Books by Jacques M. Chevalier

About the author?

Books by

Jacques M. Chevalier

(authored or co-authored)

CIVILIZATION AND THE STOLEN GIFT: CAPITAL, KIN AND CULT IN EASTERN PERU. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1982, 467 pp. Preface by E. Laclau.

The Spanish-speaking mestizos of the Peruvian Pachitea Valley and the Arawak-speaking Campas living in the rugged territory of the upland Pachitea are the subjects of this revealing study. Chevalier examines the interplay of economic, kinship, and cosmological practices within two interacting societies: an indigenous population, and a mestizo society subjected to the influence of wider national and international forces. The book starts off with an outline of a post-structuralist theory of culture and economy -- a provocative rejection of theories that reduce the widespread phenomenon of historical 'syncretism' to a gradual process of 'modernization' or 'class polarization.' It also proposes a conception of society that does away with the notion that material practices are distinguishable from the mental moments of cultural activity.

Set in this broader theoretical context, the author covers a wide range of issues such as the social and ecological conditions of Amazonian slash-and-burn agriculture, the resistance of peasants and wage-workers to hinterland capitalism, and the intervention of capital, state, and church in the manipulation of pre-Hispanic forms of production, trade, and warfare. The author also addresses issues of social organization and reveals how the articulation of specific forms of kinship and economic organization affects observable patterns of residence, sex, and marriage. The analysis includes an in-depth discussion of the godparental complex and a study of indigenous shamanic rituals, their internal logic, and their relationship to the social fabric of both Campa tribespeople and the poverty-stricken segments of mestizo society.

SEMIOTICS, ROMANTICISM AND THE SCRIPTURES, Approaches to Semiotics 88, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin & New York,1990, 364 pp.

To order go to http://www.degruyter.de/

This monograph offers detailed analysis of the New World "model woman," the choice daughter of Acadie bearing the celebrated named of Evangeline. More broadly, the book is a contribution to theories of intertextual semiotics as applied to English poetry, popular cultural history, and biblical mythology. The work combines theoretical discussions with concrete interpretive analyses ranging from ancient astrology to scriptural imagery and modern poetry. The theoretical perspective of the book, a method called 'scheme analysis', is applied to the intertextual reading of the erotic and ascetic imageries deployed in New World and Old World visions of Genesis.

A LAND WITHOUT GODS: PROCESS THEORY, MALDEVELOPMENT AND THE MEXICAN NAHUAS, Co-authored by J. M. Chevalier and Daniel Buckles, Zed Books and Fernwood Publishing, London and Halifax, 1995, 374 pp. http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=631

To order go to http://www.zedbooks.demon.co.uk/home.htm

The book is a comprehensive, theoretically-informed study of a Nahua speaking population of farmers and fishers living on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Chevalier and Buckles address the impact of current developments in the Mexican cattle-raising and petro-chemical industries on both the economy and the socio-cultural fabric of the Gulf Nahuas of southern Veracruz. The objectives of the book are broad inasmuch as they involve many central issues in the anthropological discipline: the causes of underdevelopment, the role of self-employed labor in hinterland economies, the impact of extractive capitalism on native patterns of ecological adaptation, and also the response of indigenous culture to alien forms of livelihood and social relations. The research draws upon the theoretical contributions of the researchers in the corresponding fields (anthropology of underdevelop-ment, semiotic analysis) while also adding to our knowledge of Mexican native society.

LA RESERVA ESPECIAL DE LA BIOSFERA, SIERRA DE SANTA MARTA, VERACRUZ: DIAGNOSTICO Y PERSPECTIVA. Project Coordinators: Luisa Paré O., Daniel Buckles, and Jacques M. Chevalier. Contributors: Emilia Velázquez H., Rafael Gutiérrez M., Fernando Ramírez R., Álvaro Hernández D., Marta Patricia Lozada R., Hugo Perales R., José Luis Blanco R. UNAM and Secretaría de Medio Ambiente, Recursos Naturales y Pesca, México, 1997, 118 pp.

This is one of many publications resulting from an IDRC-supported project involving the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Carleton University, a project aimed at generating information and analyses needed to formulate a sustainable social and economic development strategy for the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz, Mexico. In contrast to preservation strategies that seek to exclude or greatly restrict the utilization of living resources within particular areas, the research project promoted a resource-use strategy that addresses problems of poverty and inequality while also maintaining essential ecological processes and the sustainable utilization of species and eco-systems. The research project also sought to ensure that the regional population participated fully in the formulation of alternative development strategies. This approach to sustainable development involved a thorough examination of the ecological, economic and political realities of rural life in the region by a twelve person interdisciplinary team of scientists, community development workers and local research assistants. This activity resulted in the formulation of a concrete proposal for a bio-economic reserve designed to promote equitable and sustainable growth in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas.

A POSTMODERN REVELATION: SIGNS OF ASTROLOGY AND THE APOCALYPSE. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, and Vervuert, Frankfurt, 1997, 416 pp.

To order go to http://www.utppublishing.com/detail.asp?TitleID=1596

While prophecy has been the language of the Church and the saints, astrology has taken its inspiration primarily from the "pagan" world. In its own convoluted way, the New Testament Apocalypse speaks to this grand battle between the Verb and the heavenly spheres. Chevalier's close reading of John's visions of the End shows how Revelation makes it a point of undoing and dismantling the "heathenish" views of astrology and related principles of sidereal divination. In his dialogue with pagan astro-mythologies of Antiquity, John insists on downgrading the visible spheres of heaven to markers of time and sign-manifestations, metaphors and messengers of invisible spirits dwelling above the vault of heaven. Much like Judaism, Christianity decrees that bodies of heaven must never be treated as divinities in their own right. Accordingly, Revelation is written in such ways as to co-opt stars and planets into subserving the higher rule of Logos -- a timeless, immaterial divinity sending signs of His Will to inhabitants of the Earth on the verge of being destroyed and renewed.

Chevalier goes on to explains how in the modern era ancient visions of "signs of things to come," prophetic and astrological, have been supplanted by institutions of secular learning and the growth of modern academia. Accordingly, in lieu of concerning themselves with visions of the future (as in Antiquity and the Middle Ages), scholars interpreting the scriptures are now bent on pursuing signs of the origins of text and cultural context. Popular interest in divining the future through horoscopes has survived but only on the fringe of the "high cultural" achievements of science (astronomy), religion (Christianity), literature, and art.

A Postmodern Revelation explores these issues by looking at the fate of astrology and apocalyptic prophecy in Western history. The author also discusses old and new conceptions of the sign process and what current fears and hopes of the billennium reveal about the End -- the downfall of modernity and of all grand narratives inspired by secular ideals of the French Revolution, liberal democracy, the forward march of science, the industrial revolution, socialism, the Welfare State, and the Affluent Society.

Last but not least, the analyses presented in this book are situated against the background of what major contemporary theorists have had to say about signs of astrology and the Apocalypse: they include Foucault, Jung, Derrida, Lévi-Strauss, Cassirer, Adorno, Barthes, Frye, Lawrence, and Morin.

Chapter 1 in:

Chapter 1: Conflict Management: A Heterocultural Perspective, byJacques M. Chevalier and Daniel Buckles. In Cultivating Peace Conflict and Collaboration in Natural Resource Management, edited by Daniel Buckles IDRC/World Bank 1999.

Research on community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has paid little attention to key assumptions it uses in the analysis of conflict and conflict management. The concepts of pacifism, egalitarianism, communalism, secularism, and rationalism are built into the community-based approach to natural resource management and are often treated as universal principles. In this paper, we examine differences in cultural perspectives on these assumptions. We also invite researchers to ground their practice of conflict management in the different social and cultural settings they encounter. Through the use of a conversational style of presentation and reference to cases presented in this volume, we attempt to bring the reader closer to oral forms of community-based politics, learning, and teaching, as an alternative approach to resolving differences in perspectives on the meaning of conflict and conflict management.

Text in English: http://www.idrc.ca/books/899/101cheva.htm

Texte en français: http://www.idrc.ca/books/945/101cheva.htm

Texto en español: http://www.idrc.ca/books/939/101cheva.htm

In this three-book exploration of signs and synapse, Chevalier explores the links between brain science, studies of symbolism, and debates in ancient, modern, and postmodern philosophy to shed light on how brain and signs in language actually interface. In The 3D Mind the author pursues this dialogue across disciplines through an elegantly simple plan that mirrors the three-dimensional structure of the brain, proceeding from the saggital (right-left) to the axial (top-down) and the coronal (front-rear) dimensions of neuropsychology. While maintaining biological reductionism at bay, Chevalier demonstrates how concepts of logic, affect, and memory adapted from several disciplines and perspectives actually work in concrete symbolic settings ranging from scenes of Adam and Eve to memories of Ground Zero tragedy. Illustrative material also includes frog and beaver tales in Canada, shoe fetishism and body piercing, corn mythology in native Mexico, and scorpion demons in the Book of Revelation.

HALF BRAIN FABLES AND FIGS IN PARADISE: THE 3-D MIND, VOLUME 1. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 2002, 197pp.

To order go to http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=631

Half-Brain Fables and Figs in Paradise starts the trilogy on the lateral plane and explores the tendency of each hemisphere to specialize but also to complement or supplement the other hemisphere. Brain and sign processing is thus shown to involve bimodal weavings or reticles of right-hemispheric similarities and left-hemispheric differences. Chevalier goes on to illustrate how whole-brain connectivity generates the crisscrossings of oppositions and metaphors in language, using symbolically rich material ranging from Western naming practices to expressions of ethnobotany in the bible (figs in Genesis), poetry (Longfellow's Evangeline), and native Mexican mythology. Three major philosophical implications follow from Chevalier's "theoreticle" perspective on the weavings of signs and synapse. First, the integrative concept of "nervous sign processing" should be substituted for models of the brain and the intellect that separate biology from mental and cultural activity. The subject matter of "semiosis" is both physical and communicational. Second, sign reticles are orderly and chaotic at the same time. They are subject to patterns of convergence but also to lines of divergence that defy simple modeling, whether analytical or dialectical. Third, sign events are governed by the principle of conferencing, not referencing. They do not refer to things or thoughts signified through representational means. Rather they confer meaning through "signaptic" conversations, reticles of fine lines evolving in language and in neural cells alike.

THE CORPUS AND THE CORTEX: THE 3-D MIND, VOLUME 2. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 2002, 288pp.

To order go to http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=329

While The 3-D Mind 1 started the trilogy on the lateral plane (right and left hemispheres), The Corpus and the Cortex looks at brain and sign processing from an axial, or vertical, perspective, with an emphasis on neural projections that divide and connect the neocortex and the lower emotional system. It is on this plane that the mind draws lines between right and wrong, pleasure and pain, the practical and the impractical, the lawful and the lawless. The vertical axis also generates variations in levels of attention, ranging from the full awareness of "higher mental faculties" to the inhibitions of hyperpolarization and the autonomic impulses of lower brain and body activity. Signs and synapse are thus constantly wrapped in the foldings of judgments, emotions, and impulses of all kinds.

Chevalier shows how the attentions and inhibitions of affect and norm are best understood at the crossroads of several disciplines, including neuropsychology, semiotics, and philosophy. He delves into these linkages, with an emphasis on the reciprocal concessions between the pleasure principle and the teachings of normative language (moral, rational). These mutual allowances of sentiment and judgment go far beyond cognitive models of the mind. They also bridge the Freudian and Kantian gap between self-enjoyment and morality. Far from being constantly in struggle, The Corpus and the Cortex shows that norms and infractions are the warps and wefts of a single "neurosemiotic" fabric. Symbolic analyses illustrating these intriguing manifestations of brain, language, and culture range from personal anecdotes to cultural identity rhetoric, animal farm imagery, shoe fetishism, and body piercing. The 3-D Mind 2 presents these analyses against the background of theories and debates concerning concepts of identity construction, metaphor, rhetoric, simulation, consciousness, morality, and eroticism.

SCORPIONS AND THE ANATOM'Y OF TIME: THE 3-D MIND, VOLUME 3. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal and Kingston, 2002, 224 pp.

To order go to http://www.mqup.mcgill.ca/book.php?bookid=1248

The first two books in Jacques Chevalier's The 3D Mind trilogy dealt with the horizontal and vertical planes of brain science and their relevance for a better understanding of signs in culture and language. Scorpions and the Anatomy of Time brings the trilogy onto a third and final plane, the associative fibers that connect the rear lobes to the anterior regions of the brain. This is the coronal plane that governs the weavings of remembrance and anticipation, recollections of the past and expectations of the future. Chevalier shows that while brain and sign processing caters to events that succeed in attracting our attention, it also provides means to produce silence where unawareness is called for. Some inattention to things that are no longer or not yet is a requirement of the plotting of signs of hope and apprehension folding and unfolding in narrative time. The end result is a complex calculus of recollection, anticipation, and hope combined with traces of deferment, forgetfulness, and fear. This intricate "time-machine" built into language and the brain governs the "working memory system," an active memory operating by necessity in the present tense. The author explores these issues in light of what philosophers such as St. Augustine, Kant, Heidegger, and Lévi-Strauss have said about memory and the nature of time. Arguing against all static and apocalyptic conceptions of time, Chevalier applies his own blending of "neurosemiotics" and Ricoeurian hermeneutics to the interpretive analysis of narrative plots ranging from a cat drawn by a child to intriguing speculations on the hot and the cold in Mexican Nahua agriculture. The 3-D Mind 3 also looks at prophecies of demonic scorpions in the Book of Revelation, and signs of the End heralded by the tragedy of Ground Zero.

Excerpt on September 11 event

THE HOT AND THE COLD: ILLS OF HUMANS AND MAIZE IN NATIVE MEXICO, Co-authored by Jacques M. Chevalier and Andrés Sánchez Bain, University of Toronto Press, 2002, 285pp.

To order go to http://www.utppublishing.com/detail.asp?TitleID=2552

Is folk medicine in Latin America a legacy of ancient Mesoamerican thought, as López Austin argues? Or is it a product of the Hippocratic humoral doctrine brought by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, as Foster claims (1994)? The debate is certainly not trivial. It goes beyond an academic interest in folk thoughts and behavior. At stake is the recognition or denial of an indigenous tradition informing the prevention and treatment of ill health in humans and food plants, ailments ranging from diarrhea to snakebites, heat of the dead, lovesickness, soul theft, and milpa drought.

Based on extensive fieldwork in southern Veracruz, the book shows how pre-Hispanic notions of heat and cold continue to shape native Mexican ideas about health and illness affecting humans and maize plants growing in the milpa. Notions of what is frio and what is caliente are not reducible to temperature understood in the caloric sense and measured with the corresponding scales (i.e., thermometers). The analysis shows how non-thermal usages of hot-cold categories pervade the ways in which the Nahuas and Zoque-Popolucas of the Sierra Santa Marta think about their relationship with the land and all entities that surround them, including fellow human beings, plants, animals, and spirits as well.

Forthcoming,

slowly but surely...

please bear with me

FORTHCOMING: THE SOCIAL ANALYSIS SYSTEM

See SAS web page www.sas-pm.com

EMAIL JACQUES CHEVALIER