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Law as a Means to Change*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

John F. Goins
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Extract

In that remarkable little book, so deftly argued and so elegantly phrased, which he wrote about anthropologists and coincidentally Peasant Society and Culture, Robert Redfield made more than one wise observation, but one was both a promise and a suggestion. Noting that peasant society in one sense consists of two connecting halves, he remarks that “we may be able to see a sort of link or hinge between the local life of a peasant community and the state or feudal system of which it is a part.”

The recognition and disclosure of connections in the extended relations of indigenous peoples — especially those who comprise major elements of modern states — is surely one way in which anthropologists, from the peculiar advantage of their ethnographic tradition, can contribute something of method and point of view to the study of large, compound societies and cultures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 1961 , pp. 53 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1961

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Footnotes

*

This is a slightly revised version of a paper presented at the session on “Law and Social Change” at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, Illinois, in 1957. The article is based in part on ethnographic field research carried out in the Valley of Cochabamba (Bolivia), particularly in the pottery-making village of Huayculi, as a 1951-52 Fellow of the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Foundation.

References

1 Redfield, Robert, Peasant Society and Culture, Chicago, 1956, p. 43.Google Scholar

2 Such stereotypes, for example, as the following: that Bolivia is economically dependent on tin and mining, when it is in fact distinctly an agrarian country of small farmers; that Bolivia is a country whose populace is collectively disposed to violence, rebellion, and revolution, when in fact the great majority of the people are not participants in the political turbulence that has marked Bolivia's history; that Bolivia is a homogeneous country enjoying just the same attributes of nationality as may be found elsewhere, when in fact the populace of Bolivia does not have a common language, a common religion, or a common tradition and culture. These and other familiar stereotypes were summarized in a paper, “Types, Stereotypes, and the Character of Bolivian Quichua Culture”, presented by the author at the 55th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (1955), in Boston. They are analyzed in the author's forthcoming book on the ethnography of Huayculi.

3 Cahn, Edmond, The Sense of Injustice, New York, 1949.Google Scholar

4 Similar choices and opportunities lie also with the Aymara Indians, who are the second most important component of the Bolivian population. Their reaction to the pressures of the state has been different from that of the Quichua, both in the past and in the present; in general, the Aymara have been less flexible than the Quichua, less nimble, and more resistant to change. And the Aymara will not accommodate so readily to emerging national patterns of culture.

5 These figures result from an analyses of census data, various estimates by Bolivian demographers, and my own study of Indian language distribution in highland Bolivia. See Goins, John F., “The Present Distribution of Indian Languages in Highland Bolivia”, Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, No. 2, pp. 17–34 (Berkeley).Google Scholar

6 Reference is made of course to that skillful analyst of ploys, Stephen Potter, and to his several tomes: Theory and Practice of Gamemanship, New York, 1948; Some Notes on Lifemanship, New York, 1950; Oneupmanship, New York, 1952.