Edward (Ted) F Fischer

Background: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members represent an important and relatively understudied population for improving our understanding of alcohol dependence recovery as over 1 million Americans participate in the program. Further insight into coffee and cigarette use by these individuals is necessary given AA members' apparent widespread consumption and the recognized health consequences and psychopharmacological actions of these substances. Methods: Volunteers were sought from all open-AA meetings in Nashville, TN during the summer of 2007 to complete a questionnaire (n = 289, completion rate = 94.1%) including time-line followback for coffee, cigarette, and alcohol consumption; the Alcoholics Anonymous Affiliation Scale; coffee consumption and effects questions; the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND); and the Smoking Effects Questionnaire. Results: Mean (±SD) age of onset of alcohol consumption was 15.4 ± 4.2 years and mean lifetime alcohol consumption was 1026.0 ± 772.8 kg ethanol. Median declared alcohol abstinence was 2.1 years (range: 0 days to 41.1 years) and median lifetime AA attendance was 1000.0 meetings (range: 4 to 44,209 meetings); average AA affiliation score was 7.6 ± 1.5. Most (88.5%) individuals consumed coffee and approximately 33% of coffee consumers drank more than 4 cups per day (M = 3.9 ± 3.9). The most common self-reported reasons for coffee consumption and coffee-associated behavioral changes were related to stimulatory effects. More than half (56.9%) of individuals in AA smoked cigarettes. Of those who smoked, 78.7% consumed at least half a pack of cigarettes per day (M = 21.8 ± 12.3). Smokers' FTND scores were 5.8 ± 2.4; over 60% of smokers were highly or very highly dependent. Reduced negative affect was the most important subjective effect of smoking. Conclusions: A greater proportion of AA participants drink coffee and smoke cigarettes in larger per capita amounts than observed in general U.S. populations. The effects of these products as described by AA participants suggest significant stimulation and negative affect reduction. Fundamental knowledge of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of coffee and cigarette consumption among AA members will enable future research to discern their impact on alcohol abstinence and recovery.

— In the capability approach to poverty, wellbeing is threatened by both deficits of wealth and deficits of agency. Sen describes that " unfreedom, " or low levels of agency, will suppress the wellbeing effects of higher levels of wealth. We introduce another condition, " frustrated freedom, " in which higher levels of agency belief can heighten the poverty effects of low levels of wealth. Presenting data from a study of female heads of household in rural Mozambique, we find that agency belief moderates the relationship between wealth and wellbeing, uncovering evidence of frustrated freedom.

Often invoked in both academic and popular discourse, the concept of hegemony carries many different meanings. Most frequently, it serves as a synonym for "political domination," a usage that is at once more precise and more ambiguous than the way it is employed in anthropology and culture studies. Coming from the Greek verb hegeisthai ("to lead"), the concept of hegemony in our tradition goes back through Antonio Gramsci to Karl Marx and his writings on "hidden" or "false consciousness," and further still, if we want to be exhaustive, to Aristotle's wariness of the masses. In essence, the Marxist usage of hegemony refers to a situation in which people are exploited and do not realize it. Marx was clearest on the point in his essay "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," in which he laments the fact that the French peasants were supporting a second coming of Napoleon Bonaparte through his nephew Louis Bonaparte, even though the nephew was selling out their patrimony to an emergent merchant class.' Marx disparages the French peasantry as ignorants duped by Napoleonic rhetoric into acting against their own self-interest: The mortgage debt burdening the soil of France imposes on the French peasantry an amount of interest equal to the annual interest on the entire British national debt. Small-holding property, in this enslavement by capital toward which its development pushes it unavoidably, has transformed the mass of the French nation into troglodytes. Sixteen million peasants (including women and children) dwell in caves, a large number of which have but one opening, others only two and the most favored only three. Windows are to a house what the five senses are to the head. The bourgeois order, which at the beginning of the century set the state to stand guard over the newly emerged small holdings and fertilized them with laurels, has become a vampire that sucks the blood from their hearts and brains and casts them into the alchemist's caldron of capital. The Code Napoldon is now nothing but the codex of distraints, of forced sales and compulsory auctions. 2

This article examines early colonial Kaqchikel Maya notions of the self, souls, and the heart. By integrating ethnohistorical data and contemporary ethnographic observations, we show that Kaqchikeles viewed the self as contingent on a dynamic balance of cosmic forces acting on the individual. The ways in which these forces are seen to effect one's state of being are documented through an extensive discussion of Kaqchikel metaphors of the heart and soul. We conclude by noting the importance of understanding processes of continuity (as well as change) in cultural constructions and argue for the continued utility of such approaches in ethnohistorical research. The present article examines Kaqchikel Maya notions of the self (and its physical and metaphysical referents) based on both eth-nohistoric sources and contemporary ethnographic data. We document the semantic categories most closely associated with early Colonial-period Kaqchikel notions of the self, elucidating their significance through comparison with data from other parts of the Mesoamerican culture area and from modern Kaqchikel concepts. From texts recorded on Classic-era (a.d. 250–900) stelae and pottery and from surviving Postclassic (a.d. 900–1550) codices, we know that the pre-Columbian Maya considered earthly existence (both individual and collective) to be closely connected to the cosmic realm; the primordial events which gave life to humankind and set the cosmos in motion were played out both on earth and in the celestial sphere. The animizing force behind Maya creation and life is in turn linked to the eternal cycles of time as measured by the movement of the sun, moon, and stars.

Ready To Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) and Ready To Use Supplementary Food (RUSF) have proliferated in recent years to treat acute and chronic malnutrition. Biomedical research has established the efficacy of these products, yet little is known about their actual effectiveness in real world settings. This article reports on an ethnographic study of the acceptance and use of RUSF within households in a rural Maya community in Guatemala (a country with the world’s third highest rate of chronic malnutrition). We found a number of surprising obstacles to RUSF effectiveness. There is a strong commitment to breastfeeding (supported by public health messages of local NGOs as well as culturally perceived benefits) that leads to sub-optimal complementary feeding after six months. We also found instances of off-label sharing and confusion over relative nutritional values. We present a framework for maximizing RUSF effectiveness that involves nutritional education, positive peer support, and the framing of the product as a medicine

This article examines non-traditional export production of broccoli, snow peas, and other crops in Guatemala. Focusing on Maya farmers, exporters, and government development officials, we trace the production of the desire to grow these crops, to make some extra money, and to enhance local and national economies. We find that the export business has left farmers shortchanged even as it has opened new possibilities of algo más (something more or better). We examine how this empirical paradox has emerged from the convergence and divergence of power relations and affective desires that produce the processes known as 'hegemony' and 'resistance'. We conclude by considering alternative ethnographic strategies for understanding the multifarious connections between power and desire, hegemony and culture. Luis Tecum, a middle-aged Kaqchikel Maya farmer living in a hamlet outside of Tecpán, Guatemala, works land that has been in his family for generations. He speaks nostalgically of the long days of hard labor that he and his father put in when he was young and of his regret at having to quit school at age 14 to work full time in the fields. Tecum is fortunate to have inherited almost two hectares of land, more than enough to support his family of five with maize and beans, staples of the local diet. In fact, Tecum plants about half of his land with crops that his family will not eat: broccoli, snow peas, and French beans. He sells these non-traditional export crops through a regional cooperative , earning enough to buy a pickup truck and add on to his house. At times, Tecum speaks enthusiastically about the potential of farmers to break into the export market, proclaiming it " the wave of the future " for smallholders who are willing to " work hard and

An ethnographic account of the putative shift away from state-sponsored violence and the emergence of new patterns of violence in postwar Guatemala challenges liberal political and moral models that narrowly interpret violence in terms of individual suffering and/or culpability. Such models converge with a resurgence of right-wing political activity. The origins and outcomes of violence are more usefully and accurately conceived in terms of structural and societal conditions. Guatemala’s new violence (e.g., crime, gang activity, and vigilantism) is not the chaos of media accounts but a manifestation of enduring legacies of state violence and the social and economic insecurities brought on by structural adjustment policies.

A great deal is at stake in understanding the moral dimensions of economic behavior and markets. Public debates over executive compensation, the fair trade movement, and recent academic inquiries into the limitations of rational-choice paradigms all point to the relevance of moral values in our economic decision-making processes. Moral values inform economic behavior. On its face, this proposition is unassailable. Think of the often spiritual appeal of consumer goods or the value-laden stakes of upward or downward mobility. Consider the central role that moral questions regarding poverty, access to health care, the tax code, property and land rights, and corruption play in the shaping of modern governments, societies, and social movements. Ponder the meaning of fair trade coffee and organic produce as well as Walmart’s everyday low prices. The moral aspects of the marketplace have never been so contentious or consequential; however, the realm of economics is often treated as a world unto itself, a domain where human behavior is guided not by emotions, beliefs, moralities, or the passions that fascinate anthropologists but by the hard fact of rational choices.

Anthropologists have historically tended to focus on the corrosive effects of markets on traditional lifeways and the ways in which global markets disadvantage marginalized peoples. Economists often have difficulty recognizing that markets are embedded in particular social and political power structures and that “free” market transactions are often less free than we might think. If anthropologists could view markets a bit more ecumenically and if economists could view them a bit more politically, then great value—cash on the table—could be found in bringing these perspectives together.

Emerging from the convergence of neo-liberal reforms, democratic
openings, and an increase of interest in indigenous issues among
international organizations, the growth of civil society in recent years
has dramatically altered the political-economic landscape of Latin America.
For a number of Latin American indigenous causes, civil society’s
surge in importance has been empowering, allowing access to funds,
national and international attention, and in some cases increases in de
facto and de jure autonomy. At the same time, the rise in the importance
of civil society goes hand in hand with the rise of neo-liberal
political and economic reforms that threaten the material bases of
indigenous culture and expose populations to the vagaries of private
funding. In this way, civil society also serves as an arena for neo-liberal
forms of governmentality.

Tracing the commodity chain of broccoli from Nashville, Tennessee supermarkets to Maya farmers in highland Guatemala, this paper examines relations of desire and political economic power. We argue that the global broccoli trade is shot through with desires—desires of Western consumers to eat healthy foods as well as desires for Maya farmers to get ahead economically. Such desires simultaneously subvert and sustain the hegemonic constellations that anchor crucial nodes in the international broccoli trade.