Peasants, primitives, and proletariats : the struggle for identity in South America

The score of papers in this volume cover a broad gamut of South American groups, but are particularly rich for northwestem South America. Basic ethnographic information is tied together by common interest, particularly in basic political and economic issues facing the indigenous groups. There is a new diachronic dimension, that of ethnohistory, permitting a better understanding of historic changes from the indigenous perspective. Economic studies focus on systems of production (from Marxist viewpoints) and systems of distribution (from capitalistic perspectives); on land-tenure systems and access; and on

information flow regarding market conditions. A majority of the articles are concerned with culture and ethnicity, particularly with the issues of identification, classification, and differentiation between political groups; the problems of personal and cultural identity; and social organization and boundary maintenance. Historical struggles of the Indian survivors of the conquest help to explain the patterns of selected benefits that they today strive to extract from their modernizing national environment while at the same time struggling to maintain their separate ethnic and social identities. Increasingly important, in a worldwide as well as local perspective, are the causes of increased rural to urban migration, and the economic importance of rural to rural and rural to urban seasonal labor mobility. The volume has topical and theoretical importance for all social scientists, and regional interest for all Latin Americanists.