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In Mesoamerica, the processes of making and using hand-woven cloth are well known ritual and mundane practices often regarded as markers of primordial identity and clear indications of deep historical continuities with the pre-Columbian past. This chapter analyzes a set of commemorative wall hangings from Tecpán, Guatemala from the perspective of ritual economy to argue that ritual weaving persists in contemporary Mesoamerica within global economic contexts. The Tecpán textiles contain multiple significations that, in addition to indicating cultural continuities and community identity, symbolically link hamlets to the municipality, represent development projects completed, and symbolize the connections these hamlets have to the broader global economy. This analysis of weaving and cloth is contextualized within the cultural and economic conditions of Tecpán in order to discuss the interrelationship between the ritual and the mundane, as well as what hand-woven cloth means to contemporary Maya weavers.

The temporary closure of Maya Bay – located at Phi Phi Le Island in Thailand’s Krabi province – was an executive decision made to overcome problems of “over-tourism” and degradation of the marine ecosystems. The purpose of this paper is to assess the process of stakeholder engagement by the Thai authorities before they arrived at decisions on the closure of Maya Bay.

A multi-method qualitative research through in-depth interviews and netnography was designed to examine opinions of participants within the context of investigation.

The key findings revolve around the central research question of “how are stakeholders managed and consulted to overcome ‘over-tourism’ in Maya Bay?”. The research question can be sub-divided into three parts – the identification of “over-tourism,” the process of engaging and consulting with stakeholders on solutions to deal with “over-tourism,” and the final decision on selected approaches to overcome “over-tourism.”

The researchers draw upon the views from the five groups of stakeholders to propose recommendations on tackling “over-tourism” issues that local governments and destination management agencies might face. A business, residents, authorities, visitors and environmentalists (BRAVE) stakeholders framework is proposed by integrating five main stakeholder categories – businesses (B), residents (R), authorities (A), visitors (V) and environmentalists (E). This “BRAVE” stakeholders model is then used to assess the various stakeholders’ positions on the issue of “over-tourism” in Maya Bay, including a cost-benefit analysis in an “over-tourism” situation. Particular attention is placed on how different stakeholders work together and converge on a decision accepted by all.

The most powerful and effective forces of hierarchizing are those that naturalize difference so that it is beyond dispute and something to be tacitly accepted. In the Classic Maya world, this “social speciation” was materialized and naturalized through a complex web of ritual practice, deity emulation, enhancement of body aesthetics, and the fabrication and possession of hypertrophic goods. The architecture of Classic Maya royal courts broke with an older Maya residential pattern of accretional construction filled with ancestral burials in order to materialize more effectively social difference, to provide space for exclusive ritual performance, and to showcase the highly valued and gendered labor of textile production. Such instruments of authority are “weapons of exclusion” that can be wielded to fend off assaults on hierarchy. From this perspective, informed by the ritual economy approach, the profound transformations of the 9th century in the Maya lowlands are considered an assault that was not defendable.

Building on theories of adolescent learning, including cognitive, personal, social, and moral development, this chapter considers how using media literacy techniques to analyze a children’s television program can create wide-awake, active learners while dissecting media messages. By analyzing children’s television for its portrayal of race and ethnicity, this chapter will explore the role media play in children's understanding of people and cultures outside of their own. A textual analysis of episodes of Maya & Miguel, the chapter describes the depiction of several cultures found represented on the program including White, Asian, African, Dominican, and Mexican and how race, ethnicity, and culture is framed in the television program.

Some theories suggest that television is a primary tool in the socialization of children. Children are attracted to the animation in cartoons, the colors, the movement and the easy-to-follow simplicity of the dialogue. Given the impressionable nature of children, it is possible that they begin to act out the biased nature of the cartoons they watch. Thus, considering their vulnerability, information literacy is relevant to discerning media messages. In this way, information literacy converges with media literacy and visual literacy. Guiding children to interrogate what they view is critically important especially when they are at an age where they can be easily influenced by misinformation or dominant messages. Additionally, the volume of information is steadily increasing in the 21st century as are the modes for accessing, creating and manipulating information. Thus, this work will demonstrate how promoting participatory learning by objectively viewing media and exercising reflective thinking will be important components of children’s education in this millennium.

“Dora! Dora!” squealed my 18-month-old son from his stroller on the crowded subway platform. I scanned the crowd but could not locate the source of his excitement. Then a young girl turned her back to us and I saw on her purple backpack the face of “Dora the Explorer,” whose name had made its way into my son's small vocabulary. This scene could have easily taken place in any city or town in the US; young children of all ethnicities are familiar with Dora's animated television program. Worldwide, parents have spent over $3 billion on Dora the Explorer merchandise since 2001, and most products feature English and Spanish phrases (Jiménez, 2005). And Dora is not alone: her show was just the first in a recent wave of animated educational children's programs featuring Latino main characters and dialogue in Spanish.

As destinations emerge from the crisis, a sustainability-focused recovery approach is necessary; thus, there is need to design action plans that are capable of managing the environmental impacts caused by cruise tourism and identify citical issues and priorities for sustainable tourism management in the post-COVID-19 era. This article presents a detailed overview of key issues facing cruise tourism in Mahahual – Costa Maya, the second most important port of entry/cruise destination in Mexico and areas of opportunity to cope with or manage change, both positive and negative. Areas of discussion include: local attitudes towards cruise tourism, government policies currently in place or in consideration that may impact cruise tourism, social or environmental projects that cruise companies should support in or around the host destination to foster sustainability after the pandemic. The analysis is based on desk-research, local stakeholder feedback/input, site visits and an evaluation of the destination's policies and practices against a selected number of indicators from Global Sustainable Tourism Council – GSTC's Criteria for Destinations (GSTC-D). Issues identified include: fear of rapid and uncontrolled growth of tourism before the pandemic (both cruise tourism and stay-over tourism), pollution and the loss of ecosystems/environmental degradation, disappointment due to low economic spill – lack of benefits from cruise tourism and limited public services and infrastructure (water and electricity, sewage treatment, garbage etc.). The researcher recommends regular and timely collection, recording, monitoring and public reporting of data about residents' aspirations, issues and satisfaction with destination management.

In this paper I explore how members of rural Maya households in central Quintana Roo (Mexico) interact with the wider social system and cope with long-term transformations in productive relations since c. 1840. Maya householders integrate elements of capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production. Through particular cultural forms they regulate internal uses of wealth and their relationships with the larger capitalist world. Social and economic stratification is a fundamental feature of life among Maya householders today as it was in the past. While disparities between wealth strata within the local context have increased, the community is far from disintegrating into antagonistic groups.

In 1992, a Kaq’chikel woman, Vera, told a tale of shapeshifting and dreams to me and the woman with whom she was staying while teaching weaving classes in Northern California. Laughingly, we were exploring the question of power between man and woman. Asked why she, a young woman, was the first to leave her town, Santa Catarina, to travel to North America, she cited a “lineage of power” back to her grandparents that turns on gender and reproductive roles. The following is a synopsis:The Nawal (Shapechanging) WifeHer grandfather had first a bad wife. This wife had no children. She was a woman who went out into the night and ran wild as a lion. The husband grew to be afraid and suspicious, even though she gave him something to make him sleep as if he were dead. One night he awoke anyway; his wife was not beside him. He went out of the house, taking his machete. He waits and he waits, and then it is big, crying “aieee”…“aieee” in the night and it is coming close, it is coming closer and he slashes with his machete, he slashes his machete and she dies. He knew and yet did not “know” that it was his wife. The head of the animal, which was now human, uttered words. She did not finally die until she was returned to the house of her father the next day.

There are numerous design principles that can guide strategic decisions and determine good product design. One principle that has received considerable attention in the literature is the MAYA principle, which suggests that consumers seek a balance of typicality and novelty in products. The purpose of this paper is to test the MAYA principle specific to various categories of apparel. By drawing from the MAYA principle as a two-factor theory, the effects of specific aesthetic properties (i.e. typicality and novelty) of apparel products on consumer response were examined.

An experimental design in three phases was implemented.

Results revealed that typicality is the primary predictor of aesthetic preference relative to pants and jackets, while both typicality and novelty are significant predictors of aesthetic preference relative to shirts, suggesting that the MAYA principle better explains aesthetic preference relative to shirts.

Understanding consumers’ reactions to product design provides potential value for academics as well as practitioners.

Consideration of both aesthetic properties is needed when implementing the MAYA principle in apparel design.

Although studies have examined the MAYA principle relative to consumer products, few have examined how the principle operates relative to apparel products. The definition of a design principle, such as the MAYA principle, assumes that the logic proposed should apply to all types of products. Yet, this empirical study reveals that this is not the case when applied across different apparel categories.

This chapter focuses on the dispositions and values of The Education Doctorate (Ed.D.) students in England and the United States as they conducted research, graduated, and entered their work communities.

We will present a brief review of the history of the Ed.D. and an explanation of signature pedagogy, which leads to a consideration of values, particularly as they relate to the connection between the researcher and the community. A synthesis of Banks (1991, 1998) description of the researcher’s position and stages of ethnic development provide a framework to analyze the experience of a doctoral student in England and a doctoral student in the United States.

The leaders developed multicultural dispositions through doctoral pedagogies that included the supervised creation of a doctoral thesis in a Higher Education Institution with access to resources. The resources included pedagogical relationships with program providers, a library and access to intellectual networks that built leadership capacity within the doctoral education system. Leaders designing and implementing their research and drafting and redrafting their doctoral thesis, engaged with pedagogies that developed a deep understanding of “what counts as evidence,” and critical and reflective thinking tools that enhanced their multicultural dispositions and habits of hearts, minds and hands.

The findings may contribute to informing decisions to invest in the doctoral dividend, policy and a research agenda into doctoral pedagogies.

New insights into the benefits of educational leaders investing in the doctoral dividend are revealed.