Jason Ramsey, "Reckoning with Change in Yucatán: Histories of Care and Threat on a Former Hacienda" (Routledge, 2023)

Sep 17, 2024

Jason Ramsey, an author focusing on Yucatán's historical shifts, dives into the complexities of change versus heritage within the community of Chunchucmil. He discusses how residents navigate the conflicting aspirations of redevelopment versus cultural preservation. Through the lens of a former hacienda and the veneration of the Virgin of the Rosary, Ramsey paints a picture of local identity shaped by both economic and spiritual narratives. The conversation also highlights the importance of community bonds and the evolving nature of history as a dynamic, ongoing performance.

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Intro

00:00 • 2min

Heritage vs. Development in Yucatán

01:41 • 23min

Ruins: Narratives of Change and Exploitation

24:53 • 8min

Heritage and Patrimony in Yucatán

32:56 • 31min

Celebrating Tradition and Change

01:04:03 • 22min

Exploring Identity and Ethnographic Insight in Anthropology

01:25:36 • 3min

Exploring Historical Themes and Democratic Evolution in Yucatán Research

01:28:59 • 3min

A perpetual tension exists between history and change, which is an issue long explored by historians and social scientists. Reckoning with Change in Yucatán: Histories of Care and Threat on a Former Hacienda (Routledge, 2023) engages with how best to look upon and respond to change, arguing that this debate is an important arena for negotiating local belonging and a force of transformation in its own right. For residents of Chunchucmil, a historic rural community in Yucatán, Mexico, history is anything but straightforward. Living in what is both a defunct 19th-century hacienda estate and a vibrant Catholic pilgrimage site, Chunchucmileños reckon past, present, and future in radically different ways. For example, while some use the aging estate buildings to weave a history of economic decline and push for revitalization by hotel developers, others highlight the growing fame of the Virgin of the Rosary in the attached church and vow to defend the site from developer interference.

By exploring how past and future are channeled through changing built environments, landscapes, sacred relics, and legal documents, this ethnographic study details how the politics of change provide Chunchucmileños with a common language for debating commitments to place and each another in the present. Against Western notions of ‘History’ as a relatively coherent account of change, Jason Ramsey suggests we reframe it as an ongoing performance that is always fractured, democratic, and morally tinged.

Jason Ramsey is a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Canada. Based on fieldwork in Yucatan among former plantation laborers, he publishes on topics such as semiotics, ruination, value, and the anthropology of history.

Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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