Aspects of Group Relations in a Complex Society: Mexico1

Abstract

S TARTING from simple beginnings in twenties, anthropologists have grown increasingly sophisticated about relationship of nation and community. First, they studied community in its own terms, taking but little account of its larger matrix. Later, they began to describe outside factors which affected life of local group under study. Recently they have come to recognize that nations or 'systems of higher level do not consist merely of more numerous and diversified parts, and that it is therefore methodologically incorrect to treat each part as though it were an independent whole in itself (Steward 1950:107). Communities are modified and acquire new characteristics because of their functional dependence upon a new and larger (ibid: 111). The present paper is concerned with a continuation of this anthropological discussion in terms of Mexican material. The dependence of communities on a larger system has affected them in two ways. On one hand, whole communities have come to play specialized parts within larger whole. On other, special functions pertaining to whole have become tasks of special groups within communities. These groups Steward calls horizontal socio-cultural segments. I shall simply call them nation-oriented groups. They are usually found in more than one community and follow ways of life different from those of their community-oriented fellow-villagers. They are often agents of great national institutions which reach down into community, and form the bones, nerves and sinews running through total society, binding it together, and affecting it at every point (ibid: 115). Communities which form parts of a complex society can thus be viewed no longer as self-contained and integrated systems in their own right. It is more appropriate to view them as local termini of a web of group relations which extend through intermediate levels from level of community to that of nation. In community itself, these relationships may be wholly tangential to each other. Forced to understand community in terms of forces impinging on it from outside, we have also found it necessary to gain a better understanding of national-level institutions. Yet to date most anthropologists have hesitated to commit themselves to such a study, even when they have become half-convinced that such a step would be desirable. National institutions seem so complex that even a small measure of competence in their operations seems to require full-time specialization. We have therefore left their description and analysis to specialists in other disciplines. Yet specialists in law, politics, or economics have themselves discovered that anthropologists can be of almost as much use to them as they can be to anthropologist. For they have become increasingly aware that legal, political or other systems to