John M. Watanabe (NHC Fellow, 1998–99)

Fellowship Work Summary, 1998–99

John M. Watanabe worked on his book, under the working title of Forging Identities, Citizenship, and the Nation in Late Nineteenth-Century Guatemala. He made final revisions to an article (coauthored with Barbara B. Smuts), "Explaining Religion without Explaining It Away: Trust, Truth, and the Evolution of Cooperation in Roy A. Rappaport's The Obvious Aspects of Ritual," which appeared in a special forum of American Anthropologist 101, 1 (1999). He wrote an essay, entitled "Getting over Hegemony and Resistance: Reinstating Culture in the Study of Power Relations across Difference," for the European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 66 (June 1999); an article entitled "With All the Means That Prudence Would Suggest: Procedural Culture and the Writing of Cultural Histories of Power in Nineteenth-Century Mesoamerica," which is under review as part of a special issue of the Journal of Latin American Anthropology; and another entitled "Culturing Identities, the State, and National Consciousness in Late Nineteenth-Century Western Guatemala," under review as part of a special issue of the Bulletin of Latin American Research. He wrote a proposal (with Edward F. Fischer),"Culture Theory and Cross-Cultural Comparison: Maya Culture and History in a Multicultural World," for the Advanced Seminar series at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, which was accepted and scheduled for October 2000. At the XXI International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, held in Chicago, he read a paper on "Community, Citizenship, and Peasant Nationalism' in Late Nineteenth-Century Western Guatemala," and served as a discussant for the panel "Local Liberalisms: Campesinos and the State in Nineteenth-Century Mexico." He read a paper on "The Play of Identities and Cultures in Southeastern Mesoamerica," at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, held in Philadelphia; one on "State Formation As Bureaucratic Formalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Western Guatemala," at the annual conference of the Society of Latin American Studies, held at Cambridge University; and another on "El lenguaje de almas: la religión, identidad y el cambio religioso en la cultura maya," at the Segundo Congreso sobre el Popol Wuh, held in Quezaltenango, Guatemala. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he spoke on "Identity, Ethnicity, and the Nation: Procedural Culture' in Late Nineteenth-Century Western Guatemala," at a colloquium given for the History Speakers Series, sponsored by the Department of History; on "Procedural Cultures and Local Nationalisms in Nineteenth-Century Western Guatemala," at a colloquium given for the Department of Anthropology; and on "Truths, Lies, and the Nobel Prize: Politics, Memory, and Responsibility in David Stoll's Exposé of Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú," also for the Department of Anthropology. He spoke on his paper "With All the Means That Prudence Would Suggest: Procedural Culture' and the Writing of Cultural Histories of Power in Nineteenth-Century Mesoamerica," for a colloquium given for the Social Science Research Seminar at Wake Forest University, and was a participant in a panel discussion on "The Politics of Truth: Rigoberta Menchú, David Stoll, and the Guatemalan Truth Commission," for the Duke University - University of North Carolina Working Group on Latin American Politics and Labor. He has organized a panel, "'I . . . Rigoberta Menchú' and the Politics of Truth in Guatemala," for the upcoming annual meeting of the New England Council of Latin American Studies, to be held in New Haven in October, and another panel (with Edward F. Fischer, and sponsored by the Society for Latin American Anthropology), for an invited session on "Culture Theory and Cross-Cultural Comparison: Maya Culture and History in a Multicultural World," for the 98th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, to be held in Chicago in November. He was a participant in the Lilly Collegium on Religion and the Humanities at the Center.