City and region in the credit market of late colonial Guadalajara,Mexico

Regional studies of colonial Mexico have focused on economic, sociological and political themes that largely neglect developing relationships between urban centers and their regions. Understanding these relationships is necessary for a clearer determination of the beginning of dependency and underdevelopment. Data for this study come from loan and mortgage documents contained in the Libros de Hipotecas for Guadalajara, Mexico from 1721 through 1820. The records show that most of the credit necessary for rural economies to function came from creditors in the capital city of Guadalajara. Credit flows through the countryside corresponded to the distributional patterns of population, economic activities, and social networks. Districts with larger populations consumed greater amounts of credit in part because of the presence of many potential borrowers. Those areas involved primarily in trade and agriculture also needed much urban credit, particularly at critical stages in their economic development. Districts in which the region's wealthiest families resided also received more credit through the system of personal and business contacts which channelled the distribution of credit. The net flow of credit from city to region, however, does not necessarily indicate unilateral dependence of rural districts on the capital city. An analysis of the relative benefits to creditor and debtor indicates that the relationship between city and region was characterized by mutual dependence rather than urban exploitation of rural districts.     

Examining Indigenous perspectives on the health implications of large‐scale agriculture in Jalisco,Mexico

In Mexico, as in many other parts of the world, industrial agriculture is dramatically changing rural landscapes and altering relationships with the land. This paper draws on community‐based research from a collaborative international research project that examined the perceived health implications of the agricultural industry for Indigenous peoples in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. Thirty interviews were conducted in a Nahuas community experiencing expanding agribusiness industries. The results of this study show that the implications of export‐oriented agricultural industry for this Nahuas community are complex and, at times, contradictory: employment in the agricultural industry provides community members with much‐needed sources of income, but it is precarious work. At the same time, community members are concerned about the long‐term health and environmental implications, such as increased exposure to chemicals, depletion of the soil and water, and loss of traditional food and lifeways. These results suggest that to better understand the costs and benefits of large‐scale agriculture for Indigenous health, a broad lens of health that is situated in the context of colonial legacies and the particularities of relationships with the land is required.     

Building a high-resolution chronology at the Maya archaeological site of El Palmar,Mexico

This paper discusses how detailed analyses of archaeological contexts and macrobotanical remains are critical for building a high-resolution chronology in archaeological research. While the application of Bayesian modelling has improved chronology-building significantly, archaeologists have sometimes neglected different dates recovered from the same depositional layer without further scrutiny. Based on 78 radiocarbon samples, this problem is challenged by building a high-resolution chronology of the Guzmán Group, a small plaza compound of the ancient Maya city of El Palmar, Mexico. The results permit a deeper understanding of relationships between dynastic interactions and the emergence of non-royal elites in Classic Maya society.     

Prehistory of Chihuahua and Sonora,Mexico

The North American Southwest includes much of Mexico as well as the southwestern United States. The area north of the international border has been studied intensively and its culture history is widely known; the portion south of the border has usually been ignored. This essay proposes a new term for the entire culture area, Northern Mexico, and provides a summary of local sequences for two states in the region, Chihuahua and Sonora. The general sequence in the U.S. Southwest (Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and Ceramic periods) also holds in northwest Mexico. Preceramic occupations are poorly known. The Ceramic period saw the rise of a number of local cultures, which varied greatly in adaptation and social complexity. The basic culture pattern of Northern Mexico is derived from that of central Mexico, but direct Mesoamerican intervention in the region was apparently limited. While the issue of Mesoamerican-Northern Mexican relationships has dominated scholarly debate for decades, the greater need is to define and explain cultural variability within and between local sequences.     

Assessing Surface Correspondence and Trade of Maya Figurines and Moulds Using Multi‐Stripe Laser Technology and Metrology*

One of the most intriguing questions for archaeologists studying clay artefacts concerns technologies employed in their manufacture and whether standardization can be demonstrated through traditional ceramic analysis. Visual comparisons and mechanical measurements have been used to determine correlations and infer standardization. Using a laser multi‐line scanner and software developed to quantify Hausdorff distances between vertices in 3D surfaces, we analysed sample collections of figurines and moulds from Belize, Mexico and Honduras. The results indicated that this procedure was a more precise indicator of common source and standardization in moulded clay artefacts. This method provided data relevant to assessing the scope of ancient trade networks and the nature of social and economic relationships that existed among the ancient inhabitants of Mesoamerica.     

Contrasting Resistance and Alliances in the Ethnic State of Napiniaca,Chiapas (Mexico) (1521–1590): The Anthropological and Historical Aspects

The present article aims to re-evaluate the gamut of ostensible alliances forged between colonial subordinates and those who subordinated them in the ethnic state of Napiniaca, Mexico, as well as identify the social spaces and contexts in which such alliances were formed and ultimately fell apart. It will do so by attempting to “unwrap” indigenous strategies and forms of resistance based on the admittedly limited texts we currently possess, in light of modern research and theory in both (ethno) history and anthropology.     

Northwest Mexico: The Prehistory of Sonora,Chihuahua, and Neighboring Areas

This article surveys research in Northwest Mexico (Sonora and Chihuahua), with an emphasis on the Early Agricultural period to the Late Prehistoric period. Middle range societies that are diverse in scale and organization characterize this region. Significant advancements in our understanding of these societies have been made in recent years, but substantial challenges remain in building interpretative frameworks that account for both regional diversity and incorporate macroscale interactions. Topics covered in this review include the adoption of agriculture, population movements, bases of social differentiation, and interactions between organizationally disparate groups. These issues demonstrate the relevance of the Northwest to research on the organization of middle range societies.     

Advancing ethical research with children: critical reflections on ethical guidelines

This viewpoint article reflects upon the recent surge of formal and institutional ethics requirements, particularly for research with children. Drawing on our experiences of researching with children and communities in economically poor contexts, we critically discuss three interrelated perspectives that help shift the focus of attention about the ethics of research in the global south from the geographical and conceptual margins to the center. First, we explore the interface between ethical research and the wider agenda of achieving social justice for/with children. Second, we highlight the ways in which research takes place within the context of broader social and personal relationships. Third, we highlight the need for researchers' understand, respect and incorporate appropriately local ethos of relationships in order to not only bridge the gap between formal ethical standards/guidelines and informal ethical practices but also promote participatory ethics.     

Exchange economies of late prehistoric eastern Sonora,Mexico: A re-evaluation based on provenance data analyses

This paper presents provenance data on mundane and rare artifact classes from eastern Sonora in order to revise interpretations of the political economy of late prehistoric Northwest Mexico. Previous researchers have argued that long-distance exchange was a predominantly elite activity utilized to generate economic wealth as a means to political ascendance. Data presented in this analysis contradict these previous models and indicate that all segments of society employed exchange to forge relationships for diverse reasons. Aspiring leaders rarely utilized unequal access to regionally acquired goods to attract local supporters. There is no evidence that foreign objects or symbolism imported from Mesoamerica were a component of aspirant leader strategies. Commoner households exchanged mundane artifacts to bank social capital with groups unlikely to undergo simultaneous social depredations. Overall, exchange and other data indicate a fairly balkanized landscape with few signs of elite offices.     

Land Tenure, Archaeology, and the Ancestral Pueblo Social Landscape

Archaeology relies upon evidence of past human modification of the natural landscape in order to infer past human social dynamics on the site, local, and regional levels. Given the inferential linkages between past landscape use and social relationships, archaeology can benefit from an approach that more explicitly delineates relationships between systems of land use and land tenure, the social means through which people define and assert land use rights. This research outlines a set of methods for modeling prehistoric land tenure systems and developing a middle range theory of land tenure relationships that may assist archaeologists in their investigations of prehistoric resource access systems. Land tenure systems are complex risk-buffering strategies that are conditioned by the labor invested in food production, the size of groups holding direct access to productive lands and resources, and the temporal duration of land access rights. The role of these variables is supported by cross-cultural data from a worldwide sample of food-producing societies. The land tenure model is applied to data from the prehistoric Southwest to help explain local and regional changes in food production, settlement size, and community organization in southwest Colorado between 900 and 1300 A.D.     

The Enduring Toltecs: History and Truth During the Aztec-to-Colonial Transition at Tula,Hidalgo

Tula, Hidalgo, was an important early Postclassic city that dominated much of central Mexico as well as adjacent regions to its north and west. For many decades, Tula was thought to be the city that early colonial documents referred to as “Tollan,” or “place of the reeds.” It is clear that the Aztec Empire, a later civilization that dominated a much larger area, revered Tollan and connected themselves to the city and its people, the Toltecs, in various ways. Recent research has questioned whether Tula was indeed the Tollan that the Aztecs revered; instead, Tollan may have been a concept that referred to all of the great civilizations that preceded the Aztecs. These two perspectives, which I frame as the “single Tollan/many Tollans” debate, have important consequences for our understanding of the early Postclassic period as well as colonial configurations of power. I argue that to understand the Aztecs’ relationships with their past, and the colonial consequences of those relationships, it is important to shift away from questions of truth. Instead, I concentrate on historical narratives and the social, material, and biological effects that they produced, including the early and late Aztec interventions at Tula. I argue that Jorge Acosta’s data provide evidence for an Early Aztec period termination ritual and a Late Aztec period New Fire ceremony that ushered in a new population boom at Tula. In turn, these connections allowed for the unprecedented rise of the Moctezuma family during the colonial period. This evidence forms part of a broader argument that the two sides of the Tula debate are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they both form part of attempts to control, claim, and revere the past in the inherently unstable fields of power that characterized the late Postclassic and early colonial periods in central Mexico.     

Recent Research in Puebla Prehistory

This review of recent research in the state of Puebla, Mexico, focuses on six issues: (1) reevaluations of the Tehuacan Valley Archaic; (2) rural household archaeology at Tetimpa; (3) the impact of Popocatépetls eruptions; (4) the city of Cholula; (5) the Nahua-Otomangue frontier; and (6) new perspectives on the Mixteca-Puebla art style. Not only do these topics illustrate the scope of archaeological work, but they can be linked to broader anthropological themes like the origins and spread of agriculture, relationships between rural populations and emergent cities, the environmental, social, and cultural impact of natural disasters, the operation of geographical frontiers and ethnic interfaces, the construction of cultural landscapes, and the connections between political organization and art style. Pueblas location along numerous environmental and cultural divides makes it an excellent laboratory for the study of human interaction across diverse kinds of frontiers.     

布迪厄实践理论视角下民族旅游与社会性别的互动——以龙胜金坑红瑶为例

在剖析现有研究忽视民族旅游与社会性别互动缺陷的基础上,提出在布迪厄的实践理论框架内可以实现二者统一的观点。然后以龙胜金坑梯田旅游与红瑶女性角色变迁为调查对象,借助布迪厄实践理论的四个关键概念--场域、惯习、资本和策略,很好地解释了金坑旅游与红瑶女性角色变迁的互动机制。研究表明:场域的变化提供了社会性别功能发挥的空间,不同的社会性别在不同的场域内依靠自身所拥有的资本形式,通过相应的内在策略实践与外在偏好选择实现了不同资本功能的转换,资本功能的实现又生成并强化了惯习的形成,并最终表现为场域结构的优化与功能的提升。     

The Correspondence of Regional Patterns and Local Strategies in Formative to Classic Period West Mexico

Archaeological research in West Mexico has tended to emphasize two widely distributed and interlocking sets of archaeological remains—the shaft tombs associated with funerary ritual in the Formative/Early Classic periods (1500 B.C.–400+ A.D.) and the Teuchitlan tradition public architecture of the Late Formative/Classic (300 B.C.–900 A.D.) periods. Each is found across a wide area, and each has been used by archaeologists of different persuasions to define West Mexico as a cultural region. This paper contrasts the shaft tomb phenomena with the Teuchitlan Tradition and concludes that their core–periphery patterns are the result of two different kinds of elite–elite relationships. These, in turn, appear to be distinct local level strategies by elites to develop a following and to establish pools of available labor.     

The Chaco Connection: Evaluating Bonito-Style Architecture in Outlier Communities

Because architecture shapes and is shaped by human actions and perceptions, architectural variability has the potential to provide information about relationships among prehistoric social groups. This study examines communicative and enculturative information contained in Bonito-style architecture constructed in Chaco Canyon and outlying communities during the late eleventh century A.D. Does the appearance of Bonito-style architecture at outliers constitute direct involvement on the part of a centralized, Chacoan entity or could local people have been emulating Bonito-style architecture they saw at Chaco or in neighboring communities? These questions have implications for existing models of Chacoan social organization. To investigate, a comparative architectural analysis uses data from 61 great houses in 55 outlier communities. Analysis is based on the premise that outlier similarity should reflect a unified, direct Chacoan source for Bonito-style architecture, and diversity should reflect the converse. Because highly visible, external architectural characteristics can be emulated, five internal, low-visibility great-house architectural attributes were selected for comparison. Results indicate substantial diversity is contained within the Chacoan world. A variety of relationships probably existed between outlier communities and Chaco Canyon, and a range of explanatory models is necessary. Bonito-style architecture is more likely to be associated with a struggle to legitimate social power than with spontaneous, cooperative communal activity. Competitive emulation may account for the appearance of Bonito-style architecture in outlier communities toward the local end of the outlier spectrum.     

Knowledge Externalities and Knowledge Spillovers in Social Networks: The Case of Izmir Metalwork Industrial District

Social networks are the networks based on relationships between social entities. Since social interactions are directly associated with externalities, these relationships are assumed to create opportunities for the network members by providing especially knowledge flows. In this context, the main objective of this study is to show the role of knowledge externalities in social networks. By following this aim, some theoretical derivations are delivered and survey results in a small-world network are explained. Consequently, after a brief introduction, the first section of this study consists of a theoretical model derived by including knowledge externalities in social networks. In the second section, a survey applied in Izmir Metalwork Industrial District is explained. Finally, in the third section, survey results are presented and then conclusions and discussions for further research are revealed. Contributions of this study to the related literature are three-fold. Firstly, knowledge externalities are added to the models of knowledge flows in social networks explicitly. Secondly, a questionnaire trying to measure knowledge spillovers and knowledge externalities separately is introduced and applied for the first time in the literature. Finally, such an analysis is the first for Izmir which is the third metropolitan city of Turkey.     

IS SOCIAL CAPITAL USEFUL FOR EXPLAINING ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN POLISH REGIONS?

The concept of social capital is widely perceived as a promising tool for explaining differences in economic development between countries and regions. According to this theory, weak links (bridging social capital) and social trust in an area favour its better access to other forms of capital, that is, economic and human capital. However, strong links (bonding social capital) may stifle creativity and entrepreneurship. Since the vast majority of research on the impact of social capital on economic development focuses on highly developed Western European countries, it seems particularly interesting to evaluate the usefulness of this approach when applied to post‐communist countries with their different experiences. The objective of this article is to identify the spatial variation of different forms of social capital in regions of Poland and then to test a hypothesis on the impact of this capital on regional economic development. The results demonstrate that despite the existing differences between regions there are no significant relationships between levels of social capital and economic development. This may be explained either by low social capital levels or by the overall degree of Polish economic development.     

Recent Advances in Mixtec Archaeology

Current research in the Mixteca region of Mexico has revealed that Formative communities were as populous as in other Mesoamerican regions. Evidence of emerging social complexity is associated with the use of and access to luxury items of foreign style and/or manufacture. Research efforts draw from indigenous models to interpret data and investigate urbanism. Regional and environmental approaches, household studies, and ethnohistory are integrated to study ethnic diversity and the complex history of human occupation. The politics associated with cultural resource management and community archaeology in the Mixteca also are discussed.     

New visual methods for teaching intersectionality from a spatial perspective in a geography and gender course

Intersectionality is a complex concept to deal with when doing research but also when teaching the interrelationships between space and social relations. Here we present “Relief Maps” as a visual tool for teaching intersectionality and its spatial dimension in higher education courses. “Relief Maps” are a model developed for research and applied in a Geography and Gender course at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) with the aim of promoting student reflection on the relationships between power structures, places and lived experiences, starting from their everyday lives.     

Cultural Effects on Phenetic Distances Among Postclassic Mexican and Southwest United States Populations

The Southwest United States (US) and Mesoamerica are often thought of as disparate regional networks separated by Northern Mexico. Chaco Canyon in the Southwest US, Tlatelolco in Central Mexico and Casas Grandes in Northern Mexico, all had large inter‐regional trade centres that economically connected these networks. This study investigated how factors such as geographic distance, shared migration history, trade and political interaction affected biological relationships and population affinities among sites in Mexico and in Southwest US during the Postclassic period (ad 900 ~ 1520). Distances based on cultural and geographic variables derived from archaeological and ethnohistoric data were compared with phenetic distances obtained from dental morphological traits. The results of Mantel tests show trade (corr = 0.441, p = 0.005), shared migration history (corr = 0.496, p = 0.004) and geographic distance (corr = 0.304, p = 0.02) are significantly correlated with phenetic distances, whereas political interaction (corr = 0.157, p = 0.133) is not. Partial Mantel tests show trade (corr = 0.223, p = 0.049) and shared migration history (corr = 0.493, p = 0.003) remain significant when controlling for similarities with geographic distance, although the correlation for trade and phenetic distance is lowered. Geographic distance is not significant when similarities with trade (corr = 0.067, p = 0.681) and shared migration history (corr = 0.148, p = 0.127) are controlled. These results highlight the importance of economic relationships and shared migration history across geographic regions in interpreting biological relationships among contemporaneous populations in prehistoric Mexico and the Southwest US. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.