Re: revitalization movements

karl h schwerin (schwerin@UNM.EDU)
Fri, 19 Jan 1996 15:23:56 -0700

On Wed, 10 Jan 1996, thomas w kavanagh wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Jan 1996, JEROME H. BARKOW wrote:
>
> > A.F.C. Wallace's revitalization stuff first appeared around 40 years
> > ago and is definitely out-of-fashion.
>
> One trajectory of development follows Wallace's extention/generalization
> of the revitalization stuff into his "paradigmatic processes of cultural
> change" (AA 74:467-78). A parallel line was taken by Roy Rappaport
> (Ritual, Sanctity and Cybernetics, AA 73: 59-76; the Sacred in Human
> Evolution AR Ecol & Sytematics), and later by Kent Flannery (Cultural
> Evolution of Civilizations) and beyond with the archaeologists (Sanders
> and Webster, Unilinealism, Multilinealism, and the Evolution of Complex
> Societies, 1978).
>
> > As far as I can tell, the kinds
> > of phenomena with which he was concerned today are discussed under the
> > rubric of "identity," the "politics of identity" in particular. A
> > union or synthesis of the Wallace framework and more recent approaches
> > is needed.
>
> Question: Do these "politics of identity" studies subsume the
> ethnogenesis and/or "re-tribalization" studies or do they indeed "start
> from scratch"?
>
> tk

Tom-
Wallace's model also greatly influenced the theoretical efforts I
undertook in my dissertation in trying to develop a workable micro-macro
model for cultural evolution. see

Schwerin, Karl H. 1966. Oil and steel. Processes of Karinya culture
change in response to industrial development. Latin American Studies,
vol. 4. Los Angeles, CA: Latin American Center, University of California
(UCLA)

Schwerin, Karl H. 1970. The Mechanisms of Culture Change, pp. 283-305
in The Social Anthropology of Latin America. Essays in honor of Ralph
Leon Beals, ed. by Walter Goldschmidt & Harry Hoijer. Latin American
Center. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA

Later, I discovered that John Gillin had come up with essentially the
same model in his anthropological textbook The Ways of Men, pp. 558-568.
New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. 1948


Karl Schwerin SnailMail: Dept. of Anthropology
Univ. of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131
e-mail: schwerin@unm.edu

There are people who will help you get your basket
on your head because they want to see what is in it.
-- African proverb