Jacques M. Chevalier
Carleton University
Dr. Jacques M. Chevalier, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, Ottawa, has been part of the IDRC (International Development Research Centre) co-operative research project on sustainable development in the Sierra de Santa Marta, Mexico, since 1990. His scholarly interests have also included economics and kinship in native Latin America and semiotics as applied to a variety of disciplines, most recently to scriptural mythology. Among his publications are Civilization and the Stolen Gift: Capital, Kin, and Cult in Eastern Peru (Toronto University Press, 1982) and Semiotics, Romanticism and the Scriptures (Mouton de Gruyter, 1990).
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Process Theory, Maldevelopment and the Mexican Nahuas
By Daniel Buckles and Jacques M. Chevalier
January 1995
In this theoretically innovative study of maldevelopment and power relations among the Nahuas of southern Veracruz, Chevalier and Buckles explore the impact of Mexico’s cattle ranching and petrochemical industries on milpa agriculture and rainforest environment. They also examine how national politics and economics affect native patterns of patrimonial culture and social organization. In the concluding chapter, an ascetic worldview illustrated through corn god mythology points to meaningful ways of countering current trends of social and ecological impoverishment.
