Mayan People Within and Beyond Boundaries: Social Categories and Lived Identity in the Yucatan

Assisted Dying explores the law relating to euthanasia and assisted suicide, tracing its development from prohibition through to the laissez faire attitude adopted in a number of countries in the 21st Century. This book provides an in-depth critique of the arguments surrounding legislative control of such practices and particularly looks into the regulatory role of the state. In the classical tradition of libertarianism, the state is generally presumed to have a remit to intervene where an individual's actions threaten another, rather than harm the individuals themselves. This arguably leaves a question mark over the state's determined intervention, in the UK and elsewhere, into the private and highly personal choices of individuals to die rather than live. The perceived role of the state in safeguarding the moral values of the community and the need for third party involvement in assisted suicide and euthanasia could be thought to raise these practices to a different level. These considerations may be in direct conflict with the so called right to die espoused by some individuals and groups within the community. However this book will argue that the state's interests are and should be second to the interests that the people themselves have in choosing their own death.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Maps List of Illustrations List of National Geographic Plates List of Tables Preface 1. 1. The People of Oxkutzcab, Yucatan 2. Social Categories in Yucatan 3. External Constructions of the Maya 4. Maya and Mestizo : Two Different Worlds 5. Learning to be Indian : New Ethnic and Cultural Identities in Oxkutzcab 6. Voices In and About Popular Religion: The Competing Constructions of Participants and Authorities 7. Shared Social Experience and Co-developing Reflexivities 8. Conclusion Bibliography Index

About the Author :

Peter Hervik has a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and has taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Currently he is researching the Danish response to emerging multiculturalism. Hervik is the Editor of Folk-theJournal of the Danish Ethnographic Society.