence, we analyzed porotic hyperostosis, dental caries, and stable isotopes on skeletal remains recovered from 118 burials at Piedras Negras, Guatemala. The abundant [...]

In this paper I use seeds in Malawi as both an analytical lens and an empirical focus of study to examine how food sovereignty is threatened or enhanced in a particular location and time. I argue that while food sovereignty was eroded for smallholders through neoliberal reforms to the agricultural system, community and kin practices help to maintain food sovereignty. The intersection of gender and class dynamics, combined with state policies, however, works to undermine food sovereignty for particular groups in northern Malawi. Historical processes of exclusion, dispossession and exploitation changed the division of labour and reduced time and land for diverse farming systems. State policies reduced knowledge and availability of preferred local varieties. While peasants, particularly women, have considerable knowledge of seed varieties, and seeds continue to be exchanged in agrarian communities, young women, tenant farmers, food insecure younger couples and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)-affected families are particularly vulnerable to reduced food sovereignty, in part due to gender inequalities, unequal land distribution and social stigma. New efforts to strengthen food sovereignty need to build on community and kin relations, while addressing social inequalities. Understanding the struggles and relations linked to seeds helps us to understand ways in which food sovereignty is undermined or strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reviews "El Maíz (Corn)," a play by Jesua Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe which was performed at the Los Angeles Theater Center in California on November 23, 2008.

Corn is of central meaning for Nahuat-speaking people of Sierra Norte, Puebla, Mexico. It is an integral part of personhood und closely related to ideals of harmony, of (gender) cooperation and (hierarchical gender) complementarity. The article explores the relation of disturbed male harmony, resulting from missing opportunities, to adequate corn production in the context of globalization. This may lead to increased illegitimate gendered violence by men. Besides, it will also be demonstrated how new forms of cooperation and complementarity between husband and wife are developed and may contribute to less hierarchical and less violent gender relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent hikes in food prices have created economic and social turmoil in many African countries. But in Malawi, fertilizer and seed subsidies have enabled small-scale farmers to improve maize productivity and achieve food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the impact of maize on the agricultural transformation in Africa from 1500 to 1999. Importation of maize to the different parts of the region; Inclusion of maize as a grain and primary household food supply; Percentage of maize consumed in national diets.

Discusses the social aspects of the consumption of maize (corn) around the world. Ecological and nutritional benefits of maize; History of maize consumption in Europe; Appreciation of the benefits of maize; Reasons why most Western Europeans avoided consuming maize.

This article follows the trajectory of maize husks from their production sites in rural Western Mexico to diverse consumption and commercialization locales both within the country and in the United States, showing how the uses and meanings of specific products are continuously reassembled and transformed within the livelihoods and social networks of Mexicans living in a transnational world. By highlighting the multiplicities and ambiguities of social value and cultural identities implicit in the workings of commodity chains and globalization processes, the study leads to a questioning of commodity-chain analysis. It also challenges theories of cultural production and circulation based on a unified and hierarchical system of value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]