Cognitive and Geographic Maps: Study of Individual Variation among Tojolabal Mayans

Abstract

Disease and geography are related domains for Tojolabal-Maya. Using multidimensional methods, we compare two domains: (1) individual cognitive mapsfrom disease terms and (2) hand-drawn maps, both with one another and with an official topographic map. Multivariate study of individual informant data demonstrates correspondence of the axes of maps. Least squares fitting of dimensional representations using a method specifically modified for ethnosemantic data allows meaningful comparisons both among and within informants, and with an aggregate from a related survey of 33 informants as well. These multivariate operations help integrate individual data, sampled simultaneously for several domains, tasks, and occasions, with aggregate data. For semantic domains, we achieved rapprochement between psychological and anthropological approaches. [disease, folk theories, ethnosemantics, cognition, multivariate, Tojolabal-Maya] DISEASE AND GEOGRAPHY ARE RELATED DOMAINS for the Tojolabal, a Mayan Indian group of about 30,000 living in the southern part of Chiapas, Mexico.' Using multidimensional scaling, we study the two domains. We compare individual cognitive maps from disease terms and hand-drawn geographic maps, both with one another and with an official topographic map. In studying the cognition of disease among the Tojolabal, our concern has been to learn the meanings of disease terms to the native. This problem holds both practical and theoretical interest: practical because modern health care delivery systems are now being extended to the Tojolabal zone, and their acceptance is sometimes problematic; theoretical because this work bears on a classic strand of investigation in cognitive anthropology, testing for psychological reality.