On Everyday Natures and Enchanted Landscapes: Worldmaking Practices and Rooted Cosmopolitanism in Guatemala’s Western Highlands

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, I explore how different meanings attached to social and natural landscapes in Guatemala’s Western Highlands inspire a sense of cosmopolitan imagination among those who are potentially less mobile and rooted in their own environment. I show how different manifestations of rooted cosmopolitanism in Chicabal and Santa Cruz la Laguna are mediated by residents’ engagements with these landscapes and how diverging human-environment relations shape cosmopolitan worldviews as they intersect with and encounter tourism dynamics. The landscapes in which these processes take form are described as dynamic realms of encounter between both local and global and human and nonhuman actors. By looking into the potentialities of rooted cosmopolitanism mediated by ideas of global connectedness, I seek to extend the notion of cosmopolitanism beyond tourists alone and, instead, examine how such interactions bring worldmaking practices of Maya inhabitants and nonhuman actors into the equation.