The Organization of Chipped-Stone Economies at Piedras Negras ...

for them, but also the status of who made those goods, who exchanges those goods (see
Mauss 1990:8), and on social norms regarding the use of those goods, it is impossible to
create a complete economic model that does not account for these symbolic and cultural
elements.
Symbolic capital, albeit too general a concept in many ways (see Wacquant
1993), provides a useful tool for conceptualizing some of the symbolic side of ancient
Maya economies. Although Bourdieu (1977:172) argued that the symbolic and cultural
elements of economic exchange to be a mask on “economic realities,” I tend to see the
symbolic nature of production and exchange to be integrated with, and thus not separable
from the movement of material through society (see Dobres 2000). Economic realities
did not always exist apart from the symbolic and cultural elements of production and
exchange. In other words, I do not agree with the Marxist strain of thought that runs
through much of Bourdieuvian theory, which focuses on ideology as a means to
exploitation and inequality (see Section 2.2).
Other aspects of practice theory that are useful for examining the symbolic nature
of economics are doxa, heterodoxy, and orthodoxy (see Section 2.3 for further
discussion). These ideas are useful for conceptualizing the degree to which social
practices are carried out discursively, and how those practices related to economic and
power relations. For Bourdieu, doxa, or doxic experience, describes those practices that
are carried out nondiscursively, and by virtue of the unconscious, playing out of daily
routines, the status quo of inequality is maintained. Inequality exists in the social
relations between those in positions of dominance, and those who do not realize they are
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