Alice Littlefield

Redefining Race: The Potential Demise of a Concept in Physical Anthropology [and Comments and Reply]

Analysis of physical anthropology textbooks published in the United States in the years 1932-79 reveals a significant decline in support for the race concept, expecially in the 1970s. Before 1970 the great majority of texts expressed the view that races exist and that the race concept is a valid tool for the description and study of human variation. In the 1970s an increasing proportion of texts rejected the race concept, with the no-race view becoming the most frequent one by 1975-79. Although the accumulation of new knowledge about human variation has contributed to the dramatic shift in textbook treatments of race, we argue that changes in the social context of anthropology have also been important. The political milieu of the 1960s coupled with the rapid institutional expansion of anthropology and the changing sociocultural characteristics of anthropologists and their students have contributed to the decline of the race concept in physical anthropology textbooks.

The expansion of capitalist relations of production in Mexican crafts

Significant changes are occurring in the relations of production and exchange in rural Mexican crafts, with increased merchant control over production constituting one of the more salient aspects of this process. Among the factors stimulating this development are the continuing proletarianisation of the Mexican peasantry and the considerable growth of the tourist market. This article discusses the changes in production relations taking place in the artisan industries of Yucatan and the parallel developments reported elsewhere in Mexico. It is concluded that although retaining certain ‘precapitalist’ features, relations of production in rural artisanty are increasingly determined by the larger capitalist economy.’

The putting-out system: Transitional form or recurrent feature of capitalist production?

Abstract The putting-out system has frequently been described in accounts of rural domestic industry during the European industrial revolution as a transitional form of production relations accompanying the development of full-fledged capitalism. In this article, the authors argue that the putting-out system is a relatively enduring feature of capitalist production, appearing in various times and places under conditions which can be specified through comparative analysis. To contribute to such specification, we systematically analyze the similarities and differences between the putting-out system in the contemporary hammock industry in Yucatan and in earlier European cases.