History of anthropological research in South America

1
History of anthropological research in South
America

• 2.2.2006

2
Readings

• Strickon (1964) Anthropology in Latin America.
• Roosevelt (1994) Amazonian Anthropology
  Strategy for a New Synthesis.

3
Discussion topics

• Anthropology in Latin America in general
• Anthropology in South America
• Highland cultures / the Andes / high cultures
• Lowland cultures / Amazonia / low cultures
• Two examples of applied anthropology
• Cornell Vicos Project
• Project Camelot

4
Anthropological particularity of LA

• Portuguese and Spanish influence
• gt specific singularity of Latin America
• Blending of colonial and precolonial
• Mestizaje Latin American essence
• racial ( fusion/mixing of races)
• linguistic
• cultural
• Syncretism

5
Anthropology in Latin America in general

• Uneven regional focus (Strickon)
• Mexico, Guatemala, Peru
• Brazil / Amazonia
• Caribbean
• Uneven scholarly contribution
• US anthropology
• UT Austin, U of Arizona, UC
• French anthropology
• 1860s in Mexico
• A few native schools
• Mexican, Brazilian anthropology
• Greater emphasis on applied projects

6
Anthropology in Latin America in general

• 19th century
• only sporadic interest (French)
• Gosse, Auburtin, Le Bret, Coindet, Jourdanet
• 1900s - 1920s
• Early anthropology in Latin America
• Native (Gamio)
• European (Steinen, Schmidt, Kock-Grunberg,
  Krause, Karsten)
• 1930s
• US growing academic interest
• "Good Neighbor Policy" (Roosevelt)
• Harvard Chiapas Project (1950s)

7
Anthropology in Latin America in general

• 3 thematic periods of anthropological research
• 1) Community studies (-1950s)
• Social structure of indigenous communities
• Evolutionism
• Functionalism
• 2) Peasant studies (1950s - 1970s)
• Community vs society / environment
• Cultural ecology
• Marxism
• 3) Contemporary approaches (1980s - )
• Study of social processes

8
Community studies

• Indigenismo
• Manuel Gamio (Mexico)
• Indigenous communies
• Culturally distinct
• primitive vs modern
• Urban vs rural
• impediment to change
• incorporation
• assimilation vs autonomy?
• integration vs cultural plurality?

9
Community studies

• Functionalism
• Various US anthropologists
• Redfield, Foster, Lewis
• influenced by the culture and personality school
• Robert Redfield
• Tepoztlán A Mexican Village (1930)
• Study of small communities
• Urban vs rural
• Particular values and lifestyle
• Romantic view (harmony)
• Folk-urban continuum (Yucatán)

10
Community studies

• Oscar Lewis
• Life in a Mexican Village Tepoztlán Restudied
  (1951)
• critique of Redfield
• prevalence of conflict over harmony
• theory of culture of poverty (study of Mexico
  City)
• Five Families (1959)
• The Children of Sánchez (1961)
• La Vida (1966
• influence on study of poor urban communities

11
Community studies

• George Foster (1967)
• Tzintzuntzan Mexican Peasants in a Changing
  World
• mistrust and fear
• image of limited good
• prevailing worldview
• psychological factors impediment to change

12
Peasant studies

• Shift of focus
• Local community vs wider society
• Relations of power
• Julian Steward
• Cultural ecology
• Focus on material conditions and socio-economic
  relations
• Studies of Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico
• Handbook of South American Indians (1946-1950)

13
Peasant studies

• Eric Wolf and Sidney Mintz
• Peasants (1966)
• Marxist approach
• Focus on macro-economic conditions
• Peasants
• product of national political and economic
  relations
• Integrated in world system on unequal terms
• not just dependent but exploited/dominated
• Dependency/dependencia theories
• 1960s and 1970s
• Frank, Cardoso, Dos Santos, Prebisch, Baran

14
Contemporary perspectives

• Various old and new topics
• Rural gt urban
• Interdisciplinarity
• Study of social processes / social change
• proletarianization
• modernization
• protestantization
• urbanization
• New topics
• Eg. Gender
• Violence
• New approaches to old topics
• eg. identity

15
Anthropology of South America

• Early ethnological studies
• European
• Steinen, Schmidt, Kock-Grunberg, Krause,
  Nordenskiold, Baldus, Metraux, Nimuendaju
• US (from 1930s)
• Gillin, Henry, Wagley
• gt
• Massive body of literature
• Descriptive accounts of tribal and subtribal
  peoples

16
Julian Steward

• Handbook of South American Indians (1946-50)
• Theoretical significance
• cultural evolution
• relation between culture and environment
• Classificatory significance
• Systematization of ethnographic data
• organizing principle
• 4 culture areas
• Marginal cultures (the Cone)
• Tropical forest cultures
• CircumCaribbean (N SA)
• State-organized peoples (N C Andes)

17
Culture area

• German Kulturkreise school (Friedrich Ratzel)
• US diffusionism
• Clark Wissler (1917), later Alfred Kroeber
• culture area a region with similar cultural
  traits
• defined by one or a set of traits
• Paul Kirchhoff
• Mesoamerica (1943)
• borders dynamic
• Steward
• particular distinction between highlands vs
  lowlands
• Low vs high primitive vs developed peoples
• shaped the character of ethnographic research in
  SA for 40 yeares

18
Early Andean / highland anthropology

• Inca studies
• Pivotal role
• Central to 19th century (racist) debates on
• evolution, savagery and civilization
• kinship and political economy
• Point of comparison
• For evolutionary studies
• Past glory vs present-day poverty
• theory of degeneration
• Incas a doomed/decadent race
• Ostentatious display of wealth
• non-Christian religions
• polygamy

19
Contemporary Andean anthropology

• 1950s and 60s
• village studies
• planned social change (eg. Vicos project)
• John Murra
• The Economic Organization of the Inca State
  (1956)
• Marxist approach
• political economy and control of markets
• Tom Zuidema
• structuralist approach
• kinship classification
• spatial organization of irrigation systems
• agricultural and religious calendars

20
Contemporary Andean anthropology

• 1970s rough division into four fields on
  interest
• community and economy
• studies of kinship and productive activity
• The Andean ayllu (political and social unit)
• Studies of Andean religiosity
• Syncretic Catholicism
• Studies of Quechua and Aymara languages
• educational reforms, and the spread of literacy
• Sociolinguistics
• Ethnicity and identity

21
Contemporary Andean anthropology

• 1980s-
• Proliferation of topics
• Proletarianization of peasantry
• Nation, state and nationalism
• Indigenous resistance
• participation of Andean peoples in local politics
• State vs social movements
• Social change / modernity
• Violence
• Evangelical Protestantism
• migration and urbanization

22
Amazonian anthropology

• Curt Nimuendajú (Kurt Unckel)
• Pioneer of Amazonian anthropology (since 1920s)
• The Eastern Timbira (1946)

23
Amazonian anthropology

• 1920s-60s
• abundance of detailed monographs
• Descriptive accounts
• Ritual, myth, symbolism and cosmology
• Lévi-Strauss
• Tristes Tropiques (1955)
• The Savage Mind (1962), Mythologiques (1967-71)

24
Amazonian anthropology

• Environmental determinism
• Julian Stewards influence
• environmental limitations
• gt limited political development
• gt lack of political complexity (chiefdoms,
  states)
• i.e. social particularities are reducible to
  natural imperatives

25
Amazonian anthropology

• Amazonia a counterfeit (fake) paradise
• Betty Meggers (1971) Amazonia Man and Culture
  in a Counterfeit Paradise
• Only small tribes could survive
• If evidence to the contrary (Marajo, Santarem)
• gt Andean diffusion

26
Amazonian anthropology

• Cultural materialism
• Marvin Harris
• Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches The Riddles of
  Culture (1974)
• Protein shortage thesis
• the Yanomamö
• noble savagery
• Rousseau / Lévi-Strauss

27
Amazonian anthropology

• The tribe
• focal unit of analysis in 1920s-60s
• Problematic concept
• Morton Fried
• The Notion of the Tribe (1972)
• tribes are dynamic and have fluid boundaries
• How many?
• Hemming (1978) 240
• da Cunha (1992) - 126

28
Amazonian anthropology

• 1980s -
• Attempts at new synthesis
• Riviere, Maybury-Lewis, Roosevelt
• Against counterfeit paradise thesis
• Tropical forest - an anthropogenic environment
• native peoples not dominated by nature
• Constant human modification of environment
• excavations in Upper Xingu (1995)
• interconnected villages, well-engineered plazas,
  roads etc

29
Amazonian anthropology

• 1980s -
• New topics
• Due to geopolitics / development in Amazonia
• indigenous rights and resistance
• changed relations between the native peoples and
  the sate
• Commodification of indigenous ethnobiological
  knowledge
• Brazil
• Indian Protection Service (1910)
• gt National Indian Foundation FUNAI (1967)
• Indian reserve Xingu (1961)

30
Vicos Project

• Cornell-Peru Project
• 1952-62
• Vicos (Callejón de Huaylas)
• backward semiserfdom
• 200 families / 2000 inhabitants
• Multidisciplinary, led by Holmberg (Cornell U)
• Aims
• Experiment in "participant intervention
• promotion of modernization
• increase of productivity
• develop the hacienda into a self-governing
  community
• intervention into local medicine, education,
  kinship, demography, and nutrition

31
Vicos Project

• 1962
• peasant purchased the hacienda
• Criticism
• William Stein Deconstructing Development
  Discourse in Peru A Meta-Ethnography of the
  Modernity Project at Vicos (2000)

32
Project Camelot

• Project Camelot in Chile (1965)
• to predict and influence politically significant
  aspects of social change in the developing
  nations of the world.
• devise procedures for assessing the potential
  for internal war
• Funded the by Department of Defence
• Counterinsurgence against potential communist
  revolutions
• How US army could help armies of friendly
  countries

33
Project Camelot

• Chile
• outraged response
• diplomatic crisis
• Project cancelled
• gt Camelot underground?
• Peace Corps
• International Development Front
• Other projects funded by DoD
• Brazil, Colombia (Project Simpático), Peru
  (Operation Task)

34
Anthropologies as spies

• Franz Boas
• The Nation (December 20, 1919) "Scientists as
  Spies
• espionage in Central America during WWII
• Samuel Lothrop, Sylvanus Morley, Herbert Spinden,
  John Mason
• Censured by AAA
• Samuel Lothrop
• Harvard archaeologist
• Peru during WWII
• monitored imports, exports and political
  developments

35
Anthropologies as spies

• WWII
• Ruth Benedict, Gregory Bateson, Clyde Kluckhohn,
  Margaret Mead
• Early 1950s
• Secret collaboration of AAA and CIA
• list of AAA members with geographical and
  linguistic areas of expertise and summaries of
  research interests
• Vietnam War