Center and Periphery in the Social Organization of Contemporary Nahuas of Mexico

Abstract

There has been a tendency among ethnographers working in Indian villages in Mesoamerica to ignore intermediary social units that lie between domestic group and wider universe of community, regional, and national-level social structures (Nutini 1976:3).(1) Ethnographers who have investigated social organization in Mesoamerican have tended to focus on local-level kinship systems. One reason for this emphasis on micro-analyses is that villagers themselves often place domestic group at center of their psychological and social worlds. Another reason is that social structures beyond immediate kinship system often appear ephemeral and are difficult for ethnographers to study. This article offers an explanation of why intermediary social structures are such a challenge to investigate, and suggests an analytical approach that will reveal significance of these entities in lives of indigenous Mesoamericans. The call to take a more macroscopic view of social organization in Mesoamerica is not recent. Forty years ago, Eric Wolf suggested that analysts view Indian villages as the local termini of a web of group relations which extend through intermediary levels from level of community to that of nation (Wolf 1956:1065). He advocated regional studies in place of community studies because key relations originating outside of local group may be wholly tangential to each other in an actual community (Wolf 1956:1065). Anthropologists should attend to the relationships between different groups operating at different levels of society, rather than on any one of its isolated segments (Wolf 1956:1074). Perhaps relative lack of ethnographic research on social units beyond domestic group has contributed to an element of confusion. On one hand, Wolf (1960:5) states, No significant web of social relationships intervenes between level of individual household and organizational level of community. More recently, however, he has lamented that scholars disregard entities and kinship structures intermediate between household and community . . . as well as connective networks among peoples in communities (Wolf 1986:327). Do such entities and structures exist? If so, how do they operate in Mesoamerican communities? In characterizing importance of social units that lie beyond domestic group, anthropologists often fall back on mechanical metaphors to clarify this often complex tangle of shifting social structures and processes. Hunt and Nash (1967), for example, describe two dimensions of local groups and territorial units in Mesoamerica. First, they see them as demographic, administrative, and political structures imposed on Indian by Spaniards and later by independent nation-states. Then they see local groups and territorial units as a means of ordering social interaction and establishing community identity (Hunt and Nash 1967:253). After comparing a number of intermediary social units, they conclude that it is evident that Middle America has a low regional integration (Hunt and Nash 1967:279). Truex (1996) and I contend that intermediary social units do exist in Middle America, but not as conveniently isolated and identifiable formal structures. Rather, they exist as a shifting, ephemeral social framework around which factions are organized. Problems of clarifying place of intermediary social units in Mesoamerican social systems are legion. Mulhare (1996) provides an admirable summary of many of theoretical and empirical difficulties that impede scientific progress in this area. She points to variety of emic labels people use to identify social arrangements beyond domestic group and to diverse criteria that are used to define these units, including kinship, territory, and religious practice. Adding to confusion, terms that refer to intermediary social units such as barrio, calpul, and paraje have been applied throughout Mesoamerica to such a variety of social arrangements that many have lost all analytic value. …