June Nash facts for kids

June C. Nash (May 30, 1927 – December 9, 2019) was an important anthropologist. She studied people and cultures, especially focusing on how societies work and how women fit into them. She was a professor at the City University of New York (CUNY).

June Nash traveled a lot for her research. She worked in the United States and Latin America, especially in Bolivia, Mexico, and Guatemala. She also supported women's rights and worker's rights movements, like the Zapatistas in Mexico.

Early Life and Learning

June Caprice Bousley was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1927. She earned a Bachelor's degree in economics from Barnard College in New York City. After college, she worked for a year in Washington, D.C. as a statistician.

Then, she decided to travel to Mexico. She first visited Acapulco, but later went to the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico. There, she worked with the American Friends Service Committee on projects in Maya communities.

This experience made her very interested in the Maya peoples. So, Nash returned to the U.S. to study more. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1960. Her Ph.D. paper was about the social life in a town called Amatenango del Valle in Chiapas, Mexico.

A Career of Discovery

June Nash had a long and active career as an anthropologist, lasting 50 years. She taught at Yale University and New York University before joining CUNY in 1990. Her work appeared in many different academic magazines.

She also helped make two ethnographic films. One was called I Spent My Life in the Mines, about her work in Bolivia. The other was Community and Industrial Cycle, about her studies with General Electric workers in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Nash received several awards for her important work. These included the Conrad Arensburg Award (1992) and the American Anthropological Association's Distinguished Service Award (1995). She also received the Kalman Silvert Award (2004) from the Latin American Studies Association.

Two awards for students were created in her honor. The Roseberry-Nash Award helps graduate students studying Latin American anthropology. The June Nash Travel Award helps graduate students attend the annual AAA meetings.

Field Work and Activism

June Nash's research often showed her strong beliefs. She used her studies to highlight social problems and help people. She believed that anthropology was about living with people and understanding all parts of their lives. She said, "It's a method of living with people."

Nash started her field work in Chiapas, Mexico, and returned there many times. She also visited Mexico and Guatemala often. Her research focused on how people live with nature and find new ways to develop their communities.

Studying Tin Miners in Bolivia

Nash traveled to Bolivia to study tin miners. She looked at how big systems and power differences affected their lives. In her book We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (1979), she wrote about the miners' struggles. She admired their courage in trying to keep their way of life.

Her book showed how individual experiences were connected to larger social and economic issues. This way of studying local life to understand big political changes was very new at the time. It helped shape how anthropologists do research today.

In 1992, her book about a miner named Juan Rojas was published in English as I Spent My Life in the Mines. Nash became very close with Rojas and his family. This helped her understand the life of a tin miner deeply. She felt that Juan Rojas chose her to tell his story. Nash, Rojas, and Eduardo Ibanez also shared these stories in a film called I Spent My Life in the Mines in 1977.

Looking at Global Business

June Nash often studied how globalization and capitalism affected people. After her work in Bolivia, the tin miners asked her about working conditions in U.S. companies. This led her to study General Electric workers in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (1989).

Later, she returned to Chiapas and wrote Crafts in the World Market. This book showed how traditional artisans (people who make things by hand) were connected to the global market. Her recent work continued to explore how global changes affect local communities. For example, she studied how rum and Coke became part of traditional and ritual uses in Guatemala and Chiapas.

Chiapas and the Zapatistas

Nash wrote a lot about the Maya communities in Chiapas, Mexico. She covered topics like violence, politics, and artisan crafts. After the Zapatista rebellion in 1994, Nash shared her unique insights. She had worked in Chiapas since the 1950s.

She described the Zapatista movement as a "radical democratic mobilization." This meant it was a strong movement for democracy by people who felt left out. Nash also pointed out that the Zapatistas were reacting to a global trend where conflicts involving indigenous peoples were becoming more military.

Nash noted that women made up 30% of the Zapatista movement. She believed this was partly because a women-led pottery group formed in the 1970s. This group, even though it wasn't always active, became a source of strength for women when the Zapatistas started.

In her book Mayan Visions, she explained the history of the Maya in Chiapas. She helped readers understand how the Zapatista movement grew because of global capitalism and globalization.

Women's Roles in Latin America

June Nash was very important in making gender a key area of study in Latin America. She edited books like Sex and Class in Latin America (1976) with Helen Safa. These books explored how gender and social class were connected. Nash was among the first to critically analyze women's lives in Latin America.

She wrote about how women often worked hard but had little control over what they produced. She said they were "seen but rarely heard."

Later, some feminists criticized Nash for her ideas about women's roles in the Zapatista movement. She wrote that traditional gender roles were being renewed. Nash argued that women using traditional ideas about themselves could be a powerful tool in social movements. She believed it was important to look beyond the words and understand why these movements created a common image for indigenous groups.

Personal Life

In 1951, June C. Bousley married Manning Nash (1924-2001). He was also an anthropology student at the University of Chicago. After her master's degree in 1953, she joined him for field work in Guatemala. In 1960 and 1961, they worked together in Burma, studying marriage and families.

Later, in 1972, she married Herbert Menzel (1921-1987), a sociology professor. In 1997, she married Frank Reynolds, a professor of religious history. June Nash had two children from her first marriage, Eric and Laura.

June Nash passed away on December 9, 2019, at the age of 92.