Who Counts? ─ The Mathematics of Death and Life After Genocide

In Who Counts? Diane M. Nelson explores the social life of numbers, teasing out the myriad roles math plays in Guatemalan state violence, economic exploitation and disenfranchisement, as well as in Mayan revitalization and grassroots environmental struggles. In the after-math of thirty-six years of civil war, to count—both numerically and in the sense of having value—is a contested and qualitative practice of complex calculations encompassing war losses, migration, debt, and competing understandings of progress. Nelson makes broad connections among seemingly divergent phenomena, such as debates over reparations for genocide victims, Ponzi schemes, and anti-mining movements. Challenging the presumed objectivity of Western mathematics, Nelson shows how it flattens social complexity and becomes a raced, classed, and gendered skill that colonial powers considered beyond the grasp of indigenous peoples. Yet the Classic Maya are famous for the precision of their mathematics, including conceptualizing zero long before Europeans. Nelson shows how Guatemala's indigenous population is increasingly returning to Mayan numeracy to critique systemic inequalities with the goal of being counted—in every sense of the word.

Diane M. Nelson is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University and a coeditor ofWar by Other Means: Aftermath in Post-Genocide Guatemala and author of Reckoning: The Ends of War in Guatemala, both also published by Duke University Press; and A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala.