From Indigenismo to Zapatismo: Theory and Practice in Mexican Anthropology

Human Organization, Summer 2004 by Gonzalez, Roberto J

Discussion

What implications does Mexican anthropology have for its counterpart in the United States? In some ways, the traditions are strikingly similar. Each began in the early 1900s, based on a four-field approach traceable to Boas; each became renowned during periods of social change and was connected with political issues (the "Indian problem" in Mexico, "race" relations in the U.S.); each could be described as progressive; and each underwent a legitimacy crisis in the 1960s.

However, there were and are important differences. For most, if not all, of the 20th century, Mexican anthropology was considered both theoretical and practical-a body of knowledge to be applied to concrete social problems. According to Gustavo Esteva-Fabregat (1996:118), many scholars saw the discipline as "a practical science concerned with the cultural transformation of native groups...[a] 'patriotic anthropology'...a form of political practice whose origins were in the ideals of the 1910 Revolution in which 'the indigenous' should be recovered as a critical element in the shared national character." Funding almost exclusively came from official bureaucracies: the INI, INAH, and the Secretariat of Public Education.

Now, even as funding sources have shifted and NGOs support significant amounts of anthropological research, and even as critics continue to problematize branches of applied anthropology, many Mexican anthropologists view activism as an integral part of the discipline, and they have embarked upon new theoretical and practical directions. Significantly, some renowned anthropologists in Mexico are literally household names. With the possible exception of Margaret Mead and Franz Boas there have been few U.S. anthropologists of comparable stature.

By contrast, in the United States, anthropology has taken multiple paths. Boas was interested in using anthropological knowledge to help solve social problems in the early 20th century, and he helped change public attitudes (and government policies) toward immigrants and ethnic minorities. Applied anthropology was established in the early 1940s to study "human relations." The focus was often on worker-management relations in industries, government agencies, the military, schools, and other bureaucracies (Chappie 1955). George Foster (1969:54) described applied anthropology as "professional activities in programs that have as primary goals changes in human behavior believed to ameliorate contemporary social, economic, and technological problems." Since then, action anthropology, development anthropology, and cultural brokerage have emerged as different efforts to use anthropological knowledge for addressing "real world" problems. More recently, some have attempted to distinguish between practicing and applied anthropology and have noted a "general decoupling of theory and application/practice" in American anthropology (Baba 1994:181). Unlike Mexican anthropology, in the last half of the 20th century the tendency in the U.S. was often for theory and practice to be kept apart, and for the latter to be marginalized (or granted less prestige by those at elite institutions).