On the 10th anniversary of the Seminary of History, Philosophy and Sociology of Mexican anthropology, appeared a commemorative volume that involves various members of the seminar, whose regular meetings were always enriched by a sense of the inevitable seasoned critic of companionship and exercise friendship.
Comprising 17 articles grouped around five major themes (history, traditions and concepts, the writing of anthropology, the anthropology personage, scientific communities, theories and narratives of Mexican anthropology), the volume begins with the text where Carlos López Beltrán struggles “For a new historiography of scientific concepts. The case of biological inheritance”, which basically gives us an approach on how to address the difficulties and advantages that gives the historian of science the follow-up and reassessment of the historical concept, which in this case is the biological heritage.
The section of history, traditions and concepts, concludes with “The program of sociology and its restructuring”, in which Fernando Castañeda Sabido addresses the process of destruction and displacement of the discourse of sociology for a variety of theoretical statements over the past two decades. Proposes to characterize the knowledge of sociology and how demarcated it is from the political philosophy, economics and other normative theories, indicating exhaustion and need for reform. Castañeda illustrates how a discipline articulates its paradigm profile and the accent of its transformations, which reveals in the radicalization of some subjects, not only the characterization of the discipline itself but also the occurrence of theoretical trends that are not always lucky.
The second topic, Writing anthropology, starts with the work of Fernando López Aguilar, “The archaeology and the writing of the past”. Whose lines reveal that, from his reading of the past, soon the archaeologist abrogates the authorization of “writing for other”, in the same measurement he constructs a speculation on the subject, so that the archaeology is eminently powers ahead. Thus, the essence of the text lies in a double dilemma: the construction of meaning in our time here and now, and seeking to break hermeneutics to access the possibility of understanding the sense of otherness, studied with the tools and archaeological methods.
The exploration of this second topic closes with “The delicious ordeal of writing anthropology”. Here Carlos García Mora brings us closer to the paper as a liberator of the impressions left in the anthropologist exercise of writing as a sum of delight and ordeal of their experiences, while synthesizing the anthropological work that finds its final stage in the text. Although during the process of ethnographic data, the anthropologist creates a way of life. García Mora wonders why it is so difficult to write, from there his spirit for reverting the enmity feeling of many anthropologists towards the blank page, to overturn it in a pleasant practice. The way he achieves to support his worry for encouraging the traffic of the scientific writing to the humanistic text, without attenuating the intellectual creativity or invalidating the own existential experience, of such luck that the final product is the book as a “total work “.
The third topic, prominent figures of the Mexican anthropology, headed by Barbara Cifuentes with the article “Languages and history in three Mexican works of the 19th century”. There is underlined that the institutionalization of the linguistics happened thanks to the constitution of scientific and literary societies commanded by self-taught scholars. Spaces where in turn there developed Manuel Orozco y Berra, Francisco Pimentel and Joaquín García Icazbalceta, creators of the works under study, which illustrates the parallel conformation of discipline as a distinct specialty.
In “The dance of the disciplines. The National Museum across Gumesindo Mendoza’s works “, Rafael Guevara Fefer proves to be nonconformist with the oblivion imposed on the naturalists of the Mexican Society of Natural History. For what his contribution stands out (and especially of one of his more celebrated members, Gumesindo Mendoza) in the institutional consolidation of the National Museum, as well as of disciplines like biology, ethnology and linguistics during the second half of the 19th century. Thanks to the rescue of these professionals in the “construction work”, the author contributes to understanding and demystifying the creation of the anthropological community, using the fighting to illustrate Mendoza academics from the polarity between liberals and conservatives, and glimpse the metamorphosis of the amateur in a professional within the same maturity of the nineteenth century disciplines.
We continue with Fernando Gonzalez Davila and his text, “Dr. Nicolas Leon versus evolutionism”, which addresses the controversial circumstances of the scientist torn between his religious faith and the objectivity that distinguishes it as such. Gonzalez analyzes the absence of a definite position on the part of Nicolás León before the discussion of the evolutionism and the origin of the man in view of Catholicism. While the author believes that in the classroom Leon ventilated his opinions, his silence was due to the ties maintained with the clergy or people related to him, so, based on a likely personal drama, the author reveals intricacies on how a group sets its rules of integration, sometimes dressed in the fragile human condition.
The following text corresponds to Ana Maria Crespo and Beatriz Cervantes, “Kirchhoff’s look of the Bajío. A case for the history of the archaeology”, whose first revelation indicates not only that history is based on the “fact” as an act committed, because in that article the authors show a multidisciplinary project, conceived by Paul Kirchhoff, that not “was what might have been”. The archaeological investigation that Kirchhoff wanted to tackle was chasing the inspection of inquiries across his work with the historical sources; nevertheless, as other contributions that left things unsaid, also they deserve if not their analysis or reintroduction, at least an act of spreading and rescue.
This paragraph of Figures of the Mexican anthropology closes with the text “Spanish Utopias in Mexican lands: Ángel Palerm and the formation of new generations of anthropologists”, of Alba Gonzalez Jácome, who puts in perspective the vision of the Spanish anthropologist as builder of “utopias” in this case creating new training institutions for anthropologists. With the premise of “it is just possible to learn to investigate, investigating”. And the formulation of the teaching vocation, the weighting of the field work and the direction set by the neo-evolutionist theory, the author is approaching not only the establishment of the educational project from Palermo but to forge a tradition within the academic alternative courses of Mexican anthropology, which means even go just beyond the ENAH.
The fourth section or paragraph, scientific Communities, opens with the article “The Annals of the National Museum” of Rosa Brambila Paz and Rebeca de Gortari. Text in which approaches the Annals period of 1877-1909, representing a watershed in the history of the Mexican anthropology, marked by the professionalization and the construction of a “precise and own” vocabulary to know ancient Mexico. With the appearance of the Annals there was impelled at the same time the publication of the science and the conception of a national identity by means of the study of the pre-Hispanic past. So that the work recounts some aspects of this publication eliminated in 1977; hence it is an excellent introduction not only to know its importance, but a handlebar to approach its valuable materials.
“On the history of anthropology in Mexico 1900-1920” by Mechthild Rutsch is a text which ponders the lack of interdisciplinary work for the history of anthropology in this country. It seeks to focus on the future of science with emphasis on the importance of considering the main characteristics of business processes and make them more professional “before and after the Revolution”, which involves ruptures and continuities. The researcher develops her analysis from the situation of the National Museum itself. Explained by the educational liberal project, and up to the School of High Studies of the National University the study points out that the anthropologists’ formation, in spite of the new structure of higher education, would see its consolidation distant, even if the later governments would assume the above-mentioned intention. This way, the exhibition annotates that the demarcation of the processes and institutional contexts – where there was in preparation the history of our discipline – allows to question its myths or to re-examine the “adjectives of the national anthropology”.
In turn, José Roberto Téllez Rojo, author of “The teacher and the students. A school trip to the class of the National Museum of Ethnology in 1906”, departs of an almost anecdotal situation: the trip issued by the newspapers of the time to provide the reconstruction of which meant the teacher-pupil relation in courses offered by the National Museum. Based on newspapers and consulting files, Téllez Rojo offers an idea of how they were preparing the students of Dr. Nicolas Leon, turning his gaze to the courses, the profile of the students, the teacher’s methodology and to the peculiarity of the same trip, at times more like a Sunday stroll. Thus, the author outlines the setting and consolidation of a group in blossoming, where the training of professionals was then a letter of intent that the museum was far from offering.
“The project of Tenayuca and the archaeological community in Mexico: 1925-1935”, of Haydee Lopez Hernandez, rescues sidelong the history of Tenayuca, notorious site for the development of national archaeological and showcase of the men involved in this project, members of an important generation. The Tenayuca “example” is important for the events that it provoked. So if on the one hand it shows how Manuel Gamio’s leadership perpetuated his projects thanks to a group of friends, on the other hand illustrates how a group that formed in response to own and strangers on the controversy unleashed by the project of conservation. The project Tenayuca, both for its academic connotations and for its conception of integral investigation, helped to imbue its professional and scientific character to the Mexican archaeology, amen of revealing also that the decade of the twenties is not “a period without proper meaning”.
The topic of the scientific communities closes with the article “The anthropological community of the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM)”, where Leif Korsbaek, Tonatiuh Romero Contreras and Carlos Castaños Montes serve as direct affected and authors of the conflict that they describe as: the cliques of political influence in the academic area. From a defense of the “academic neutrality”, the authors plan the path of the at that time Academy of Anthropology of the UAEM, created in 1977, up to its constitution in faculty, which only changed the scene of action for the since then group in the power. Beyond the details, this clique has endorsed, including the practice of plagiarism, when was supposed to keep the quality of publications that offer. In sum, the text refutes the assertion that it is sad that budgetary starvation annihilate institutions.
The fifth theme, theories and narratives in Mexican anthropology, begins with the work of Nicanor Rebolledo, “Anthropology and Intercultural Education. Interdisciplinary perspectives in Mexico”, that highlights the interest in the interdisciplinary nature of Mexican anthropology and its ties with other areas of study, including education. The author follows the key moments in the history of our discipline, in turn linked to the integrationist project of “national education” post-revolutionary, and shows that the relationship with psychology, pedagogy and other sciences is more vital as they tend to think anthropologists themselves, a fact evidenced by the appropriation of conceptual and methodological tools (eg, ethnography) and sometimes erratically. Through interdisciplinary and its impact on indigenous education, imbuing its intercultural character and its consummation in intercultural education, the author arrives at a crucial point in the training of professionals in this line, so that in weighing the intercultural evidence of Indian self-determination and the exercise of their cultural and linguistic rights.
Sergio Ricco’s article, “The legal anthropology: an attempt of social regulation”, said that despite the loss of national sovereignty caused by the abandonment of substantive responsibilities by the State and the current situation it follows rules to organized social groups, including indigenous people, in a case unrelated to its otherness and close to conservatism. Moving in the disagreements arising from the dispute “tradition-modernity” nodal axis of legal anthropology, emerging as the core issues rose regarding the Autonomists conceptual positions or persistent weakness in relation to theoretical and methodological construction of customary law, pitfalls that the author represents the absence of a tradition regarding so-called legal anthropology.
This last item ends with the words “shameful Narratives, dangerous anthropologies”, of Ignacio Rodriguez García, who after the counting of the work done throughout the history of anthropological disciplines, not only indicates the interference of the State on them, but how they arrived at a deplorable “omnipresent theory and without appeal”, is the Marxist or postmodern inertia. Taken by the author as “shameful narrative,” are merely personal catapults at the expense of their public utility. When asked about the usefulness of anthropology, Garcia Rodriguez raises what themes to develop when considering the nationalist, humanist path and critique of anthropology in Mexico. For him can only be two: First, “the Indian problem without paternalism or guilt”, which would avoid the perception of indigenous people as a ministry to reach agreement with the analysis in scientific ethics, regardless of political opportunism rather than the dangerous anthropology”. The second: “The reaction from the right in the educational and cultural”, which directly influence the popular education project at stake for our country before the neo-conservative beating, undoubtedly disdainful of its nationalistic load.
Given the richness and variety of texts, the reader remains curious just dives into the leaves; ink and words that we hope will continue to flourish in future work.
Author: Hugo López Aceves, Dirección de Etnología y Antropología Social, INAH
Translation by Carmen Martí Cotarelo.