Analysis of Financial Practices Among Families in Two Cities Indigenous to the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico

Analysis of Financial Practices Among Families in Two Cities Indigenous to the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico

2009

Latin America and the Caribbean

Mexico

The proposal aims to analyze the various types of financial practices that are commonly carried out between indigenous artisans from the region of Los Altos de Chiapas to identify the social mechanisms that come into play and determine the frameworks of calculation by which value is attributed to natural resources and trade. The particularity of the cases to be analyzed is that women are concerned that a high percentage have not attended school and do not know the basic operations of arithmetic, yet they make significant contributions to the economy of their families through the production and marketing crafts (and other goods). For this resort to some practices such as cooperation with other artisans to join to purchase inputs in bulk and lower costs, or organized group to market its products, which are unlikely to demand due to market saturation.

Maria Eugenia Santana, Magdalena Villareal

Maria Eugenia Santana received her doctorate of Social Sciences with a major in Social Anthropology Research Center and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, CIESAS-West in 2008. She is a professor of social anthropology and researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Chiapas State University at San Cristobal de Las Casas. Nowdays, her research is focused on issues of ?Economy of the Solidarity?, gender, popular finance and social money from an anthropological perspective.

Magdalena Villarreal is senior researcher and professor at the Mexican Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Social Anthropology (CIESAS Occidente) and member (level II) of the National Research System. In 1994 she graduated Cum Laude at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Her research has focused on issues of development, poverty, gender, migration, popular finance and money from an anthropological perspective.