History of anthropological research in South America

1
History of anthropological research in South
America

• 4.2.2004

2
Readings

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

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
Anthropology in Latin America in general I

• 19th century
• sporadic interest (French)
• 1900s - 1920s
• Early anthropology in Latin America
• Native Gamio(student of Boas)
• European (Steinen, Schmidt, Kock-Grunberg,
  Krause, Karsten)
• 1930s
• US growing academic interest
• "Good Neighbor Policy" (Roosevelt)
• Institute of Social Anthropology of the
  Smithsonian Institution
• Founded by Julian Steward in 1943
• Harvard Chiapas Project (1950s)
• Cornell Vicos Project (1950s)

5
Anthropology in Latin America in general II

• Uneven regional focus
• Mexico, Guatemala, Peru
• Brazil, Amazonia
• Caribbean
• Strickons divisions
• Uneven scholarly contribution
• US anthropology
• UT Austin, U of Arizona, UC
• French anthropology
• 1860s in Mexico
• Some native schools
• Mexican, Brazilian anthropology
• Applied approach

6
Anthropology in Latin America in general III

• 3 thematic periods of anthropological research
• 1) Community studies (-1950s)
• 2)Peasant studies (1950s - 1970s)
• 3) Contemporary approaches (1980s - )

7
Community studies

• Internal structurings of indigenous communities
• Indigenismo
• Manuel Gamio
• primitive vs modern
• Urban vs rural
• Functionalism
• Redfield
• Small community (Tepoztlan)
• Folk-urban contiinum (Yucatan)
• Oscar Lewis, George Foster
• Critique of Redfield
• Tepoztlan, Tzintzuntzan

8
Peasant studies

• Local community vs wider society
• Social change, modernization, migration,
  urbanization
• Julian Steward
• Studies of Mexico, Peru and Puerto Rico
• cultural ecology
• Focus on material conditions and socio-economic
  relations
• Handbook of South American Indians (1946-1950)
• Eric Wolf and Sydney Mintz
• Marxist approach
• Focus on macro-economic conditions
• Peasants
• integrated in national political and economic
  relations
• but on unequal terms
• not just dependent but exploited
• 1960s and 1970s
• Dependency/dependencia theories
• Frank, Cardoso, Dos Santos, Prebisch, Baran

9
Contemporary perspectives

• Various old and new topics
• modernity and identity
• gender studies
• popular culture
• medical anthropology
• Interpretive anthropology, postmodernism,
  neo-...ism

10
Typologies of Latin American cultures

• Redfield
• 2 types (folk vs urban)
• Wagley
• 9 types
• Steward
• 4 types (Culture areas of SA)
• Kirchhoff
• Mesoamerica (1943)
• Strickon
• Tribal or aboriginal
• 14 cultural areas
• Traditional Latin America
• Social groups of colonial and early republican
  origin
• Modern Latin America
• social groups due to Industrial Revolution  

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Anthropology of South America

• highlands vs lowlands
• developed vs primitive
• Early ethnological studies
• Steinen (1894), Schmidt (1905), Kock-Grunberg
  (1909-10), Krause (1911), Nordenskiold (1924),
  Baldus (1931 1937), Metraux (1937, 1946),
  Gusinde (1937), and Nimuendaju (1942, 1946).
• From 1930s
• Studies by US anthropologists (Gillin 1936),
  (Henry 1941), (Wagley 1940, 1943),
• Mainly
• description and analysis of tribal and subtribal
  peoples
• gt massive body of literature

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Julian Steward

• Handbook of South American Indians (1946-50)
• Classificatory significance
• organizing principle
• the concept of the culture area
• Wissler (1917)
• 4 culture ares
• Marginal cultures
• Tropical forest cultures
• CircumCaribbean
• State-organized peoples
• gt Systematization of ethnographic data
• Theoretical significance
• cultural evolution
• relation between culture and environment

13
Early Andean / highland anthropology

• Inka studies
• Pivotal role
• Inkas
• Central to 19th century 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
• Inkas a doomed/decadent race
• Ostentatious display of wealth
• non-Christian religions
• polygamy

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Contemporary Andean anthropology I

• Influence of John Murra and Tom Zuidema
• Studies of Inkas
• set the agenda for subsequent studies in Cuzco
  region
• Murra (1956)
• Marxist approach
• political economy and control of markets
• Zuidema (1961)
• structuralist approach
• kinship classification
• spatial organization of irrigation systems
• agricultural and religious calendars

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Contemporary Andean anthropology II

• 1980s
• Proliferation of topics
• community
• Ayllu
• villages brought together by ties of kinship
• Nation, state and nationalism
• Radcliffe Westwood
• Ethnicity, indigenous politics/resistance
• Proletarianization of peasantry
• Nash, Taussig, Gudeman Rivera (1990)
• Social change / modernity
• Violence
• Evangelical Protestantism
• migration and urbanization

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Amazonian / lowland anthropology I

• Environmental determinism
• Julian Stewards influence
• tropical forest lowland peoples
• environmental limitations
• gt limited political development
• Meggers (1971)
• Amazonia Man and Culture in a Counterfeit
  Paradise
• Evidence to the contrary
• Marajo, Santarem etc.
• gt Andean diffusion
• protein scarcity thesis
• Harris, cultural materialism
• noble savagery
• Rousseau / Levi-Strauss

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Amazonian anthropology II

• The tribe
• focal unit of analysis
• Problematic concept
• Ethnic group?
• Morton Fried
• The Notion of the Tribe (1972)
• tribes are dynamic and have fluid boundaries
• rather than being parochial
• How many?
• Hemming (1978) 240
• da Cunha (1992) - 126
• Vanishing cultures
• Brazils indigenous population - 250,000

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Amazonian anthropology III

• Curt Nimuendajú
• Pioneer of Amazonian anthropology (1920s)
• Levi-Strauss
• ritual, myth, and cosmology
• Tristes Tropiques (1955)
• The Savage Mind (1962), Mythologiques (1967-71)
• Since 1920s
• abundance of detailed monographs
• relatively little synthesis

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Amazonian anthropology IV

• From 1980s
• Attempts at synthesis
• Riviere 1984 Maybury-Lewis 1979 Roosevelt 1994
• New topics
• challenging the counterfeit paradise thesis
• tropical forest as an anthropogenic environment
• indigenous rights and resistance
• Brazil
• Indian Protection Service (1910)
• gt National Indian Foundation FUNAI (1967)
• Indian reserve Xingu (1961)

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Vicos Project

• Cornell University
• 1947 comparative study of cultural change
• US, India, Thailand, Peru
• In Peru
• Callejon de Huaylas
• change expected due to hydroelectric power plant
• cancelled
• Experiment in "participant intervention - 1951
• Cause cultural change themselves
• applied anthropology on the community level
• Holmberg (Cornell U)
• Monge Medrano (Peruvian Indian Institute)
• Vicos hacienda community
• semiserfdom gt a functioning part of the
  national society
• Conclusions
• social and economic problems in the Andean area
  can be resolved
• Means for it are already available

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Project Camelot

• Project CAMELOT (1965)
• to predict and influence politically significant
  aspects of social change in the developing
  nations of the world.
• Official objectives
• devise procedures for assessing the potential
  for internal war
• identify those actions which a government might
  take to relieve conditions which are assessed as
  giving rise to a potential for internal war
• Funded
• by Department of Defence
• Real objectives
• Counterinsurgence against potential communist
  revolutions
• How US army could help armies of friendly
  countries
• Johan Galtung
• Archangel of Chile
• Lyndon Johnson, Eduado Frei
• AAA
• Camelot underground?
• Peace Corps
• International Development Front (New York based
  private foundation)
• Other projects funded by DoD
• Brazil, Colombia (Project Simpatico), Peru
  (Operation Task)

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Anthropologies as spies

• Franz Boas
• The Nation (December 20, 1919) "Scientists as
  Spies
• four American anthropologists accused
• Samuel Lothrop, Sylvanus Morley, Herbert Spinden,
  John Mason
• Censured by AAA
• Samuel Lothrop
• Harvard archeologist
• Lima (Peru)
• monitored imports, exports and political
  developments during 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