Tepoztlan: A Mexican Village--A Study of Folk Life

by Robert Redfield

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

254 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1930

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rereading Robert Redfield at this point can only remind one of the velocity of change -- of anthropology, of economics, of Mexico. Redfield belonged to the second wind of anthropology (in a schema that is purely mine and will no doubt generate eye-rolling among historians of the field), people who abandoned the armchair research of Lewis Morgan and Sir Edward Tylor for the field, to see how culture actually functioned in its own setting. They had a fondness for the unexplored, or at least the exotic--one thinks of Malinowski in the Triobriands or Levi-Strauss in the Amazon. Perhaps it was the adventure tourism of its day. These anthropologists, at least in my shallow reading of them, stand with at least one foot in the worship of progress that characterized so much of the nineteenth century. They seem not to have abandoned the notion that "primitive" cultures exist on some sort of economic and developmental (and, implicitly, moral) scale, the goal of which is to wind up on the civilized side of things. It isn't always explicit in their work; in this book of Redfield's, it shows up mostly in a fascination with material culture and the notion of folk (a term which is a bit more respectful than the adjective "primitive") -- hence, folklore, folk culture, and eventually folk music. So, Redfield to Tepoztlan, a town outside of Mexico City and hence very accessible to academics -- Oscar Lewis also wrote a book about it, and I remember a linguistic study from the seventies on how Spanish grammar was influencing the structure of the native language, Nahua. The linguistic study was published in the early seventies, a decade before I visited (and revisited in the nineties). One is probably hard-pressed to find Nahua speakers in Tepoztlan now; its proximity, crisp mountain air, and sheer beauty have made it a favored destination of Mexico City-dwellers seeking weekned relief. There was some tension over the building of a golf course (monopolization of water), and some kidnapping, but it has been blessedly absent from the news of shootouts between gangs and each other or with the Army. Still, Tepoztlan is located in a region where cartel factions fight over routes, or access, or assets, or whatever else they decide to fight over. So, re-reading Redfield at this time, with his hint of a belief of a developmental continuum along which cultures can be arranged, can only remind one that the encounter between technologically advanced societies and those that are not so resembles a collision more than a march forward.

[S.kuppusamy]

i want read this book with 15 days