Mothers’ Reflections on Generational Changes in Childhood in a Mayan Town: Globalization Challenges to Convivencia/Togetherness

• In Event:  Collaboration, Togetherness, and Mutuality; Strengths of Learning among Indigenous Children and Families of the Americas

Abstract

This study challenges "chronocentric" views of child development by examining how children's and families' everyday lives have changed across generations in an Indigenous community that has experienced rapid changes associated with globalization. We join several scholars who have demonstrated that ways of learning and interacting change as the circumstances of child and family life transform over generations (Bronfenbrenner, 1986; Cole, 1996; Corona, 2011; Rogoff, 2003, 2011; Rosado-May et al., 2020; Saxe, 2012; Settersten et al., 2021). We examine Guatemalan Mayan mothers' views of the dramatic changes in childhood in their town associated with globalization, which appear to have decreased togetherness since their own childhoods 30 years before when their families had participated in previous research by Rogoff and her colleagues. We make the argument that globalization has decreased this Mayan town's family and community togetherness – convivencia – based on the mothers' comments regarding such changes as family size, mothers' work, and children's community roles, technology use, and helping at home.

In our work, we examine the practice of convivencia – togetherness – which is an everyday concept in family and community life in many Indigenous communities of the Americas. This concept refers to being together with full presence, seeing each other often, engaging in frequent conversations, enjoying interdependence, recognizing the sharedness of life. Convivencia appears to be highly valued among many Mexican, Central American, and other Indigenous communities of the Americas, where engaging in group activities is often preferred to solitary work, as people perform most of their daily activities alongside others (e.g., Briggs, 1970; Bolin, 2006). Convivencia often happens as family and community members of different ages engage in a range of everyday activities (Thomas, 1958). The concept of convivencia is related to concepts of relationality, comunalidad, and care that have received attention in the study of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (e.g., Battiste, 2002; Cajete, 2000, 2015; Chandler, 2013; Martínez Luna, 2010; Murray, 2017; Teuton et al., 2012; Urrieta, 2013).

Authors

• Itzel Aceves-Azuara, California State University - Sacramento
  Presenting Author

• Barbara Rogoff, University of California - Santa Cruz