The Politics of Ethnicity

Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States

Editor David Maybury-Lewis

    The indigenous people of the hemisphere have resisted a five-hundred-year assault, fighting to maintain their cultural identities. During this time, authorities in the Americas have insisted that the toleration of indigenous societies and cultures would undermine their respective states. In recent years, however, the nations of the Americas have started to reverse themselves. They are altering their constitutions and proclaiming themselves multiethnic. Why is this happening now? The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States, edited by David Maybury-Lewis, helps us understand the reasons and history behind these times of transition.

    The book provides a valuable overview of current problems facing indigenous peoples in their relation with national states in Latin America, from the highlands of Mexico to the jungles of Brazil. The traditional, sometimes centuries old, relations between states and indigenous peoples are now changing and being rediscussed. The collection, authored by U.S. and Latin American anthropologists using interdisciplinary approaches, enables the reader to understand these recent developments in a comparative framework. An ambitious and quite thorough collection, it is brought together skillfully by one of the discipline's maître penseurs.

  • Cover: The Politics of Ethnicity

David Maybury-Lewis is Edward C. Henderson Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and founder and president of Cultural Survival, an organization that defends indigenous rights.

Bartholomew Dean is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas.

Paul H. Gelles is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.

Bret Gutafson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Washington University, St. Louis.

James Howe is Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jean Jackson is Professor and Head of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jerome M. Levi is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of Latin American Studies at Carleton College.

Maria Clemencia Ramirez is Senior Researcher at the Instituto Colombiano de Antropologia e Historia and Professor of Anthropology at Universidad de los Andes, Bogota

Richard Reed is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Trinity University.

Jennifer Schirmer is a Research Professor in Oslo and an Affiliate of the Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival at Harvard University.