Pathways of Power: Building an Anthropology of the Modern World

487 Pages·2001·2.82 MB·English

by  Eric R. Wolf

Pathways of Power

Pathways of Power
Building an Anthropology
of the Modern World
Eric R. Wolf
with Sydel Silverman
foreword by
AramA.Yengoyan
UNIVERSITYOFCALIFORNIAPRESS
Berkeley . LosAngeles . London
UniversityofCaliforniaPress
BerkeleyandLosAngeles,California
UniversityofCaliforniaPress,Ltd.
London,England
q2001by
TheRegentsoftheUniversityofCalifornia
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Wolf,EricR.,1923–1999.
Pathwaysofpower:buildingananthropology
ofthemodernworld/EricW.WolfwithSydel
Silverman;forewordbyAramA.Yengoyan.
p.cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-520-22333-0(cloth:alk.paper).—
ISBN0-520-22334-9(pbk.:alkpaper)
1. Ethnology—Philosophy. 2. Ethnology—
Comparativemethod. 3. Politicalanthropology.
4. Power(Socialsciences) 5. Groupidentity.
I. Silverman,Sydel. II. Title.
GN345.W6432001
306—dc21 00-055969
ManufacturedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Thepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimum
requirementsofANSI/NISOZ390.48-1992
(R1997)(PermanenceofPaper).
Contents
Foreword:CultureandPowerintheWritings
ofEricR.Wolf,byAramA.Yengoyan vii
Preface xix
Introduction:AnIntellectualAutobiography 1
part i. anthropology 11
1. AmericanAnthropologistsandAmericanSociety 13
2. KroeberRevisited 23
3. RemarksonThePeopleofPuertoRico 38
4. OnFieldworkandTheory 49
5. AnthropologyamongthePowers 63
part ii. connections 81
6. BuildingtheNation 83
7. TheSocialOrganizationofMeccaandtheOrigins
ofIslam 100
8. AspectsofGroupRelationsinaComplexSociety:
Mexico 124
vi Contents
9. TheVirginofGuadalupe:AMexicanNational
Symbol 139
10. ClosedCorporatePeasantCommunitiesin
MesoamericaandCentralJava 147
11. TheVicissitudesoftheClosedCorporatePeasant
Community 160
12. Kinship,Friendship,andPatron-ClientRelations
inComplexSocieties 166
13. EthnicityandNationhood 184
part iii. peasants 191
14. TypesofLatinAmericanPeasantry:APreliminary
Discussion 193
15. SpecificAspectsofPlantationSystemsintheNew
World:CommunitySubculturesandSocialClasses 215
16. PeasantsandRevolution 230
17. PhasesofRuralProtestinLatinAmerica 241
18. Isthe“Peasantry”aClass? 252
19. OnPeasantRent 260
20. TheSecondSerfdominEasternEuropeandLatin
America 272
21. PeasantNationalisminanAlpineValley 289
part iv. concepts 305
22. Culture:PanaceaorProblem? 307
23. InventingSociety 320
24. TheMillsofInequality:AMarxianApproach 335
25. IncorporationandIdentityintheMakingofthe
ModernWorld 353
26. IdeasandPower 370
27. FacingPower—OldInsights,NewQuestions 383
28. PerilousIdeas:Race,Culture,People 398
References 413
Index 447
Foreword
Culture and Power in the
Writings of Eric R. Wolf
Aram A. Yengoyan
WiththedeathofEricWolf,anthropologylostoneofitsearlyadvocates
forculturalanthropologyasalinkbetweenthehumanitiesandthesocial
sciences.Fromthe1950son,Wolfapproachedanthropologyasaform
of humanistic understanding that combined theory and interpretation
withinahistoricalandcomparativeperspectivemarkedlyinfluencedby
hisrethinkingofvariousworksbyMarxandMarxistwriters.Indevel-
oping this bridge, Wolf saw the problem of culture as a historical and
processual emergent in which class and power relationsarecriticalfor
understandingwhatculturemeansasalocalexpressionandasaconcept
paramounttoAmericananthropology.
On the personal side, I want to note my relationship with Wolf. In
1959 he joined the faculty in the anthropology departmentat theUni-
versityofChicago,whereIwasasecond-yeargraduatestudent.During
the next year I took one or two classes from him. In 1960 he went to
the Tyrol region in northern Italy for fieldwork, and I went to eastern
MindanaointhesouthernPhilippinesformyinitialfieldexperience.On
his return to this country in 1961, Wolf moved to the University of
Michigan. In 1963 I was hired as an assistant professor at Michigan,
andwewerecolleaguesthereuntilheleftfortheCityUniversityofNew
Yorkin1971.Sincethatperiod,weremainedincommunication.Itwas
the Michigan and Vietnam War years that I feel were pivotal to his
writings, though some of the themes, such as his focus on history,had
beencriticalforhimsincethebeginningofhisprofessionallife.
vii
viii Foreword
This essay provides an overview of various issues central to Wolf’s
work throughout the last four or five decades. Each of the chapters in
thisanthologyexpressesconceptualconcernsdevelopedinhisextensive
writings. I deal only with some of his major books; the papers in this
volumestandontheirownbecauseWolfhimselfwroteanintroduction
to each of them and drewthe variousconnectionsofeachphaseofhis
intellectual efforts to the totality of his contributions. I focus on three
issues that are central to his work. The first, which I treat only briefly,
ishisconcern with thequestionof boundariesandborders;thesecond
pertainstohisideasabouttheinteractionsbetweencultureandpower;
the last, but most important, deals with the notion of culture in his
writings.
AsforWolf’sideasonboundariesandborders,TheHiddenFrontier
(ColeandWolf1974),basedonhisinitialfieldworkintheearly1960s
andlateroncollaborativeresearchwithJohnCole,dealswithhowthe
relationships of cultural identity between German-speaking and Ro-
mance-speaking communities have been sustained through a long his-
torical trajectory in the high alpine areas of northern Italy. The book
demonstrates how historical events—the development of the Italian
states, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the two world
wars,andthepost–WorldWarIIpoliticaleventsandnationalisticmove-
ments—have had an impact on the ways in which differences at the
microlevelaremaintainedbetweentwopopulationsthatareinvirtually
constant, daily interaction. The analysis is framed in such 1960s con-
cepts as ecology and ethnicity, but it is not difficult, from the vantage
point of the present, to view it in terms of political economy, state in-
tervention, and the intrinsic interplay between culture and class.
Through the development of what Wolf has called a “relational ap-
proach,”heandColeempiricallyandtheoreticallyshowthatnosingle
setofvariablescanaccountforthekindsofdifferencesthattheynoted
inthemicrocosmofthetwocommunities.
Furthermore, it is apparent that the idea of boundaries and borders
expressed on the local level may have littlebearingonthemacrocosm,
andviceversa.Thusbordersandboundariescanneverbedrawnstati-
cally through time, because they have little meaning in capturing the
kinds of differences that have persisted historically. Wolf, whose writ-
ings always emphasized the fallacy of culture as bounded or homoge-
neous,stressesthatthefrontierisnottimelessbutpartofthetotalsocial
formation.
Foreword ix
In retrospect, this approach to borders and boundaries anticipated
recentanthropologicalandhistoricalanalysisofsuchareasandofwhat
nationalandculturaldelineationsmeantothepopulationsthatstraddle
boundaries. In numerous ways, thequestions thatPeterSahlins(1989)
posesinhisstudyoftheborderbetweenFranceandSpainaresetforth
byColeandWolf,thoughtheirlanguagediffersfromthatofthe1990s.
Furthermore, Cole and Wolf deal with other issues that are now of
central importance in anthropology, such as the question of identity.
Forthemidentity,whetherpsychologicalorcultural,isinparttheresult
ofhowdifferencesareaplayingoutofevents,actions,andinstitutions
that have minimal opposition or contrastiveness (see Yengoyan 1989).
What minimal contrastiveness means is that when similarities and dif-
ferencesarenotedbetweencommunities,societies,orregions,itmaybe
the case that the locales differ in only one or two features. The points
of difference become the anchor in which a minimal contrast becomes
thecriticalfoundationonwhichdifferencesaregeneratedandenhanced.
Thusinthetwocommunities,whichotherwiseshowcommonecological
adaptationstotheirenvironments,thecontrastisexpressedintheirin-
heritance patterns.Not only do villagersrecognizethisdifference,they
use and magnify it in establishing their own cultural identity and in
contrastingtheiridentitywiththatoftheirneighbors.
Questions of difference based on contrastiveness and how it deter-
mines internal identity and maximal opposition are a dominant factor
in the way cultures and societies situate themselves in differing social
milieus, whether in rural areas or in urban contexts. The insights pro-
videdbyColeandWolf(1974)andbyWolf(1962)areethnographically
founded aswell astheoreticallyastute.Theimplicationsofhowdiffer-
enceiscreatedattheminimalandmaximallevelsandhowitrelatesto
cultural identity result in a series of social and political fractures that
may either be initiated at the community level or stem from largerpo-
liticalprocesses,suchasthereformulationofthenation-state.
Throughout his writings, Wolf insists that the idea of boundedness
as it is applied to cultures and communities must be abandoned and
replacedbyanunderstandingofinteractionalprocessesastheyemerge
fromsourcesofpowerandhegemonythatmaybeelusivetodefine.His
criticalwritingsonsuchissuesofbordersandboundariesallpredatethe
currentpostmodernistcritiques,whichbasicallyarguethesamemessage
inadifferentlanguage.
The second theme of this essay is power and culture. In his recent