Ethnicity can be defined as social identification based upon the presumption of shared history and common cultural inheritance. Such identities play a prominent role in political struggle in the modern world. Whether the object of struggle is securing resources in competition with other ethnic groups or resisting the dominance of an encroaching state, ethnic identity provides a powerful ideology for political mobilization. The ethnic groups engaged in these struggles often cut across class lines, containing both elites who provide group leadership and a mass of members drawn from lower classes. Thus, in the modern world, ethnicity is frequently bound up with factional competition and political change.

Did ethnicity play an important role in political struggle before the emergence of the modern world? Early approaches to ethnicity suggested that it did not. From the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, ethnic groups were regarded as primordial human groups, arising from cultural isolation and persisting by habit and custom. Competition between ethnic groups was regarded as a recent phenomenon, created during the process of modernization as diverse tribal groups were brought together in overarching states. Some observers expected ethnic conflict within these “plural societies” to be a temporary phenomenon; conflict was expected to disappear in the course of modernization as national institutions matured (e.g., Apter 1967). Others, more pessimistic, pointed to forces that would perpetuate ethnic identity and conflict: either the deep-seated, enduring character of ethnic loyalties (Geertz 1963) or the determination of colonial and neocolonial elites to maintain ethnic stratification systems (Furnivall 1939).

This volume calls attention to the importance of factional competition as a force of social transformation. It argues that factional competition is implicated in developments as diverse as the spread of ceramic technology and maize agriculture, the origins of permanently instituted leadership offices, the expansion and collapse of states, and the European domination of indigenous New World peoples. Although this volume focuses upon the New World, its perspective is relevant to the social histories of other areas of the world as well, because all non-egalitarian societies, both ancient and modern, are shaped by the dynamics of factional competition. Bringing an agent-centered perspective to the study of political development, this volume also contributes to a general understanding of social stability and change. An agent-centered perspective maximizes the amount of data drawn into the analysis and thus permits the most detailed and complete account of specific cases of political continuity and transformation.

Our studies of factional competition both complement and critique the two prevailing approaches to prehistoric social change: cultural ecology and Marxism. Cultural ecology focuses upon the dynamic interactions of human populations and their local environments. As a complement to this, the studies in this volume examine the internal dynamics of local populations, dynamics that help to shape the strategy of resource exploitation. Marxist theory focuses upon the dynamics of class struggle: a model postulating solidarity within classes and struggle between them. As a complement to class struggle, the essays in this volume emphasize the importance of conflicts within classes and alliances between them.

This volume began with a chance meeting between Liz Brumfiel and John Fox at the World Archaeological Congress, Southampton, in 1986. We recognized our mutual interest in the internal dynamics of political development and our complementary specialties in the prehispanic Aztec and Maya. We also recognized our mutual interest in visiting Amsterdam, the site of the 46th International Congress of Americanists in 1988.

The two of us organized the symposium “Factional Competition and Political Development in the New World” for the 46th International Congress of Americanists. Participants included the two co-editors of this volume, David Anderson, Bruce Byland, Pedro Carrasco, Mary Helms, Stephen Kowalewski, John Pohl, and Rudolf van Zantwijk. Encouraged by the quality of the symposium papers, we decided to edit a volume devoted to exploring factional competition as a force of social transformation in prehispanic New World societies. To increase the breadth of coverage, we solicited additional papers from John Clark and Mike Blake, Terry D'Altroy, Fred Hicks, Mary Pohl, Helen Perlstein Pollard, Elsa Redmond and Chuck Spencer. To our regret, Pedro Carrasco had to drop out of the project; his contribution is sorely missed. Glenn Perusek, a specialist in historical materialist approaches to interest group politics and rational choice theory, generously offered to write an overview of the volume from his perspective in political science. We gratefully accepted his offer.

With the support of the editorial staff at the Cambridge University Press, we completed editing this volume in May 1992.