[Aztlan] Race and ethnicity in the past

[Michael Smith]

Just a few comments on some of the posts:

Nick Hopkins, Jerry Offner (and others) - Please don't confuse a post to
Aztlan with a scholarly statement. Historical linguistics is fantastic.
If I learned anything from 15 years as a colleague of John Justeson at
Albany, it was the value of historical linguistics for archaeology and
for any kind of well-rounded interpretation of the past. Perhaps my Teo
example was too hastily stated. My gentle criticism was that many people
today get too hung up on ethnic and racial issues (I didn't accuse
anyone on Aztlan of this, my post came from looking at some of the press
items that are posted--very usefully--on Aztlan). I mentioned the Teo
case as just one example of this tendency. Perhaps rather than saying
that I don't care what language was spoken at Teo (I forget exactly what
I said), I should have said that the ethnic identity of the people of
Teo is not the most important thing to know about them.

Jerry Ek - thanks for clarifying what I said. I admit that I fire these
things off quickly and may not always express myself in the clearest
fashion.


Just to extend the discussion a bit further, there is some interesting
comparative research about ethnic and cultural diversity in cities.
Ethnologist Ralph Grillo suggests that in most preindustrial cities,
rulers didn't care much about ethnic diversity. Urban enclaves organized
their own affairs. Race was recognized, but was not particularly
important as a basis for inequality. In Colonial cities, rulers became
obsessed with ethnicity because elites needed to keep the natives
separate from the colonizers in order to extract work and resources and
protect privileges. Race became an important identifier, associated with
class position. In industrial cities, racial divisions (claims Grillo,
citing Southall) were promoted in order to prevent the formation of
class identities that could more easily challenge the economic and
political order.

The implication of this (and other research) is that racial and ethnic
and linguistic identities and differences have always been around, but
they have taken on a different role in modern society (as everyone is
clearly aware). I don't think its an exaggeration to claim that
contemporary society (in the US and Europe at least) is obsessed with
race. But this was probably not the case in the past. It is interesting
to learn about ethnic or linguistic affiliations of past populations,
but this is just one aspect among many factors in ancient life and
society.

A similar point is made by Xavier de Souza Briggs (MIT urban scholar,
part of Obama's transition team) in a comparison of three multicultural
cities: imperial Rome, medieval Islamic Cordoba, and modern Los Angeles.
Briggs shows that Rome and Cordoba handled diverse urban populations
very well, without violence, strife, or excessive inequality. He wonders
whether these cases could hold lessons for modern urban diversity. One
of his findings, however, is that Rome and Cordoba used very strong
governmental power to keep their ethnic diversity under control. Since
we don't have that level of state power today (hooray!), we need to find
other ways to make people get along in our cities. This is part of an
ongoing comparative project by Briggs, who is someone with very good
things to say about modern cities and society.

I haven't tried applying these ideas to ancient Mesoamerica. Teo and
Tenochtitlan seem fertile case studies for applying the ideas of Grillo
and Briggs. Maybe an enterprising student out there will take an
interest......


Briggs, Xavier de Souza
2004	Civilization in Color: The Multicultural City in Three
Millennia. City and Community 3:311-342.

Grillo, Ralph D.
2000	Plural Cities in Comparative Perspective. Ethnic and Racial
Studies 23:957-981.

Southall, Aidan W.
1998	The City in Time and Space. Cambridge University Press, New
York.

One final point - I get Aztlan in digest format, and I find that the
messages seem out of order and its difficult to follow the thread of an
argument. Also, I don't think I got Nick's post except at the bottom of
Jerry Ek's.

Dr. Michael E. Smith
Professor of Anthropology
School of Human Evolution & Social Change
Arizona State University
www.public.asu.edu/~mesmith9/