[Aztlan] Race and ethnicity in the past

[Matthew H. Robb]

I have been reading these posts with great interest, and largely I read Mike's postings and think 'what he said'. But I also think that the important question to me is not what language was spoken at Teotihuacan, but what languages - so I applaud the work of historical linguistics in this regard. There's a great little show at the 'old' Teo site museum (the one at Puerto 1) right now showcasing Zapotec material excavated over the last few years. It's a perfect example of the kind of blending of traditions that only careful archaeology can recover. Ultimately we need all these approaches to help us get a glimpse of the subtleties of everyday life in a complicated urban environment.

Clearly, one of the key functions and purposes of the city - of any city - is its ability to manage ethnic differences while at the same time giving residents a stake in a larger, shared, civic identity. Being an art historian, I naturally would argue that one of the ways this larger identity gets formed, articulated, and used (not to say controlled) is through objects, images, and architecture. These things never happen passively, of course. There are rulers who pick and organize plans and ideas, courtiers who analyze and whisper in the background, architects and artists who build and make the things and plain ol' regular folks who perform their everyday tasks in these environments and using these objects - some with gusto, and some with a high degree of skepticism. 

I also think Mike is absolutely right to suggest that those of us who
study urban environments in Mesoamerica would do well to pay attention
to what's going on in urban studies in general. In addition to the essays Mike points out, I'd recommend Goffman's 1959 The Presentation of Everyday Life and de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life as excellent starting points for thinking about how urban environments shape indvidual behaviors. 

my dos centavos, 

Matthew Robb




________________________________
From: Michael Smith <Michael.E.Smith.2 at asu.edu>
To: aztlan at lists.famsi.org
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 1:06:17 PM
Subject: [Aztlan] Race and ethnicity in the past

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/


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