10. Cultural Change and Ethnicity on Rural Mexico

An unease with the term ‘cultural change’ seems to be characteristic of research in rural areas in Latin America in the last few years. It stems, in my view, from two sources: first, from the confusion arising between the holistic term of culture as used in classical anthropology, and the reductionist version of it prevalent in other social disciplines and in policy-oriented studies, and, secondly, from the belief that the concept of cultural change cannot be dislodged from the North American culturalistic framework, and thus cannot be applied in studies taking a Marxist or dependency theory framework. This chapter attempts to give a comprehensive view of cultural change in the Mazahua region in central Mexico, since the beginning of this century, by focusing on the association between mainstream economic processes and shifts in ethnicity, in literacy, and in the perception of rural culture in the region. In so doing, it is hoped that both narrowing down the concept and separating it from the economic and power structure will be accented.