Distinguished members of The Tokyo Foundation and The Nippon
Foundation, ladies and gentlemen: It is deeply and personally
significant for me to receive this award. It means that socially
engaged scholarship by public intellectuals working in the social
sciences and humanities continues to be a central activity of
theirs and one that is perhaps more relevant than ever.

I am very impressed by the dedication of The Tokyo Foundation and
The Nippon Foundation in recognizing how critical social science
research is in a period of history when its importance is being
diminished by powerful interests.

I am committed to engaged scholarship, in
which activity I am being nurtured by several
mentors in the Department of Sociology of York
University, Canada?a university where John
Lennox, the dean of the Faculty of Graduate
Studies, encouraged me to accept the
nomination for this award, for which he, Dr.
Alan Simmons, and community worker Grissel
Orellana offered their unconditional support.

To me, engaged scholarship means active involvement with others
who are working positively toward the achievement of social
justice through both the production of moreaccurate knowledge and
the formation of community partnerships. This means rigorously
applying the most appropriate, critical, and innovative
epistemologies, from which the everyday world is not left out but
rather is linked to a web of social relations. Such an approach
goes deeper and leads to a moreinsightful analysis of the
obstacles to change, the conditions necessary for rapid social
improvement, and the possibilities, even minimal, of involving?as
active participants in positive social, economic, and political
change those who are marginalized. I learned to value this type of
scholarship during my fieldwork in Guatemala. It was there where I
developed a more dynamic sociological imagination to see and to
analyze through sociological ethnography, deep interviewing,
teamsurveys, focus groups, and other methodological strategies?
how, amidst extreme difficulties and paradoxes, many Maya women
are recuperating and reconfiguring the Maya "cosmovision", and
seeking the right to historical memory as sites for building a
moreinclusive society.

I, along with others, think that engaged research also reaffirms
the indivisibility of human rights and citizenship rights?
indivisibility that in practical terms means bringing to the
center social, economic, and cultural rights as pivotal elements
in eradicating poverty, exploitation, and subordination in all
their dimensions.