How to Enter the Material and Social Worlds

Abstract

Abstract This chapter places the work in the context of two major bodies of literature: studies of materiality since the 1980s, and the literature of the Spanish conquest and colonialism in Mexico. It provides a critique of studies of materiality that argue that scholars must focus more on the material world and less on the social world. Now that the literature on Spanish colonialism has only begun emphasizing Indigenous power in the last several decades, the chapter argues that it is no time to focus on things and abandon the social world. Instead, it argues that we must continue the project of studying how different groups of people, in competition and collaboration, created and transformed the material world. The chapter also provides a critique of the use of agency as a concept that guides work on materiality.