Boccara 2003 Rethinking the Margins-Thinking From the Margins. Culture, Power, And Place on the Frontiers of the New World

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Rethinking the Margins/Thinking from the Margins:Culture, Power, and Place on the Frontiers of the NewWorldGuillame Boccara aa Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France.

Online Publication Date: 01 January 2003To cite this Article: Boccara, Guillame (2003) 'Rethinking the Margins/Thinking fromthe Margins: Culture, Power, and Place on the Frontiers of the New World',Identities, 10:1, 59 - 81To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/10702890304339

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Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 10: 5981, 2003

Copyright 2003 Taylor & Francis

1070-289X/03 $12.00 +.00

DOI: 10.1080/10702890390180714

Rethinking the Margins/Thinking from the Margins:Culture, Power, and Place on the Frontiers of theNew World

Guillaume BoccaraCentre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueParis, France

In this article, I undertake a critical analysis of the writings that contributed to set upthe foundation for eclipsing Amerindian social dynamics and their complexity. Startingfrom a presentation of Jesuit Jos de Acostas classifications of the indigenoussociopolitical forms, I show that both the evolutionist and discontinuist perspective stillin vogue among some Americanists and the positivist approach of some borderlandshistorians tend to perpetuate a conquest culture (the material and symbolic power rela-tion of domination) while concealing indigenous social dynamics and adaptation strat-egies. I end the article by presenting some of the perspectives and concepts developedby a new historical anthropology that seek to re-politicize the production of social andcultural differences otherwise considered as natural.

Key Words: frontier, Americas, colonial classifications, production of difference,Mestizo logic

In this essay, I explore the topic of the American frontiers and hinterlands as wellas that of the peoples living therein, taking as my point of departure the sociocul-tural and sociopolitical categories that have been used and are still used to charac-terize them. Given the span of the topic, as well as the vast geographical areasencompassed by the terms frontier land, unconquered or peripheral territory, andborderlands,1 I will focus on some typologies, categories, and representational strat-egies that have tended to endure through the ages. I am alluding, for example, tothe typology advanced by the Jesuit missionary Jos de Acosta (15401600) to-ward the end of the 16th century,2 whose traces can still be detected in more recentstudies, such as those by Service, Carneiro, or Redmond. I am also thinking ofdichotomies such as the one that has been established between nomadic and sed-entary peoples, which has worked since earliest colonial times as a true operatorfor sociopolitical and sociocultural demarcation and discrimination, or of the pur-ported contrast between leaders whose status and power is hereditary and thosewhose position in society is due to their services and personal merits.

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007 I will begin by trying to show, through the presentation of some categories and

classifications commonly used to talk about indigenous peoples in general, andnonsubjected peoples in particular, that these tend to reify and to simplify indig-enous realities while being at the same time dependent upon certain implicit con-cepts regarding the relationships between culture, society, and space that are in-deed problematic. If we accept that, from the moment of the constitution of colo-nial definitions regarding Indian nations, up to the determination of indigenousethnic groups and cultures during the republican period, the attempt has alwaysbeen made to create and to impose a correspondence, by reason or by force, be-tween a cultural entity and a territory, a language, and a political organization, thenwe cannot consider the isomorphism between culture, space, and identity as a givenor as a natural characteristic of every human society, be it primitive or civi-lized.

In the same way, if we agree that the frontier itself is not an a priori existingconcept, but that it conforms to a transitional time-space of civilization and com-munication both real and imaginary that has been constructed progressively throughmultiple processes of denomination, delimitation, and negotiation, we are forcedto acknowledge the need to account for frontier relations not in terms of contact, orof zones of contact (Pratt 1992) between two preexisting cultural entities, but asa process whereby both the others otherness and the colonizers own identity(Ferguson 1997; Gupta and Ferguson 1997) are constructed. As Mignolo put it,rather than a contact zone, what we have is the violence of border(lands) (2001:427). The alleged difference between the two sides of the frontier should not rep-resent, therefore, the point of departure for our historico-antropological investiga-tions, but rather, the very phenomenon that needs to be explained. To be morespecific, I would not propose that the fundamental problem concerns the ways inwhich the so-called Comanches, Apaches, Mapuches, Jumanos, or Miskitus havebeen transformed through their multifaceted and extended contact with diversecolonizing agents, or, conversely, that we should search for the cultural elementsthat would allow us to declare that Mapucheness, in its essential aspects, hasbeen preserved throughout the centuries. What should engage our analysis insteadis the process of production of sociocultural difference in a given sociopoliticaland economic context. In conclusion, rather than engaging in an uncritical recu-peration of ethnic labels and sociopolitical categories that have taken shape as aresult of centuries of colonialism, we should analyze not only the mechanisms forthe production of difference in a context characterized by asymmetrical social re-lations but the processes of territorialization of the diverse ethnic entities, as wellas the unforeseen or perverse effects of every social process (be it colonial ornot): what, in the American case, could be called the phenomena of resistance andspontaneous or antagonistic mestizaje.

Even though what I have just stated would appear to have been already ac-cepted by a great many Americanist ethnohistorians, we will see, nevertheless,through the presentation of some concrete examples, that for numerous scholars it

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007 is still hard to break with the concept of the ethnic group in order to re-create

connections and re-politicize and re-historicize the diverse processes of identityand sociocultural construction.

In the first part of this essay, and with the goal to illustrate what has just beenproposed in general terms, I will present the sociopolitical typology established byAcosta, and will then analyze the vision and division of the American sociocul-tural world that the Jesuit helped to create (along with others, obviously). I willthen proceed to a brief presentation of the classifications and stages of humanevolution proposed by some anthropologists and will then question both the ap-propriateness and the supposedly innovative character of typologies such as band-tribe-chiefdom-state, which in so many ways remind us of the horde-behetra3-empire (horda-behetra-imperio) trilogy of Acosta. I would like then to pause inorder to analyze the concept of chiefdom, so much currently in fashion. I willfinish this critical revision with the presentation of a text written by a specialist inborderland histories, namely David Weber, and will attempt to show the ways inwhich this author remains trapped within the order of traditional colonial and an-thropological discourse. The final part of this article will be dedicated to the pre-sentation of recent historico-anthropological works whose approaches tend, in myopinion, in the direction of an amplification of our sociological imagination, andthat will allow us to account for historical processes that, at a local or regionallevel, have led toward increased forms of complexity.

Jos De Acosta: Culture, space, and politics in the New WorldIf I dwell on an author as famous as Acosta, it is not in order to praise one of thefirst ethnologists of the New World through a presentation of his well-known andwell-recognized sociopolitical classifications, but in order precisely to meditateon the implications of the Jesuit missionarys probable position among the earliestethnologists of the New World. I will not dwell here on the question of how Acosta,throughout his work, contributes to make the strange into the familiar and theunintelligible into the understood, to borrow a formula from Stuart Schwartz (1994:3). I should mention here that the fact that I am interested in the elaboration ofpolitical and cultural classifications by the Jesuit does not mean that I consider theanalysis of colonial representations to be enough to account, by itself, for the subtle-ties and complexities of the interactions between Indians and Europeans. Finally,in concentrating throughout this study on the categories devised by Acosta, I donot intend to suggest that his vision concerning indigenous realities was rigid orstatic or that it did not change as a result of his field work. What I am trying to dohere is to examine the nature of the knowledge produced by Acosta and to estab-lish continuities between the colonial past, ethnology, and our present academicclimate. In sum, my concern is to trace the existing continuities between colonialand postcolonial anthropological procedures as regards the apprehension and con-struction of otherness without going into the question of interrelations, media-

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007 tions, or adjustments (Schwartz 1994) or discussing representational machines

or the uses of symbolic technology (Greenblatt 1991).My project here falls rather on the side of those undertaken by Carmen Bernand

and Serge Gruzinski (1988) or Jos Rabasa (2000).What I mean to say is that evenifas Anthony Pagden showed in his seminal work (1982)in La Historia Natu-ral y Moral de las Indias and De Procuranda Indorum Salute Acosta insists on theunity of the human species, puts a high premium on the value of empirical knowl-edge, advocates a historical explanation for cultural difference, emphasizes therole of social determinations in the construction of the individual, launches a com-prehensive analysis of the Amerindian world taking into account the numberlessvariety of rites and customs among the Indian peoples, and constructs a model forthe cultural evolution of humanity, what really interests me here is the kind ofknowledge produced through the Jesuits classifications: that is, the way in whichthe territorialization of a certain number of sociocultural indigenous units and thesegmentation of the totality of the worlds space (thinking here specifically of thecase of the New World) have been transacted.4 Let us then proceed to the presenta-tion of the typology created by Acosta, who was, as we know, the father of themissionary enterprise in the Peruvian Virreinato.

In the Historia Natural, as well as in De Procuranda,5 the Jesuit mentions threedifferent kinds of barbarians, it being possible to differentiate the latter kind fromthe more civilized class of individual insofar as the former deviate from the pathof straight reason and from the common practices of men (Acosta 1984 [1588]:61).6 In both typologies, whose contents and criteria vary, as we will see, one caneasily observe the intimate connection established between forms of government,rites and customs, and forms of communication.

The first class of barbarians mentioned in De Procuranda comprises those na-tions that have a stable political regime of government, public laws, fortifiedcities, magistrates, a prosperous and well-organized commerce, and, what is mostimportant, well-known use of the written arts (Acosta 1984 [1588]: 63).7 No In-dian nations whatsoever fall under the first category. It is within the second classof barbarians that the first Americans are to be found, namely, the Mexicans andthe Peruvians, but also the Chileans (Tucapalenses and Araucanos). These barbar-ians have their own regime of government, habitual and fixed settlements wherethey maintain their public administration, their military leaders, and a certain splen-dor of religious observance (Acosta 1984 [1588]: 63). As I have just mentioned,this second class includes not only the Inca and Mexica empires but also thelesser kingdoms and principalities that have chieftains, do not wander about likebeasts, have an appointed leader and judge, and live in cities (Acosta 1984 [1588]:65).8 According to Acosta, and I insist on this point because we will encounteragain the same idea in typologies 400 years later, this second category, particu-larly the subgroup comprised by Tucapalenses, Araucanos, and others, constitutes,in the words of the Jesuit, a very widespread class (Acosta 1984 [1588]: 65).9 Inthe section of De Procuranda dedicated to false titles of dominion over the Indi-

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007 ans (Los falsos ttulos de dominio sobre los indios), Acosta mentions the tyranny

of the Incas and speaks again of the heterogeneity and multiplicity of politicalregimes of peoples that live without a legitimate prince to rule themwhich iswhat the Spaniards call behetras (Acosta 1984 [1588]: 399).10 The third categoryof barbarian appears to be as wide and approximate as the second one, for, accord-ing to the Jesuit, it is impossible to say the number of towns and regions that itcomprises in this New World (Acosta 1984 [1588]: 67). Under it fall

savage men, resembling beasts, who hardly have human feelings. Without king, with-out law, without covenants, without magistrates nor fixed government regimes, shiftingtheir settlements from time to time, and, even when they are settled in one place,their dwellings rather resemble the caves of savage beasts or the stables of commonanimals.11

Thus, Acosta wrote about a class of nations among which we will find the num-berless herds (innumerables manadas; Acosta 1984 [1588]: 67) of chunchos,chiriguanas, moxos, a good part of the inhabitants of Brazil and all of the ones inFlorida, the moscas from Nueva Granada, and those who inhabit the vast country-side near the immense Paraguay river. In all, we observe, and I reprise this pointonce again, that of all the groups that inhabit unconquered, or even unknown,territories are here defined as savages. It should not surprise us, then, that Acostafinishes his enumeration by saying that these men and semi-men (Acosta 1984[1588]: 69) of the jungle occupy the infinite space that separates the two oceans,a space not yet thoroughly explored, but whose existence is assured in all cer-tainty (Acosta 1984 [1588]: 69).

In the Historia Natural, Acosta again establishes a tripartite division amongbarbarian peoples, but now insists much more on the forms of government andmodifies the content of each of the categories. At the summit, he places the em-pires of the Mexicans and the Incas (Acosta 1991 [1590]: 415); next follow thebehetras, which, as he writes, constitute the greatest part of this new orb (Acosta1991 [1590]: 376); in the last place comes the third class, where all govern andcommand. The nations belonging to the second class are the following: theAraucanos and the Tucapel Indians, who appear to have fallen one step in theranking; the Indians of Nueva Granada (note how they have gone up in the worldranking); and the Indians from Guatemala, all from Florida and from Brazil. It isimportant to note that the order in which Acosta lists the Indian nations belongingto this second class is not arbitrary, for in passing from the Araucanos to the Indi-ans of Brazil we are shifting from the category of behetra or seoro to the thirdcategory, whose barbarism is even greater; not only do they lack legitimate king-doms, but he who is strongest prevails and commands (Acosta 1991 [1590]: 376).12

Once more, the lowest stratum is occupied by the unfortunate Chichimecas, origi-nal inhabitants of Nueva Espaa, who, according to the famous stereotype, do nottill the land but hunt instead, live scattered in rough areas without civility (polica),


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007 go naked, and do not worship gods or have any kind of religion (Acosta 1991

[1590]: 453). Acosta insists here also on the fact that this is the same mode ofliving of many provinces in various parts of the Indies.

So, now I ask, what do we do with these typologies? What do these classes tellus about the forms of classification for the enormous variety of rites, customs, andforms of government faced by the Europeans, and what do they banish from sight?I will take as my point of departure the argument presented by Anthony Pagden,who considers the third categorythe one corresponding to the greatest level ofbarbarismas being for the most part a creation of the European imagination (1982:167). Does this mean that the remaining, superior categories did in fact correspondto any authentic Indian reality? Does Pagden mean to say that the behetras andthe empires as defined by Acosta are not a creation of the European imagination?

I believe that to proffer an opinion concerning the ethnographic validity of anyof these three classes can indeed be problematic for at least two different reasons,and that to do so is at the same time typical of a certain uncritical way of usingthose categories and classifications that appear in chronicles and in other docu-ments from the Colonial period. First, I believe that the category of behetra, aswell as the category of empire, cannot be thought independently of the third class,which represents simultaneously a sociopolitical type and a cultural stage, inas-much as it refers to a class of semi-men that occupy a position midway betweenanimals and the first forms of social organization and of human communication.In consequence, these types and stereotypes do not describe a concrete empiricalreality that may have existed at the arrival of the Spaniards, or do not merely aspireto describe it, despite Acostas repeated claims concerning the originality of hiswork, which, according to him, tells a true tale of facts and of men (even thoughstatements to the contrary would appear to be scattered throughout his work, aswhen he writes that one cannot know the whole world and must in consequenceuse the imagination, or when he says that he will basically limit himself to thedescription of the Peruvian Indians in De Procuranda or to the origin of the Mexi-cans in the Historia Natural). Thus, these types and stereotypes on the one handorganize the space and the history of the New World, and on the other, prepare theterrain for a more efficient, appropriate, and just enterprise of colonization andpacification. Let us remember that this is precisely the main objective of the DeProcuranda indorum salute.

Second, it seems to me that to engage in a search for an authentic indigenousreality, or to try to differentiate between imagination and reality, fact and fiction,in the case of Acostas classifications, can make us lose sight of his works trulycrucial character, as well as the procedures used in the construction of knowledgeregarding American realities.13 If I am at all interested in this work, which playedsuch a central role in the speculations about the Amerindians and their culturetoward the end of the 16th, and most of the 17th century, it is precisely on accountof how it effects cuts within the indigenous realities, including the traits that itchooses to select and feature from those societies and the aspects of the indigenous

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007 social fabric that it forces to disappear. From that point of view, it would seem that

Acostas work is indeed rather modern in its procedures, while, at the same time,the heaviness of our epistemological field manifests our own archaism. Taking asa point of departure the present state of the historico-anthropological field, andinasmuch as I am interested in the construction of an archeology of the politicalsciences, I would say that this tendency to outline and detect discrete sociopoliticalunits, while defining a political domain in whose center one could locate the objectstate, has shown signs of consolidation, inscribing itself within the very structureof anthropological knowledge and taking on the character of shared evidence.14

In this respect, we may note that the crucial aspect of Acostas work consistsprecisely in its segmentation of the social space of the New World into a series ofcultures radically different from each other, occupying different spaces or territo-ries, organized according to different forms of government, and corresponding todifferent stages in the evolution of humankind. In this way, the Jesuit contributesto the creation of an ethnological landscape composed of discrete political andcultural units as he constructs cultural types that become manifest through specificpolitical and religious types (Pagden 1982: 171174). He presents the image of anindigenous America without connections, from which inter-ethnic networks or in-termediate political forms are absent. On the other hand, Acostas evolutionist lenscontributed to the formation of a representation of the frontier as a transitionalspace, or as space-time. Obviously, it is not a question here of judging the mission-ary for his ethnocentrism (defining the world of the barbarians as an inversion ofthe Christian world, as far as the lowest stratum is concerned) or for his evolution-ism (three categories of barbarians, each one representing a different stage of hu-man evolution, each stage corresponding to a different degree of social organiza-tion, linguistic development, and religious observance). Obviously, it is not a ques-tion either of praising him for having been one of the fathers of comparative eth-nology, and the creator of what Pagden describes as a system of universal ethnol-ogy that was dependent upon an account of universal history (1982: 192).

It is rather a question of going back to the earliest treatises of applied ethnologyof the New World in order to understand how, on the one hand, the process ofconstruction of a series of indigenous worlds, for the most part imaginary, hasbeen achieved, and, on the other, how a number of cultures have become confinedto certain territories due to the needs of pacification, colonization, and evangeliza-tion. We should note that the spatiotemporal categories of frontier (frontera), in-land (tierra adentro), and margin (margen) play a central role in this context. Thatis, the definition of cultural and, in consequence, political and religious types wasintimately tied to the territorialization of the indigenous politico-cultural units andnations (naciones).15 The idea of culture, and by extension, of a human group linkedto a place and associated with a certain space, even in the case of peoples definedas nomadic, functions as a central device in the representation of the Amerindiansociocultural space.

The idea according to which cultures can be considered to be unique and dis-


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007 crete entities corresponding to diverse places and spaces is obviously linked to the

will to impose order in an otherwise chaotic world, and responds also to the need toconstruct an interpretative frame according to which sociopolitical differences canbe explained, and, if necessary, cultural differences themselves can be created. Thetracing of limits and the creation of frontiers are therefore intimately connected toprojects of pacification and colonization whose main objective is to understandcultures from the inside in order to modify them. Overall, we can see that Acostaswork presents us with an image of the New World as a cultural mosaic: discretecultural spaces are given a priori, as well as all other entities and identities. Andwhen historical processes are invoked, as in the case of the Mexicans discussed inbook seven of the Historia Natural, it is always in order to inscribe them within apredetermined temporal scheme running from the lowest stratum, that of theChichimecas, all the way up to the highest one, that of empire. Even the politicalstruggles between barbarian groups and more civilized individuals are explained interms of an evolutionism we could classify as phylogenetic.

Evolutionist typologies and pitfalls of colonial classificationsThus we arrive at the second part of this essay, where, keeping in mind Acostasclassifications and his procedures of spatialization, I would like to conduct aninquiry into whether more or less recent attempts at establishing sociopoliticaltypologies applicable to Amerindian realities, which would at the same time beable to account for indigenous social formations, have indeed managed to breakloose from sociopolitical models foreign to the Amerindian worlds. I would alsolike to cast a critical look at the colonial categories used to analyze the indigenousforms in history, the mechanisms for the production of difference, and the ways inwhich various forms of cross breeding (mestizaje) and intertwining took place inthe New World.

In order to answer these questions, I will discuss the typologies established byanthropologists such as Service and Carneiro, focusing on the category of chiefdom(cacicazgo or curacazgo). In the second place, I will show how historian DavidWebers recent work on the sociopolitical dynamics of the American frontiers tendsto perpetuate what could be called a conquest culture, or the symbolic violenceexercised when notions such as those of frontier, ethnic group, or social evolutionare deployed as self-evident concepts or as shared evidence (Rabasa 2000).

On tribes and chieftancies, on social equality and complexityDespite the fact that certain conjectures proposed by evolutionist political anthro-pology regarding the origins of the state or of hierarchical societies can sometimesbe highly amusing (When should we expect the emergence of World Govern-ment? Carneiro 1978), it is important to observe that neither evolutionism nor thesearch for origins has completely disappeared from the Americanist academic land-

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007 scape.16 So it is that the ecological determinism of the Handbook of South Ameri-

can Indians from the 1940s, the typology defined by Elman Service in 1962 in hisPrimitive Social Organization, and Marshall Sahlinss proposals regarding the tribalstage in human societies still cast an influence over a good part of the studiesaddressing American indigenous societies. In fact, the stages of sociopolitical evo-lution (band-tribe-chiefdom-state) still constitute the frame of reference many an-thropologists use in thinking about the political dynamics of indigenous societies.Granted, in the last two decades, the content of the classes has changed signifi-cantly, and, along with those changes, the totality of the geo-ethnic and geo-politi-cal Amerindian panorama. By way of a compressed summary I would say that,first, the dichotomy between, on the one hand, civilized highlands considered ascradles of increased sociopolitical complexity and cultural diffusion and, on theother, savage lowlands inhabited by stagnant egalitarian societies has been putinto question and discarded.

Second, this break with a dichotomy up to then well entrenched has led towarda revision of the distribution map of complex social formations in America. It isthus that, from the time of the investigations of Donald Lathrap and Ana Roosevelt,the Amazonian region has appeared also as a space wherein so-called complexsocial formations were developed, capable of producing considerable surplus, aswell as leaders whose power extended beyond the simple community or hamlet(see Roosevelts chapter in Salomon and Schwartz 1999).

Third, the concept of chiefdom (cacicazgo), understood in general terms as acomplex social formation,17 was posited as constituting the most extended classthroughout the continent. In consequence, chiefdoms experienced a boom, a de-velopment that, in turn, posed several problems regarding the concepts analyticalstatus. These problems concerned, on the one hand, numerous discrepancies rela-tive to the determination of the concepts characteristics, taking the form of ques-tions such as: Are chiefdoms multicommunal political units showing two or threelevels? Does the ancestral worship play a central ideological role in the function-ing of chiefdoms? Does such a political form develop under environmental cir-cumscription,18 as Carneiro proposed in his seminal 1981 text, The Chiefdom:Precursor of the State? Should chiefdoms be defined as rank societies, as did MortonFried in The Evolution of Political Society (1967),19 or should one rather definethem as political units composed of a multiplicity of villages, as Carneiro suggests(1981: 20)? Another set of questions then concerned the fact that the societiesgrouped under this class would appear no longer to have many things in common(Cahokia, Araucanians, Timucua, Seoros Andinos, etc.). Such a crise de croissanceled toward a more recent innovation, which consists in positing a distinction be-tween chiefdom and chieftaincy. In concentrating on the way in which, under cer-tain circumstances, the exercise of power becomes a permanent feature, so that theconditions are created for the accumulation of wealth and the formation of as-cribed status or of hereditary (not achieved) power, the recent studies by Redmond(1998) and Whitehead (1996, 1998a, 1998b) are attempting to re-historicize their


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007 assumed perspective.20

What can we say about the foregoing debates concerning the complexity ofindigenous societies? And, above all, what opinion should one hold regarding thistypology, which has only become increasingly amorphous, given the widespreadpresence of chiefdoms throughout the continent?

First, it is necessary to stress the salutary character of the use of the category ofchiefdom in peripheral or frontier contexts, inasmuch as this allows us to pointtoward larger-scale developments, and to the fact that other macroregional inte-gration has taken place in the past. Still, going back here to a comment made byCarlos Fausto (2000), I wonder if the break with the determinist model of Steward,and with the evolutionist one of Service, is not more apparent than real. To say, asRoosevelt does, that the lowlands are exceptionally suited to the development ofsizable chiefdoms, or that the Araucanians did not belong to the category oftribe but to chiefdom instead, as proposed recently by Tom Dillehay (2002), doesnot help at all in breaking away from the previous models, nor does it help toaccount for the diversity and complexity of sociocultural processes in those un-conquered lands. Furthermore, this obsession with chiefdoms and chieftains tendsalways to conceal the desire to understand how the state was born, inasmuch aschiefdoms are taken to represent an intermediary and crucial stage between egali-tarian societies and the state.21 Such eschatological perspective is, in my opinion,very harmful to historico-anthropological investigations, for each and every socialform taken to precede its formation is interpreted in the shadow of the state.

In the second place, I believe one can legitimately ask oneself up to what pointthe proposal presented by Whitehead (1998b), concerning the possibility of mak-ing a distinction between social formation and agency, chiefdom and chieftaincy,really does diverge from the one made by Sahlins in his famous 1968 article, PoorMan, Rich Man, Big-Man and Chief, or in Services 1962 text.22 In fact, we couldgo back a great deal more in time, as we find this same idea in Les stats, empireset principautez du monde, written by Pierre dAvity in 1617,23 or even in Acostasvery own Historia Natural, texts in which the authors explain the evolution andincreased sophistication of political, cultural, and therefore religious forms, as aresult of the activities of certain more cultivated and enterprising individuals.

In the third place, I believe that the problem with these evolutionist typologies,their neo-historicist tinges notwithstanding, is that they trap us within simple-mindedsociopolitical models that do not leave room to imagine other kinds of sociopoliticalorganization (multi-ethnic networks, interdigitated identities, social chain, etc.).As Fausto warns us once more, we should be careful to avoid interpreting complexevidence through paradoxically simple typological molds (2000: 41), for it is pos-sible that diverse processes of complexificationthat is, processes of economicintensification, of social differentiation, and of religious centralizationmay haveexisted (2000: 26).

Finally, I believe that the fact that this social formation, now regarded as com-plex, has nowadays become so fashionable, and that every day newer and more

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007 numerous chiefdoms appear to pop up where once there were only tribes or no-

madic bands of individuals, answers not only to theoretical issues but also to di-verse political struggles regarding the culture and identity of indigenous peoplestoday. It is, in other words, a question of cultural politics of identity.

Trapped in the order of colonial discourseBecause I am talking about frontiers and interethnic dynamics, I must mention ascholar who has in recent years displayed remarkable dynamism in this field ofendeavor, namely, David Weber. In a recent study, this historian, whose work, Irepeat once more, has been and still is of great importance in the subfield of His-panic frontier studies, falls in my opinion into several of the errors I have previ-ously mentioned. Concerning the use of the terms tribal society (sociedad tribal)and nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples (pueblos nmades y semi-nmades), hewrites, without making further distinctions, that in all the world throughout theModern period, those societies with state-like organizations faced, as a generalrule, difficulties in controlling tribal societies, especially in the case of nomadicand semi-nomadic peoples (1998: 149). I think we can say, without running therisk of being labeled diehard postmoderns, that these categoriestribe, nomadic,and semi-nomadic peopleshave been all too often used by the agents of thosevery state organizations in order to justify their projects of conquest and coloniza-tion. Every once in a while, nomads were conjured up simply because their in-scription within a given territory differed from the colonizing agents ideas. Some-times, nomads were generated through wars and through the deployment of de-vices for economic exploitation (the mitas and encomiendas), which would thensuggest that, in such cases, the names refugee and displaced person would be moreappropriate. In fact, the Reche-Mapuche from the 16th century had a special wordto refer to this kind of displaced Indian from the north: they called them the tripan-che (tripan: to leave, to go out; che: people).

On the other hand, we know, thanks to the studies by Brian Ferguson and NeilWhitehead (1990), that many of the so-called tribes have appeared as a result ofthe tribalization process put under way in areas of state expansion. For all of thepreceding reasons, I think we should avoid as much as possible this kind of gener-alization, which does not contribute in the least to deessentialize Colonial dis-course nor help us to account for the categories of understanding of the colonizingagents; on the contrary, it tends to perpetuate both the discontinuity of the officialclassificatory bias of the 16th, as well as of the 19th century and the narratives ofconcealment that were instrumental in the exotization of the other, as against thefamiliarity of the we.

A bit further in the study I have just mentioned, titled Borbones y brbaros.Centro y periferia en la reformulacin de la poltica de Espaa hacia los indgenasno sometidos, David Weber speaks about the Araucanos from southern Chileand about the Chichimecas from the north of Mexico, as if he were referring to


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007 real ethnic groups (1998: 150), when we are aware by now of the very limited

ethnographic value held by such heteronyms. At the same time, their great value asoperators for politico-cultural demarcation during the Colonial period has becomeincreasingly evident.

Next, this historian mentions the treaties signed by the Spaniards with diverseIndian nations throughout the American continent and comments, quite rightly,that they formed part of the new Bourbon policy for the administration of colonialspace as well as constituting a response to concrete peripheral dynamics. So it isthat treaties were signed by the Comanches, Creeks, Chickasaw, and Navajos inthe north, as well as in Central and South America, along the Caribbean coast ofNicaragua, in the region of Chaco, and the Pampas and the Araucana. Still, I thinkthat it would be appropriate to interpret those treaties and negotiations as devicesfor ethnification and normalization, that is to say, as institutions that contributed tothe creation not only of the indigenous ethnic groups but also of a certain homoge-neous and normalized juridical space. To speak about those spaces of negotiationas if they represented neutral sites of free and smooth communication betweentwo preexisting ethnic or national entities, the Spanish-Creoles on the one handand the Indian nations on the other, is to lose from sight one of the fundamentalaspects of the colonial process: the creation of collective colonial subjects (ethnicgroups, corresponding to fixed territories and composed of a documented numberof subgroups) and of individual colonial subjects (the chieftains now consideredas agents of the king, in the double sense of judges and policemen; Boccara 1999,2002). By recuperating the colonial terms contained in the various parliamentarydocuments (parlamentos), one runs the risk of taking the indigenous ethnic groupsas a priori givens while at the same time abandoning analysis of the mechanismsfor the production of difference through the use of juridico-political tools.

I would also like to point out that it is precisely as a result of this process ofethnification-normalization that new categories or classes of marginalized peopleswere created or re-created: delinquents, nomads, fugitives, idlers, all of those groupsand individuals that either did not fit into the new category of Indian subject to andof the king, and in the new Colonial political cartography, or whose leaders re-fused to take part in the new political negotiations. Thus, this new arrangement ormanagement of the diverse American spaces and of the forms of illegality tendedto create new margins, filling them in with new figures of otherness (Boccara1999; Araya Espinosa 1999).

Finally, one could say, regarding the declarations made during the signing ofthe treaties or collected in the official documents, what has already been said aboutthe requerimientos: that they are performative utterances, in the sense that they areneither descriptions, affirmations, nor exhortations but phrases that, under certaincircumstances, turn their saying into a doing. The words In the name of the Creekor the Picunche nations or In the name of God and the King I take possession ofthis land are neither true nor false, do not need to be demonstrated, do not de-scribe, but do things (Austin 1970). Treaties and negotiations played a fundamen-

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007 tal role in the creation of the Americas as an ethnic mosaic. In discounting this

fact, one ignores the mechanisms for the location of cultures and societies at thesame time that one depoliticizes the construction of cultures and identities (Ferguson1997). In saying that the Indian nations have their own rights, territories, and cul-tures, the Colonial authorities tend to fragment the indigenous social fabric, fore-close the native sociopolitical units, and contribute to creating the insular charac-ter of the cultures thus isolated.

A true anthropology of the frontier should also include a sort of political an-thropology of treaties, missions, and negotiations that would allow us to rehistoricizeand repoliticize our own analyses of the Colonial mechanisms for the creation ofdifference. This would also permit us to see that power, as Michel Foucault has soconvincingly argued, is not always repressive (Deleuze 1986; Foucault 1976, 1992)but, on the contrary, often creative. Missions and other examples of political nego-tiations (parlamentos, treaties), as pillars of the Colonial politics of frontier ad-ministration (Boccara 1999), tend to construct small positive individualities throughminute operations on the bodies and souls of the subjects thus identified, recorded,tamed, civilized, disciplined, and held accountable. This application of Colonialpower in the American frontiers uses individuals simultaneously as objects andas instruments of its own exercise (Ewald 1992: 206), and it gathers informationin order to act with more efficacy so as to intensify and enlarge the effects ofpower. Such a microphysics of civilization is accompanied by a macrophysics ofethnification (see below Ethnogenesis and ethnification) that we must reconstructin order to account for colonial processes in all of their complexity.

New perspectives: Ethnogenesis and ethnification,multi-ethnic networks and interdigitated identities,middle grounds and MestizajeIn the last few years, several new themes, concepts, and avenues of investigationhave appeared that seem to present stimulating alternatives to previous modes ofinterpretation concerning the sociocultural dynamics and historical processes inthe New World. I would like to mention briefly some of them here. Among them,I would like to call attention, in particular, to the themes of combined processes ofethnogenesis and ethnification, of multi-ethnic networks, and of interdigitated iden-tities, as representing some of the basic principles of organization of indigenoussocieties. I would like to mention too the recent emphasis placed on the analysis ofintermediary spaces and on the role of intermediaries or passeurs. Finally, I wouldalso underline the new interest garnered by the processes of mestizaje and by analysisof the formation of middle grounds.

Ethnogenesis and ethnificationI will just say, as regards the combined processes of ethnogenesis and ethnification,


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007 that from the time of the work of William Sturtevant in the early 1970s, the use of

the first concept has become widespread at the same time that it has slowly be-come associated with the second. Whereas for Sturtevant the phenomenon ofethnogenesis strictly referred to the physical emergence of new political groups,nowadays the tendency is to use the term to characterize very different processesof transformation, not only in political terms but also when linked to the forms ofidentity definition of a group through time. In separating the concept of ethnogenesisfrom its strictly biological meaning (which it also had among Soviet anthropolo-gists; Michael 1962), more recent studies have emphasized the capacities for ad-aptation and creation shown by indigenous societies and have begun to considerthe possibility that new social configurations may have taken shape, not only as aresult of fission and fusion processes but also through the incorporation of foreignelements and of consecutive modifications in the definition of the self (Hill 1996;Schwartz and Salomon 2000).

On the other hand, it is now accepted that the processes of ethnogenesis cannotbe studied without taking into account the attendant phenomena of ethnificationand ethnocide (Sider 1994; Whitehead 1996). What this clearly implies is that it isnot possible to engage the topic of ethnic unites and identities without at the sametime taking into consideration the social and political contexts that may have par-ticipated in their formation. The aforementioned considerations will be of crucialimportance in cases belonging to the Colonial period, as, for instance, in exploringthe processes of ethnogenesis-ethnification of the Mapuche or the Miskitu, whichcannot be understood without analyzing not only the mechanisms of Colonial powerbut also the struggles among different imperial powers in their attempt to gaincontrol of the borderlands (Boccara 2002).

Interdigitation, multi-ethnicity, and diasporic social logicIn speaking about the stimulating theme of interdigitation, I will refer to the studyof interlocking identities undertaken by Jos Luis Martnez in his latest work onthe circum-punea area in the Southern Andes. One can say about the work of thisChilean anthropologist that it follows in the wake of the studies realized by JohnMurra, while at the same time it constitutes an attempt to problematize the rela-tionship between ethnic identity, political units, and the question of control of re-sources. In fact, even though Murra speaks in his classic and seminal study aboutvertical control of a maximum of ecological zones (1975 [1972]), of the exist-ence of vertical archipelagos, ethnic interlocking (1975 [1972]: 79), and multi-ethnic oases (1975 [1972]: 73)thus making it possible to reflect on the non-correspondence between ethnic groups and territories, or on the noncontiguousnessbetween community and territoryhe does not seem to account for the paths offormation of such ethnic entities. Rather, he merely observed that these ethnicgroups diverge in their cultural equipment (1975 [1972]: 76), while he advo-cates the idea of an ethnico-political nucleus (core area) upon which other settle-

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007 ments are dependent. According to Martnez (2000), what he describes as inter-

mixed populations (poblaciones entremezcladas), or as a high degree of inter-digitation, constitutes precisely one of the central traits in the model of human andecologico-productive complementarity prevalent in the circum-punea area. Thus,breaking with the ideas present in previous models about autarchic sociopoliticalunits, such as the Seoros, Martnez (2000) postulates the existence of a series ofintertwining cultural strategies that facilitated the formation of geo-ethnic spaceswhere the determination of discreet political and ethnic units has no relevance.24

The author notes that throughout the zone under scrutiny, one can find individualsbelonging to all sorts of groups (Lipes, Chicha, Atacama), sharing the spaces andthe use of local resources. In consequence, he proposes a model where ethnic iden-tities, in addition to being defined within an interdigitated space, respond funda-mentally to political, social, and economic determinations.25 As can readily beseen, this represents a considerably more complex proposition than the monoethnicconcept advocated by Service, according to which chiefdoms expand by accretionof neighboring towns or groups whose culture and language are similar (1981[1962]: 142).26

As far as the existence of multi-ethnic networks and the dynamic constructionof identities are concerned, I refer the reader to the plentiful number of studiesdedicated to the South American lowlands.27 I will call attention here to certainfundamental analyses concerning the question of warfare as a predatory devicededicated to the conceptualization and interiorization of the outside, and to theirimpact on our ways of conceiving the socius, not as a sort of identitarian bubblebut as something that is constructed through its relationship with the exterior(Viveiros de Castro 1993). These Amazonian works have put into question one ofthe main pillars of our sociological tradition, namely, our concept of society as ahomogeneous whole defined on the basis of an imagined self-coincidence, as wellas our idea of culture as a sphere separated and opposed to nature.28 Another ex-ample of social and historical dynamics that cannot be explained by monotopicapproaches and evolutionist models is given by a recent collective volume onArawak-speaking peoples in which the contributors emphasize long-distance mi-grations, interregional networks, supraregional macropolities, diasporic social logic,and transethnic identities as central characteristics of these indigenous societies.The editors of the volume insist in their introduction on the fact that the connect-edness that existed among macroregions now severed by centuries of colonial de-mographic and political history can be traced back to pre-Columbian time (Hilland Santos-Granero 2002: 15). They also emphasize the openness and inclusivityof Arawakan sociopolitical formations as well as the frequency and intensity ofmultilingualism and cross-linguistic ties, rethinking the very notion of culture areaand language family.


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007 Beyond and behind resistance . . . More power: Mestizajes and

middle groundsFinally, the two concepts to have emerged with the most vigor during the lastdecade are mestizaje and middle grounds. The notion of middle grounds, coinedby Richard White (1991), insists on the facts of creation and communication of acommonly shared culture between Indians and Europeans. It is a question of break-ing with the traditional, and doubtlessly limiting, approach that conceives the termsof the encounter as a simple clash between two monolithical blocks because, as weknow, the multiple interactions generated by that encounter led to the formation ofnew spaces, new forms of communication, and new codes of behavior. The middleground, conceived as a space both real and symbolic, is the expression of the cre-ation of these new worlds within the New Worldto use the phrase coined tenyears ago in an international encounter in Paris.29 From this point of view, themiddle ground resembles, in its mechanisms and manifestations, that Mestizo Mindstudied by French historian Serge Gruzinski in his last book (2002),30 insofar as itallows us to rethink Colonial realities, not in terms of simple oppositions such asresistance/acculturation or nativism/hispanization but, rather, on the basis of moreopen notions such as mixture, metamorphosis, intermediation, and passages.31

Through the appropriation of Foucaults and Bourdieus reflections concerningthe relations between power, society, and culture, and of recent critical revisionsconcerning the links between domination and resistance (Abu-Lughod 1990; Ortner1995; Scott 1985, 1990), and by re-placing history at the base of differences spon-taneously treated as ancient or natural (Bourdieu 2000: 54), the numerous authorswho have worked, over the course of the decade, toward the development of ameditation concerning the mechanisms of mestizaje have not produced simpleanswers to the debates around questions of continuity and change, culture, andidentity. What they have proposed is that we abandon simple-minded oppositionsas tools in the task of rethinking sociohistorical processes, a task that should begrounded, first, in an apparent paradoxnamely, that the continuity of things is tobe looked for in their transformations, because changes are, precisely, what canshed light on permanenceand, second, in constant remembrance of the fact thatwe have had to learn the nation and the state. The state is not society, wroteBakounine (1972: 319), and it is only after we have managed to de-state ourminds and to re-historicize our forms of classification and categories of under-standing that we will be able to apprehend the Amerindian geopolitical spaces aswell as the Colonial frontier zones exactly as they are: as fluid, flexible, and change-able products of a permanent political struggle, as an expression of a precarioussystem of power relations that is constantly under construction by means of mul-tiple negotiations, compromises, and mobilizations, sometimes revealing conceal-ing behaviors.

In focusing on the mechanisms of mestizaje and on the construction of middlegrounds, these studies allow us to go beyond the plane of the univocal and of the

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007 absolute character of concepts such as tradition, modernity, and resistance. Instead

of trying to determine the degrees of resistance presented by this or that subalterngroup, it is now a question of analyzing the relations between different protago-nists as a function of the transformation of the forms of dependence and domina-tion. The constitutive character of the relations between colonizers and the sub-jects upon which the diverse mechanisms of social domination, economic exploi-tation, and political subjection are, on principle, applied forces us toward reflec-tion concerning the conditions of possibility of the production of difference. In thesame way, abandoning the old notion of a face-to-face between two radically dif-ferent universes (colonizers and colonized, modernity and tradition), the studiesabout middle grounds and mestizaje can help us to understand the shared meansand ways through which collective and individual social agents define their socialand cultural properties.

Instead of considering the so-called subaltern agents as an otherness outside theinstitutions of state and capitalist domination, it would be more useful to considertheir participation in the struggles concerning the definition of new frameworks ofrelationships. There is no absolute and ideal criterion for resistance, but rather theopposite, a wide spectrum of relations of interdependence with respect to the domi-nant institutions. So it is that occasionally, in a move that only superficially couldappear as contradictory, a group can achieve increased autonomy through forgingan alliance with a colonial power (as with the Mapuche in 18th-century southernChile). In other cases, it is location within interstitial and intermediary zones thatwill allow a group to reproduce its specificity (e.g., the Jumanos in 17th-centurynorthern Mexico). In still other cases, it is through the adoption of the institutionsof domination and exploitation of the colonizing society that a group manages toescape total assimilation (e.g., the Miskitu in 18th-century Nicaragua). Finally,many institutions, technologies, and symbols can, as we know, be appropriated,redefined, and subverted, creating what, in the eyes of the colonizers, could appearas cultural monsters.32

In conclusion, the perspective adopted by scholars concerned with issues ofmestizaje and middle grounds points toward the need for replacing the old, radicalcontrast between European colonizer and Amerindian colonized subject with acommon-space model where a series of groups, identities, and knowledge slowlybecome differentiated through time while maintaining, nevertheless, a constitu-tive relation. It is due, in great part, to our forgetfulness concerning thesesociohistorical processes of differentiation and mutual construction of social agents,cultural entities, and their attendant categories of knowledge that relations of domi-nation, the exercise of symbolic violence, and naturalizing discourses concerninginequality become perpetuated. It is due to this forgetfulness about the processesregarding the production of difference that marginalized peoples can be treated asarchaic groups or that those that have been subjugated can be classified as back-ward and lacking in agency. It is due to this ignorance that some social scientists(modernizing or archaizing utopians) can still contrast modernity and tradition,


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007 westernization and nativism, acculturation and resistance, and use the term devel-

opment in the same way that the missionaries from the Colonial period used theterm civilization: as embodying the central value of our time (Ferguson 1990) oras an operator of politics of representation and identity (Escobar 1995). Finally,and by way of paying my respects to the late Pierre Bourdieu, I would like to saythat the everyday forms of scholarly work and resistance should consist in dis-mantling the process responsible for the transformation of history into nature, andof cultural arbitrariness into the natural (2001: 2).

NotesReceived 4 June 2002; accepted 9 October 2002.

This article was translated by Dina Rivera (Yale University). I owe a debt of gratitude to the people atthe Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University: to its director James Scott, its coordinator KayMansfield, and to my colleagues V. Dzingarai, M. Goldman, L. Oglesby, R. Schurman, S. Sihna, andH. West. I would also like to thank for their reading and comments all of the people who attended the 5April 2002 session of the Agrarian Studies Colloquium Series where a preliminary version of thisarticle was presented.

Address correspondence to Gillaume Boccara, CERMA, EHESS, 54 bd. Raspail, 75006, Paris, France.E-mail: [email protected]

1. Given the great semantic variation of the notion of frontier through time and space, I would say thatthere is no absolute and ideal criterion to define it, even though we could agree with StephenGreenblatt when he writes: The marginal existence, the lives of those who are not us, marks theirdistance from civility (1991: 66).

2. Sent to Lima in 1569, Acosta was elected provincial of the Jesuit in 1576. He founded variouscolleges and traveled within the Peruvian Virreinato. Back to Spain in the late 16th century, heoccupied the position of rector of the College of Salamanca.

3. According to Sebastian de Covarrubiass Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Espaola (1611), behetrarefers to Middle Ages towns whose inhabitants used to elect their lords: Cuentan las cornicas quecomo oviesse en Castilla la Vieja algunos pueblos que tenan costumbre de tiempo inmemorialmudar a su voluntad los seores estables que quisiessen por cuya razn se dixeron behetras . . .libertad de poder ellos nombrar [sus seores]. And further on: en la behetra como no tienencabea a quien respetar, todos hablan a bulto. Y por esso donde quiera que dan voces confusamente,dezimos ser behetra. De hetria, que vale en lengua antigua castellana enredo, mezcla, confusin. . . y de all se pudo dezir behetra, mezcla y confusin de gentes. Refer also to the definition of theDiccionario de Autoridades (1726).

4. In this respect, my analysis differs from Fermn Del Pino-Dazs one, insofar as this Spanish histo-rian praises Acostas great interest for cultural difference (1992: 318), forgetting to mention theJesuit contribution to the very production of sociocultural difference. Likewise, Del Pino-Dazimplicitly considers that the distinction made by Acosta between a natural history on the onehand and a moral history on the other refers to preexisting and objective categories (316317),whereas I consider them as cultural constructs.

5. Acostas De Procuranda was written in Latin. I am using here the 1984 translation published by theCSIC (Spain).

6. Se apartan de la recta razn y de la practica habitual de los hombres.7. Que tienen rgimen poltico estable de gobierno, leyes pblicas, ciudades fortificadas, magistrados,

comercio prspero y bien organizado, y, lo que ms importa, uso bien conocido de las letras.Regarding the importance of literacy as an operator for sociocultural classification, refer to Mignolo

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007 (1995, chap. 1).

8. Los reinos menores y principados que tienen caciques, no andan errantes como las fieras, tienenjuez y jefe designado y viven en ciudades.

9. Una clase muy extendida.10. La heterogeneidad y multiplicidad de regmenes polticos de pueblos que viven sin un legtimo

prncipe que los rijaque es lo que los espaoles llaman behetras.11. Los hombres salvajes, semejantes a bestias, que apenas tienen sentimientos humanos. Sin rey, sin

ley, sin pactos, sin magistrados ni rgimen de gobierno fijos, cambiando de domicilio de tiempo entiempo y an cuando lo tienen fijo, ms se parece a una cueva de fieras o establos de animales.

12. No solo no tienen reinos fundados sino que el que ms puede prevalece y manda.13. As Rolena Adorno argues in her study on Guaman Poma, one should not consider the cronistas as

historians who lie but should rather ask what facts are presented and what are the assumptionsor conceptual matrix on which their exposition is based (2000: 15).

14. On this point, I inscribe my argument totally within the coordinates traced by C. Bernand andS. Gruzinski in their archeology of religious sciences (1988). As they write, concerning the construc-tion of the category of idolatry and the determination of the religious sphere: ces grilles[interprtatives des colonisateurs] rduisent et emprisonnent si bien quelles aboutissent crer desobjets nouveaux: les idoltries mexicaine et pruvienne. . . . [Ces grilles] se sont installes etenracines dans la pense occidentale dans une approche du rel qui sacharne discerner et circonscrire ce quil est convenu dappeler le domaine du religieux (1988: 7).

15. During the Colonial period, a nation was defined as a politically and territorially organized unitinhabited by natives (los naturales).

16. For an excellent critique of the weight of evolutionism in the study of sociohistorical processes andcultural dynamics in the Pacific, see N. Thomas (1989).

17. According to Service: Chiefdoms are redistributional societies with a permanent central agency ofcoordination (1962: 134). According to Carneiro, a chiefdom is an autonomous political unitcomprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief(1981: 45).

18. Resource concentration and environmental circumscription promote population pressure, fromwhich chiefdoms evolve from chieftaincy through warfare (Redmond 1998: 8). Carneiro writes:The circumscription theory runs as follows. As population density increases, and arable land comesinto short supply, fighting over land ensues. Villages vanquished in war, having nowhere to flee,are forced to remain in place and to be subjugated by the victors. Chiefdoms arose most readily inenvironmentally circumscribed areas, such as islands and narrow valleys (1981: 64).

19. According to Fried: Rank exists when there are fewer positions of valued status than personscapable of filling them. A rank society has means of limiting the access of its members to statuspositions that they would otherwise hold on the basis of sex, age, or personal attributes (1967: 52).

20. Redmond writes: chieftaincy represents an emergent simultaneous hierarchy in which an achievedleader exercises hierarchically differentiated decision-making functions, albeit on a temporarybasis (1998: 4). And further on: If it persists, the chieftaincy might well be poised for permanentinstitutionalization as a hereditary chiefdom (1998: 6). Whitehead writes: Chieftaincy is under-stood as being present in any supradomestic leadership: as such the range of this political phenom-enon is wide indeed. . . . Chiefdom is then understood to be a special case of chieftaincy, one that iscoincident with other forms of leadership and control in the spheres of economy and ideology, suchas management of irrigation works, or the social relationship with the divine (1998a: 151).

21. One of the questions Fried asks at the very beginning of his book is: What was the nature of thesimplest society? (1967: 51).

22. Service writes: When chieftainship becomes a permanent office in the structure of society, socialinequality becomes characteristic of the society (1981 [1962]: 139).

23. See the part dedicated to La connaissance que les peuples du Nouveau Monde ont de Dieu, page246.

24. Concerning this topic, see also the study by Susan Sleeper-Smith on the role of women in the furtrade during the 18th century in the area of the Western Great Lakes (2000). This historian demon-strates that in order to understand Colonial intercultural dynamics, the phenomena of godparenting


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007 and kin networks are much more relevant than those of ethnicity and fixed tribal affiliation.

25. In this respect, it should be noted that Enrique Mayers works on the household economies in theAndes point in the same direction of a complexification of John Murras model. I refer here particu-larly to the second chapter of Mayers latest book (2002), in which the author shows that verticalitydid not necessarily mean self-sufficiency or absence of autonomous exchanges of goods (throughbarter and trade) in pre-Columbian economies.

26. Chiefdoms tend to expand by accretion when their neighbors are similar in language and culture.27. For a synthesis of recent works, see Carneiro Da Cunha (1992), as well as the recent special issue

of Ethnohistory (2000).28. Viveiros de Castro (1996).29. Gruzinski and Wachtel (1996).30. Concerning this topic, see also the study by Rolena Adorno (1994) on the writings of the ladino

indians and the way in which the production of mestizo works, as well as new cultural forms basedon casting a projection over the Colonial past and concerns determined by the new social context.This author insists on the mediating character of these cultural outsiders: they do not lend them-selves to the simple or dichotomous characterizations of European versus Amerindian society andculture and they reveal instead the richer, more ambiguous strategies that characterize the roles ofcultural mediation they inevitably played (1994: 383). She also wonders about the meaning andimplications of writing history from a culturally hybrid perspective (1994: 387).

31. With respect to the question of mestizaje, one should note the glimmerings of new research per-spectives. While the French Africanist Jean-Loup Amselle no longer speaks about mestizaje ororiginary syncretism (1998) but about branchements (2001), Gruzinski prefers now also to speakabout connections or connected histories (2001). Beyond the use of metaphors originating in thefield of cybernetics or computer sciences, I must say that such overcautiousness with respect to theindiscriminate use of the concept of mestizaje (cautiousness concerning the use of a term that couldcertainly trap us within a racialized conception of history and could also be used as a weaponagainst the recognition of the rights of the indigenous peoples of the Americas) strikes me as salu-tary. The theoretical status of the concept of mestizaje should be discussed, as one should alsoattempt to re-politicize the concrete facts of hybridization that constitute, above all, a politicalphenomenon. In contradiction of the culturalist perspective, it is necessary to insist on the factthat mestizaje refers to a crucial domain of struggle (Sider 1994: 20).

32. I am borrowing this formula from Christophe Giudicelli, whose PhD deals with the fundamentallymestizo logic of the rebellion of the so-called Tepehuanes in northern Mexico at the beginning ofthe 17th century (2000).

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Boccara 2003 Rethinking the Margins-Thinking From the Margins. Culture, Power, And Place on the Frontiers of the New World