History of anthropological research in Central America

1
History of anthropological research in Central
America

• 24.09.2003

2
Readings

• Beals, R., R. Redfield S. Tax 1943.
  Anthropological Research Problems with Reference
  to the Contemporary Peoples of Mexico and
  Guatemala. American Anthropologist 45, 1-21.
• Hewitt de Alcántara, Cynthia 1984. Conclusions.
  In Anthropological perspectives on rural Mexico.
  London Routledge, pp. 178-191.

3
Discussion topics

• Main theoretical perspectives in Central America
  ethnography and criticism (Hewitt de Alcantara)
• Main topics in Central American ethnography
• The example of anthropology in Mexico
• Summer Institute of Linguistics

4
Theory major schools

• Evolutionism
• Particularism / culturalism
• Indigenismo
• Functionalism
• Cultural ecology
• Dependentismo / Marxism
• Other

5
Theory vs fact (I)

• Hewitt de Alcántara 70 years of systematic
  anthropological research in Mexico
• Can be extrapolated to CA
• Theoretical determination of anthropologists has
  influenced their ways of observing social
  phenomena
• Congruence between social setting and
  paradigmatic concerns
• Approach to countryside a function of the
  intellectual structure of schools, not of a
  random confrontation with life

6
Theory vs Fact (II)

• Search of settings and situations which fit their
  preconceived images partial and selective
  choice
• Yet in Kuhnian terms anthropologists acted
  scientifically
• Selective use of data common in anthropology
• E.g. Oscar Lewis - culture of poverty - poor
  people develop certain cultural and social values
  that prevent them from improving their situation,
  and thus enter a vicious circle (based on various
  ethnographies of Mexican families, Lewis
  presented just the facts that would prove his
  theory)

7
Theory vs Fact (III)

• Eg. Margaret Mead - studying gender issues and
  ageing in Samoa - interviewed the missionaries
  daughters instead of the local girls
• Eg. Napoleon Chagnon and the Yanomamös as fierce
  people

8
Theory - evolutionism

• Second half of the 19th century
• Not major trend in Mexican anthropology
• Underlying assumption of indigenismo
• So-called traditional societies represented an
  impediment to change

9
Theory particularism/culturalism (I)

• Franz Boas
• primitive" peoples in the static and
  non-historical framework
• isolated settlements
• The International School of American Archaeology
  and Ethnography (1911) - Jimenez Moreno,
  Weitlaner, Comas, Basauri, Mendieta y Nuñez,
  Fabila, Villa Rojas, and Beals
• mapping of "cultural areas"
• ethnographies of "pure" cultures (The Tepehuán,
  The Seri, The Cahita)

10
Theory particularism/culturalism (II)

• Later - the whole Mesoamerica regarded as one
  cultural area.
• The concept introduced to the anthropological
  discourse by Paul Kirchhoff in his article
  "Mesoamérica. Sus límites geográficos,
  composición étnica y carácteres culturales"
  (1943).

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Theory indigenismo (I)

• indigenistas - modified particularism
• After the Mexican Revolution (1910) - a growing
  concern for the integration of indigenous
  communities into the national society.
• indigenous groups are culturally distinct from
  the wider society
• Manuel Gamio (student of Boas) pioneer of
  Mexican anthropology and indgenismo
• The purpose of ethnographic fieldwork among the
  "small cultures", as he used to call them, was
  not so much to preserve cultural idiosyncrasies
  as to understand them in order to hasten their
  disappearance.

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Theory indigenismo (II)

• Gamio also launched comparative studies in CA
  ethnography
• Study of indigenous groups representative of
  seventeen regions of Mexico
• Only one study was completed - La Población del
  Valle de Teotihuacán (1922)
• Negative attitude towards the traditional
  life-style in rural areas
• Looked only for those issues that proved his
  point of view of backwardness

13
Theory indigenismo (III)

• Not all indigenistas shared Gamios pessimism
• Moises Sáenz - represented the anti-incorporationi
  st wing of indigenismo,
• study of a Tarascan village
• concluded that rural communities could not all be
  regarded as similar and that in some people were
  satisfied with their lives.
• Common to all indigenistas - they looked for the
  methods of initiating community development
  programs and modernisation policies.

14
Theory functionalism (I)

• areas with strong communal tradition
• derived explanations from the study of the
  microcosm alone
• treating communities as hypothetical isolates
• Malinowski, the main proponent of functionalism
  as a whole
• studied Oaxacan markets together with Julio de la
  Fuente in the early 1940s

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Theory functionalism (II)

• the functionalist approach in best exemplified by
  Robert Redfield's study of "folk communities"
• initiated the tradition of "community studies" in
  American anthropology
• a model of local communities as distinctly
  integrated and different from urban communities
• Tepoztlán A Mexican Village (1930)
• urban values and lifestyles as a threat and
  disintegrating force on local value-systems
• Later - folk-urban continuum

16
Theory functionalism (III)

• Reaction by Oscar Lewis
• Life in a Mexican Village Tepoztlán Restudied
  (1951)
• hottest dispute in the history of anthropology
• Redfield portrayed the village life as harmonious
  and integrated
• Lewis stressed hostility, jealousy and greed
• Other disputes over the same community
• Benedict and Thompson vs Goldfrank and Eggan over
  Pueblo Indians
• Mead vs Fortune over the male role among the
  Arapesh are just some

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Theory functionalism (IV)

• Methodologically Lewis' restudy of Tepoztlán was
  provocative
• the same village
• breach of anthropological etiquette
• unwritten rule of avoiding restudies
• theoretically marked a shift of perspective from
  stability and harmony to process and disharmony
  in anthropology as a whole
• Gluckman and the Manchester School

18
Theory functionalism (V)

• Foster (1967a), doing research in Tzintzuntzan,
  encountered mistrust, suspicion and fear rather
  than collectivism as an underlying feature of a
  rural community
• image of limited good" to explain the prevailing
  worldview
• psychological factors as the basic impediment to
  raising standards of living

19
George Foster
20
Theory functionalism (VI)

• Redfield's reply to Lewis' (1951 428-9)
  criticism
• I think that it is simply true that ... I
  looked at certain aspects of Tepoztecan life
  because they both interested and pleased m
• Agar - differences between Lewis' and Redfield's
  work caused their different personalities and
  backgrounds.
• Redfield - from impersonal and over-urbanized
  Chicago - tended to romanticize rural life,
  believing it to be closer to the "natural state"
  of human existence

21
Theory vs personal values (I)

• The great role played by personal value
  preferences in shaping the argumentation and
  perspective of an anthropologist
• e.g. Bernard 1988, Pelto and Pelto 1978)
• Not only a feature of anthropology or social
  sciences but in "hard sciences" - overlooked
  Feyerabend (1979) Against the Method

22
Theory vs personal values (II)

• Watson - The Double Helix (1970 13) science
  seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical
  manner imagined by outsiders. Rather, its steps
  forward are often very human events in which
  personalities and cultural traditions play major
  roles.
• Aya (1990) - most anthropologists studying
  peasant rebellions in 1960s and 70s have seen
  these as upheavals against capitalism, although
  the facts do not prove it.
• The reason - in the late 1960s and early 1970s
  the prevailing sentiment among academic
  intellectuals was anti-capitalist and they thus
  saw peasants also motivated by the same
  sentiment.

23
Theory - away from community

• Starting from the 1950s stepping out of the
  geographical confines of the isolated rural
  community and the temporal confines of the
  functionalist present
• Even if studying communities focus not on what
  separated rural people from the wider economic
  system but what integrated them with it.
• Communities part of socioeconomic region
• The latter placed within a framework of world
  capitalist system

24
Theory cultural ecology

• Julian Steward
• The picture of the Mexican countryside took the
  conceptual form of the levels of integration
• Communities part of a bigger system
• critical of geographical localism
• rural communities are increasingly integrated
  into ever-wider spheres of interaction
• villages linked to others through various
  mechanisms in both rural and urban settings and
  the latter to others at the apices of national
  and international networks of power

25
Julian Steward
26
Theory dependentismo (I)

• Marxism, historical structuralism
• 1960s and 1970s
• Chain of exploitation extending from metropolitan
  centers of capitalist accumulation to the most
  remote areas of Third World
• center vs periphery
• Modernization vs dependency theory
• Opposed to localism and preferred to apply
  generic laws to the whole of the countryside
• Focused on poverty (something that functionalists
  had not seen)

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Theory dependentismo (II)

• Regiones de refugio (Aguirre Beltran)
• Indian communities engaged in the subsistence
  cultivation of maize, with methods going back to
  before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century.
• poor communications, adverse geophysical factors,
  and relatively high concentrations of population

28
Theory dependentismo (III)

• particularly concerned with the impact of
  capitalist development upon rural society and
  what in 1950s became to be called "peasantry"
• already Redfield and Kroeber in the 1940s
  regarded peasantry as a specific category.
• In studies by Mexican anthropologists, however,
  the study of peasantry was strongly influenced by
  the classical Marxist concepts
• "mode of production", "social class", "value",
  "income" etc

29
Theory dependentismo (IV)

• Eric Wolf and Sydney Mintz
• peasant/indigenous community as intrinsically
  integrated in (as well as a product of) national
  political and economic relations, but on unequal
  terms
• different social relations that sustain the
  peasant community
• vertical (patron-client)
• horizontal (compadrazgo)

30
Theory dependentismo (V)

• The theoretical perspective having changed,
  anthropologists started also to see different
  things in communities.
• Wolf - "coalitions" between peasants
• Foster - "dyadic contracts"
• Earlier - communities had been regarded as having
  collective identities, now an individual stepped
  on the stage
• life-history method was used most extensively in
  numerous ethnographies by Oscar Lewis , as well
  as Paul Friedrich and others

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Theory - other

• New theoretical paradims
• post-structuralism,
• symbolist approach,
• interpretative anthropology

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Theory conclusions (I)

• Hewitt de Alcántara - change in perspective can
  be attributed to
• change in the basic characteristics of the rural
  socio-economic and cultural field
• the post-war facilitation of communication
  between European and American scientists and the
  consequent adoption of European concepts
• The near-subsistence cultivators no more
  "peasantry" in the 1960s than in the 1860s
• The new concept to Central America from Europe
  through the medium of European social scientists
• translation of Marx

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Theory conclusions (II)

• theoretical predispositions have an impact on
  anthropological practice
• anthropologists in the field and perception of
  the surroundings were (and are) influenced by
  particular schools and paradigms.
• They look for material that supports their
  hypotheses
• the production of new kind of information
  generally seems to have followed, rather than
  preceded, the paradigmatic change.
• the changes in social scientific paradigms
  reflect the social structure of the disciplines
  rather than their subject matter.

34
Topics (I)

• 1) Studies of Native American indigenous cultures
  and communities
• Till 1960s
• internal structuring of indigenous communities
• community studies
• cultural content
• 2) Studies of the social processes
• Since 1960s
• peasant studies
• modernization and industrialization
• relations between local community and the wider
  society
• Migration, urbanization etc.

35
Topics (II)

• Folk Catholicism
• Fiestas, syncretism, religious change, religious
  cargos
• Social structure
• Cargo system, socio-political hierarchy
• Social and power relationships
• Compadrazgo, tequio, guelaguetza etc
• Folk medicine
• Curanderas vs medicos

36
Topics (III)

•   Poverty and migration
• the barrios of the great cities,
• Oscar Lewis's (1961) study of one single family
  (Sánchez) as the classic text
• a distinctive a culture of poverty
•    Peasants, land and the relations of power
• Contemporary studies
• various articulations of modernity and identity,
  meanings and construction of gender, football,
  tango, and the notions of honor and shame

37
Mexican anthropology - origins

• origins in the Indian Laws introduced by the
  Spanish Crown in the 16th century
• Bernardino Sahagúns La Historia General de las
  Cosas de Nueva España
• Francisco Pimentel - in 1864 - Memoria sobre las
  causas que han originado la situación actual de
  la raza indígena de México y los medios para
  remediarla - a study of the problems of
  indigenous peoples of Mexico, and his solutions
  to those problems

38
Mexican anthropology French impact

• Systematic social scientific studies in Mexico in
  the second half of the last century
• French military intervention to Mexico in the
  1860s
• Anthropology as a shadow following colonial
  powers
• In 1862 - Gosse, Auburtin and Le Bret - prepared
  the so-called Ethnological Instructions to be
  used in the study of indigenous peoples of Mexico
• Foundation of the Comission scientifique du
  Mexique in 1864.
• Instructions, which prescribed how to approach
  certain problems of the Mexican indigenous
  peoples anthropologically.
• Coindet and Jourdanet - first studies in Mexico
  in the field of physical anthropology

39
Mexican anthropology vs other regional schools (I)

• Early systematic Mexican anthropology very
  distinct from that of early British or US
  anthropology
• Anthropological research often congruent with the
  political and demographic dimensions of the
  particular country
• Early British anthropology
• mostly concerned with its former or at that time
  current overseas colonies in Africa and Asia
• orientated so that it would in the end lead to
  more effective exploitation of both natural and
  human resources in the (ex)colonies
• anthropologist limited to that of an advisor to
  colonial administration

40
Mexican anthropology vs other regional schools
(II)

• North American Anthropology
• not so much in service of the exploitation of
  people and resources of the overseas colonies,
  but the acculturation and incorporation of the
  internal ones
• its indigenous minorities living in the
  reservations.
• Mexican anthropology
• the great ethnic, linguistic and cultural
  diversity, together with the social and political
  doctrine of the Mexican Revolution, required an
  entirely different approach
• the task of Mexican anthropology to solve the
  countrys own major internal problems and not
  those of the overseas colonies or the countrys
  periphery

41
Mexican anthropology vs other regional schools
(III)

• mostly concerned with the integration and
  development of the countrys indigenous
  population
• developed into an applied social scientific
  discipline at the very beginning.
• Applied anthropology
• in the Anglo-American world emerged approximately
  during the decade of 1925-35.
• in the United States, the aim of which was to
  re-orient the politics of the Bureau of Indian
  Affairs in Washington, then headed by John
  Collier

42
Mexican anthropology (I)

• Although Manuel Gamio was the real initiator of
  the Mexican national anthropology, its roots can
  be traced back to the last decades of the 19th c.
• In 1887 - the first department of physical
  anthropology directed by Nicolás León
• In 1903 - the first Chair of Anthropology
• The aim of anthropology at that time, much in the
  Boasian tradition was just the collection of
  ethnographic and cultural data

43
Mexican anthropology (II)

• 1906 the Mexican government under the presidency
  of Porfirio Díaz passed the first law in favor of
  Indians (Tarahumarans).
• Many started to call for the acknowledgement of
  the cultural and sociological heterogeneity of
  the indigenous peoples of Mexico
• Molina Enríquez (1909)
• the indigenous element, composed of tribes and
  villages very different from each other, lacks
  unity. Every tribe, and every village is a
  unique sociological individual.

44
Mexican anthropology (III)

• In 1909 the National Museum of Archaeology,
  History and Ethnology (Museo Nacional de
  Arqueología, Historia y Etnología)
• In 1939 renamed the National Museum of
  Anthropology (Museo Nacional de Antropología)
• In 1910 the Mexican Indianist Society (La
  Sociedad Indianista Mexicana) in order to study
  indigenous peoples

45
Mexican anthropology (IV)

• In 1911 the International School of American
  Archaeology and Ethnology (La Escuela
  Internacional de Arqueología y Etnografía
  Americanas)
• a collaborative project of the Mexican and
  Prussian governments and the Universities of
  Columbia, Harvard and Pennsylvania,
• directed among others by Franz Boas, Edward
  Seler, George Engerrand, Alfred M. Tozzer and
  finally by Manuel Gamio
• In 1920 the publication of the first Mexican
  anthropological journal Ethnos

46
Mexican anthropology (V)

• The 1920s and 30s - cultural missions to various
  Mexican rural areas and the attempts to integrate
  and mexicanize the indigenous population
  (indigenismo)
• In 1922 the Mexican Rural School (La Escuela
  Rural Mexicana), the leading idea of which was
  integrity in action (integridad en acción).
• In the 1930s Escuela Rural lead by Moisés Sáenz,
  who was also the initiator of the first major
  project in applied anthropology in Mexico.

47
Mexican anthropology (VI)

• June 1932 - January 1933 - Saenz - Experimental
  Station for the Incorporation of the Indian,
  comprising 11 villages in the State of Michoacán.
  
• pretended to be an institute of ethnological and
  sociological studies
• the aim of - to culturize the Indians, improve
  their living conditions and achieve the
  integration of these communities.

48
Mexican anthropology (VII)

• The 1930s were also marked by an ever-increasing
  presence of North-American anthropologists in
  Mexico.
• Under the auspices of the Carnegie Institute in
  Washington and directed by Robert Redfield,
  numerous projects in various regions of Mexico
  began in 1930.
• The studies in the South-Eastern part of the
  country, especially in Yucatan and Chiapas,
  developed as a collaboration between the
  University of Chicago, the Viking Fund, and the
  National Institute of Anthropology and History of
  Mexico.

49
Mexican anthropology (VIII)

• In 1934, Beals, Tax and Redfield published a
  co-authored paper on the anthropological problems
  that had emerged in the investigation of Mexican
  indigenous groups and claimed that the major
  opportunities in these countries lie in the
  fields of community studies
• The North-American anthropological and academic
  presence in Mexico increased in the 1940s
• the Smithsonian Institution in Washington
  established the Institute of Social Anthropology
  in 1943
• directed first by Julian H. Steward, and later by
  George M. Foster

50
Mexican anthropology (IX)

• Anthropology gained an important place in Mexican
  academia
• In 1930, the Institute of Social Studies (El
  Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales) had been
  founded at UNAM
• In 1937 the Mexican Society of Anthropology (La
  Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología), directed by
  Alfonso Caso
• The increasing preoccupation with the problems of
  indigenous peoples lead to the birth of the
  National School of Anthropology (Escuela Nacional
  de Antropología) in 1938.

51
Mexican anthropology (X)

• In 1936, during the presidency of Lazaro
  Cardenas, the Autonomous Department of Indigenous
  Affairs (El Departamento Autónoma de Asuntos
  Indígenas) was opened, directed among others by
  Manuel Gamio and Julio de la Fuente
• 1946 the Ministry of Public Education established
  the Institute of Alphabetization in Indigenous
  Languages.
• Interamerican Institute of Indigenous Peoples
  (Instituto Indigenista Interamericano) in 1942,
  lead first by the same Manuel Gamio, and the
  already mentioned Insitituto Nacional Indigenista
  (INI) in 1948 by Alfonso Caso
• The foundation of INI also marks the birth of
  clear and systematic indigenous politics in
  Mexico  

52
Summer Institute of Linguistics (I)

• In 1934, the Summer Institute of Linguistics
  (SIL), originally founded at Oklahoma University
  by William Cameron Townsend, a former missionary
  of the Disciples of Christ
• Explicit aim - the study of indigenous languages
  and the compilation of dictionaries, grammars etc
  
• Implicit aim - christianize the indigenous
  peoples by translating the Bible into indigenous
  languages
• Some of the best linguists (eg. Kenneth Pike)
  were working for SIL, but in the end linguistics
  was just a tool in the service of religious aims
• SIL actually lead to castellanization and
  cultural homogenization

53
William Cameron Townsend
54
(No Transcript)
55
Kenneth Pike
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Summer Institute of Linguistics (II)

• The activities of the SIL in Mexico were
  authorised by President Cárdenas in 1936
• as a conscious strategy to reduce the costs of
  governments alphabetisation projects
• in the fear of another Cristero rebellion
• Friendship with Townsend
• In 1951, a contract between the SIL and the
  government
• authorised the SIL for the investigation of
  indigenous languages,
• the detailed study of cultural and biological
  characteristics of distinct indigenous groups in
  Mexico

57
Summer Institute of Linguistics (II)

• This meant that the SIL linguists and
  missionaries could move into rural communities,
  usually in couples, and live there for years,
  sometimes for decades
• Proselytism and conversion not the explicit aims
  of the SIL members
• recruiters of braceros, Mexican migrant workers
  to the United States

58
Summer Institute of Linguistics (III)

• Consequence - religious divisionism and in some
  cases overt confrontations
• in the 1970s, opposition against the SIL in
  various Third World countries
• In Mexico, this criticism emanated mostly from
  anthropological circles.
• In 1975, thirty anthropologists signed the
  document known as The Denouncement of Pátzcuaro
• The anthropologists initiative eventually led to
  the unilateral ending of the contract between the
  Mexican government and the SIL by the former in
  1979

59
Summer Institute of Linguistics (IV)

• Patzcuaro denouncement declared
• SIL causes divisions within the communities that
  constitutes a hindrance to their organisation and
  the defence of their communal rights
• SIL was an imperialistic tool
• related to the CIA
• propagating the gringo god
• The parallel drawn between the SIL members and
  16th century Catholic missionaries.
• Salomón Nahmád Those Americans are the Spanish
  Catholic missionaries of our time. They may not
  see it that way but they constitute the religious
  arm of an economic, political and cultural
  system. Theyre plainly part of American
  penetration.

60
Summer Institute of Linguistics (V)

• Different studies - generally hostile and
  emotional accounts that took the double
  identity of the SIL for granted, a stance that
  echoed from their very titles like Is God
  American?, Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire?
  and Mission Behind the Mission.
• Fernando Benitez - Catholic priests have actually
  caused considerably more destruction, making
  their services costly, having a great influence
  over the Indians, keeping them in superstition,
  promoting mayordomías, organising anti-Communist
  campaigns with the aim of retaining their
  privileges, never really helping the Indians, not
  fighting against their alcoholism, being allied
  with caciques and becoming parasites living off
  the exploited people

61
Summer Institute of Linguistics (VI)

• The ending of the contract has not led to the end
  of the SIL activities in Mexico, although it has
  changed their strategies and modes of work.
• The previous official centre of the SIL in Mitla,
  Oaxaca, now renamed The Linguistic Institute of
  Jaime Torres Bodet,
• 40 SIL members working in Oaxaca