Doubt, shame, and the Maya self
Abstract
This is an ethnography of the Maya of Cobá, Quintana Roo, México. More specifically, it is a psychocultural study of the Maya self---a study which analyzes cognitive understandings of social relations (with both ordinary and extraordinary beings) and the emotional colorings of those understandings. The key to understanding the Maya self is discovered to be the link between two powerful emotions, doubt and shame, as locally conceived and experienced. The relatively high instance of doubt within Maya social relations is tied to the relatively high instance of shame (and the relatively low significance of guilt). One effect of this study is to call into serious question the utility of a common set of distinctions in psychological anthropology: that between so-called "sociocentric" and "individualistic" selves. ^
Subject Area
Anthropology, Cultural
Recommended Citation
Robey Kenneth Callahan,
"Doubt, shame, and the Maya self"
(January 1, 2005).
Dissertations available from ProQuest.
Paper AAI3197654.
http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3197654
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