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This article examines how a market shift toward high-end (‘Third Wave') coffee creates tension between two producer models of economic engagement: cooperatives, with mechanisms that promote solidarity to minimize risks, and ‘open’ markets, with extraordinary rewards for those able to grow the highest quality coffees. Most Maya farmers value cooperative organization and yet a growing number are defecting, unable to forgo the premiums intermediaries offer for their best beans. This is a complicated moral and economic situation in which the Third Wave focus on single-origin coffees forces changes in relations of production that undermine the cooperative preferences of smallholding farmers. Introduction The Guatemalan context This study Cooperatives and Fair Trade The Third Wave of change in the global coffee market Quality versus cooperation Tough choices and uneven rewards Quality, decommodification, and risk Conclusions References

Governments around the world have implemented measures to manage the transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). While the majority of these measures are proving effective, they have a high social and economic cost, and response strategies are being adjusted. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that communities should have a voice, be informed and engaged and participate in this transition phase. We propose ten considerations to support this principle: (1) implement a phased approach to a ‘new normal’; (2) balance individual rights with the social good; (3) prioritise people at highest risk of negative consequences; (4) provide special support for healthcare workers and caring staff; (5) build, strengthen and maintain trust; (6) enlist existing social norms and foster healthy new norms; (7) increase resilience and self-efficacy; (8) use clear and positive language; (9) anticipate and manage misinformation and (10) engage with media outlets. The transition phase should also be informed by real time data according to which governmental responses should be updated.

Scientific understandings of how coffee affects health have been closely linked to the moral and political discourses of the changing times. Inquiries into coffee began in the 16th century, as Europeans wrestled with understanding the effects of this newly introduced beverage. These early studies built on the nascent fields of chemistry and physiology to examine how coffee stimulated the body. Coffee invoked strong scientific and moral opinions about its effects, and its portrayal in the literature has swung from seeing it as the cause of a variety of conditions to seeing it as a potential cure for an equally impressive range of ailments. Most recent studies on the bioactivity of coffee emphasize its salubrious potential, and popular opinion and health promotion policies are changing their recommendations accordingly.

Ready To Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) and Ready To Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) have proliferated in recent years to treat acute and chronic malnutrition. Biomedical research has established the efficacy of these products, yet little is known about their actual effectiveness in real world settings. This article reports on an ethnographic study of the acceptance and use of RUSF within households in a rural Maya community in Guatemala (a country with the world's third highest rate of chronic malnutrition). We find a number of surprising obstacles to RUSF effectiveness. There is a strong commitment to breastfeeding (supported by public health messages of local NGOs as well as culturally perceived benefits) that leads to sub-optimal complementary feeding after six months. We also found instances of off-label sharing and confusion over relative nutritional values. We present a framework for maximizing RUSF effectiveness that involves nutritional education, positive peer support, and the framing of the product ...

Coffee production in Guatemala has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last twenty years. Changing tastes among northern consumers have driven new demand for high-quality Strictly Hard Bean coffees that are grown above 4,500 feet. As a result, many of the large, lower-altitude plantations long synonymous with coffee in Guatemala have abandoned production, moving into rubber, African palm, and other crops. At least 50,000 mostly smallholding farmers in the highlands have begun grow- ing coffee to fi ll this market niche. Building on a capabilities approach to development, this article examines how smallholding Guatemalan producers' desires for a better fu- ture orient their engagement with this new market. Most of these small producers live in very modest circumstances with limited resources and opportunities. Yet, as they de- scribe it, coffee represents an opportunity in a context of few opportunities, an imperfect means to a marginally better life. Over the past twenty years, and in the aftermath of price collapses in 1993 and again in 2001, the coffee trade in Guatemala and elsewhere in Latin America has been dramatically transformed (Murray, Raynolds, and Taylor 2006; Bacon, Men- dez, and Gliessman 2008). Throughout the twentieth century, coffee production in Guatemala was a highly concentrated industry composed of a small number of very large producers. These cafetaleros operated privately owned plantations (fi ncas) and depended on temporary migrant labor to deliver their high-volume, low-cost commodity product. The large producers traded with equally large and concentrated exporters and roasters who then completed the global value chain; this was the coffee that found its way into cups around the world as Folgers, Max- well House, and hundreds of other brands. In the largely Maya highland com- munities where labor was recruited, working on coffee fi ncas was, and is, seen as employment of last resort because of the low wages and harsh conditions. Today, we fi nd a large number of former coffee laborers and subsistence farm- ers supporting their families by growing and selling their own coffee. Guate- mala's varied landscape provides for a wide range of microclimatic variation and altitudes that produce distinct coffees. The rapidly proliferating number of small

Background: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members represent an important and relatively understudied population for improving our understanding of alcohol dependence recovery as over 1 million Americans participate in the program. Further insight into coffee and cigarette use by these individuals is necessary given AA members’ apparent widespread consumption and the recognized health consequences and psychopharmacological actions of these substances. Methods: Volunteers were sought from all open-AA meetings in Nashville, TN during the summer of 2007 to complete a questionnaire (n = 289, completion rate = 94.1%) including timeline followback for coffee, cigarette, and alcohol consumption; the Alcoholics Anonymous Affiliation Scale; coffee consumption and effects questions; the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND); and the Smoking Effects Questionnaire. Results: Mean (±SD) age of onset of alcohol consumption was 15.4 ± 4.2 years and mean lifetime alcohol consumption was 1026.0 ± 772.8 kg ethanol. Median declared alcohol abstinence was 2.1 years (range: 0 days to 41.1 years) and median lifetime AA attendance was 1000.0 meetings (range: 4 to 44,209 meetings); average AA affiliation score was 7.6 ± 1.5. Most (88.5%) individuals consumed coffee and approximately 33% of coffee consumers drank more than 4 cups per day (M = 3.9 ± 3.9). The most common self-reported reasons for coffee consumption and coffee-associated behavioral changes were related to stimulatory effects. More than half (56.9%) of individuals in AA smoked cigarettes. Of those who smoked, 78.7% consumed at least half a pack of cigarettes per day (M = 21.8 ± 12.3). Smokers’ FTND scores were 5.8 ± 2.4; over 60% of smokers were highly or very highly dependent. Reduced negative affect was the most important subjective effect of smoking. Conclusions: A greater proportion of AA participants drink coffee and smoke cigarettes in larger per capita amounts than observed in general U.S. populations. The effects of these products as described by AA participants suggest significant stimulation and negative affect reduction. Fundamental knowledge of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of coffee and cigarette consumption among AA members will enable future research to discern their impact on alcohol abstinence and recovery.

An ethnographic account of the putative shift away from state-sponsored violence and the emergence of new patterns of violence in postwar Guatemala challenges liberal political and moral models that narrowly interpret violence in terms of individual suffering and/or culpability. Such models converge with a resurgence of right-wing political activity. The origins and outcomes of violence are more usefully and accurately conceived in terms of structural and societal conditions. Guatemala's new violence (e.g., crime, gang activity, and vigilantism) is not the chaos of media accounts but a manifestation of enduring legacies of state violence and the social and economic insecurities brought on by structural adjustment policies.

Tracing the commodity chain of broccoli from Nashville, Tennessee supermarkets to Maya farmers in highland Guatemala, this paper examines relations of desire and political economic power. We argue that the global broccoli trade is shot through with desires—desires of Western consumers to eat healthy foods as well as desires for Maya farmers to get ahead economically. Such desires simultaneously subvert and sustain the hegemonic constellations that anchor crucial nodes in the international broccoli trade.

Emerging from the convergence of neo-liberal reforms, demo- cratic openings, and an increase of interest in indigenous issues among international organizations, the growth of civil society in recent years has dramatically altered the political-economic landscape of Latin Amer- ica. For a number of Latin American indigenous causes, civil society's surge in importance has been empowering, allowing access to funds, national and international attention, and in some cases increases in de facto and de jure autonomy. At the same time, the rise in the impor- tance of civil society goes hand in hand with the rise of neo-liberal political and economic reforms that threaten the material bases of indigenous culture and expose populations to the vagaries of private funding. In this way, civil society also serves as an arena for neo-liberal forms of governmentality.

Through a case study of small-scale Kaqchikel Maya farmers involved in non-traditional export agriculture (NTAX) in the Central Guatemalan highlands, this article examines the tensions between the mostly positive perceptions of farmers and the negative assessments of many who study NTAX production. In a context of severe political-economic structural inequalities and potentially high social and cultural costs, quantitative household survey results demonstrate a modest decrease in concentration of land in favour of Maya smallholders; more gender-egalitarian relations of production than expected; and largely positive local perceptions of economic and social change. Qualitative analysis interprets these findings in light of Maya-affective ties to land, preferences for continuity in traditional labor organization and subsistence maize production, perceptions of risk, and the transfer of traditional marketing skills. We find that Kaqchikeles are shaping alternative modernities as they deal with new sets of political-economic and social constraints.

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Ironically, as many Western scholars have turned to constructivist theories to explain new ethnic movements and forms of identity politics, the subjects of their studies have begun to embrace a form of essentialism to justify their political legitimacy. This article presents a critical rethinking of constructivist and essentialist approaches to identity formation and maintenance. Drawing upon Maya ethnotheoretical models of identity, I introduce the analytic concept of cultural logic—generative principles realized through cognitive schemas that promote intersubjective continuity and are conditioned by the unique contingencies of life histories and structural positions in political‐economic systems. I show how the concept of metaphysical balance in Maya cosmology illuminates the working of a uniquely Maya cultural logic, and I find in Maya cognitive models of the heart and soul a theory that mirrors that of cultural logic.

This article examines early colonial Kaqchikel Maya notions of the self, souls, and the heart. By integrating ethnohistorical data and contemporary ethnographic observations, we show that Kaqchikeles viewed the self as contingent on a dynamic balance of cosmic forces acting on the individual. The ways in which these forces are seen to effect one's state of being are documented through an extensive discussion of Kaqchikel metaphors of the heart and soul. We conclude by noting the importance of understanding processes of continuity (as well as change) in cultural constructions and argue for the continued utility of such approaches in ethnohistorical research.

Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, volume 1. Norman E. Whitten. Jr. and Arlene Torres, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. 520 pp. Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, volume 2. Norman E. Whitten. Jr. and Arlene Torres, eds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. 557 pp.

This article examines non-traditional export production of broccoli, snow peas, and other crops in Guatemala. Focusing on Maya farmers, exporters, and government development officials, we trace the production of the desire to grow these crops, to make some extra money, and to enhance local and national economies. We find that the export business has left farmers shortchanged even as it has opened new pos sibilities of algo mas (something more or better). We examine how this empirical paradox has emerged from the convergence and divergence of power relations and affective desires that produce the processes known as 'hegemony' and 'resistance'. We conclude by considering alternative ethnographic strategies for understanding the multifarious connections between power and desire, hegemony and culture.

I am writing to comment on Jonathan Friedman's recent article, "The Past in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity" (AA 94:837-859, 1992). In it Friedman sets a fine example of the type of analysis that is needed to understand the growing role identity politics plays in shaping world systems, as well as the role of global processes in shaping expressions of identity. As is the nature of such an endeavor, however, Friedman's conclusions are shaded by his limited sample (Greece and Hawaii). Here I present examples from my fieldwork with Maya cultural activists in Guatemala to make problematic some of Friedman's conclusions, and argue that perhaps Friedman is incorrect in correlating the current move toward global cultural dehomogenization with a decline of Western cultural hegemony. I must preface my comment with a note on the concept of Western culture. Friedman frequently uses the adjective Western (as in "Western identity and history" [p. 837], "the Western-dominated world" [p. 837], "Western hegemonic identity" [p. 840], and "Western social context" [p. 855]), but I am left unclear as to what level of abstraction he has in mind when referring to this arguably overused and ambiguous concept. In both social scientific and popular literature, the concept of Western culture is increasingly invoked to explain how global forces effect change in local contexts. While analyses of global systems require a high level of abstraction, scholars are too often lulled into treating the West as a homogenous entity that (re)acts similarly in situations of contact around the world. One cannot deny the many underlying, modernist assumptions about the world that have spread from Western Europe, but neither should one overlook internal diversity of this tradition. The post-World War II period of hegemonic expansion of the two main branches of 20th-century Western culture has juxtaposed cultural, political, and geographic borders, thus clouding frontiers between East and West. In matters of politics and economics, Japan is aligned with the United States and Western Europe, although culturally and geographically it remains part of the East; likewise, until their recent independence, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan were subjects of Soviet-style Western culture, although now their young leaders stress the Near Eastern heritage of the countries. My point is simply that, in such a confusing situation, when one invokes the concept of Western culture, one should clearly specify the variety of Western culture (e.g., as interpreted by Greece, the United States, orJapan) and the level of abstraction (e.g., elements of contemporary popular culture or underlying assumptions about science, progress, and the nature of the world). In Guatemala the United States acts as the prime bearer of contemporary Western culture. Thus, a Guatemala-centric view may equate the contemporary Western tradition with U.S. pop culture; and in fact, many Maya cultural activists use this equation to contemptuously dismiss Western values. Nonetheless, current Maya cultural activism-and the growth of identity politics around the world-arguably constitutes an expansion of central elements of the Western tradition, elements that predate the Cold War and that have been more thoroughly integrated into local traditions than any one trend of recent Euro-American pop culture. These elusive elements-most notably modernist ideas about the value and nature of science, progress, and economic development-are often presupposed by researcher and subject alike, a situation that may lead one to erroneously conclude that the present mutations and evolution of elements of Western culture

Beatriz Manz. Paradise in Ashes:. Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope. Berkeley. University of California Press. 2004. xix. 311pp

Histories and Stories from Chiapas: Border Identities in Southern Mexico. R. Aida Hernandez Castillo. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. xix. 295 pp., photographs, notes, glossary, bibliography, index.