Implications of Commerce and Urbanization for the Learning Environments of Everyday Life

Abstract

In recent decades, Maya ecocultural environments in Chiapas, Mexico, have undergone continuous change from more subsistence based to more commerce based and from more rural to more urban. Through ethnographic observations of one family during a 10-year period in rural and urban settings, activity settings analysis revealed changes on the micro level that reflected these shifts in the macro environment. The development of commerce between 1997 and 2007 led to increased reliance on technology, increases in individuation and individual choice, specialization for economic tasks, and for women, more formal education. Other changes in this period that were greatly intensified by urban dwelling included contact with strangers, contact with people of different ethnicities, and women’s economic achievement. Urban dwelling also introduced freedom for young women to have unchaperoned contact with young men.

Keywords

women social change Maya learning environments commercial activity urbanization

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