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8.1. ROBERT REDFIELD Sociological Investigation; Yucatán YB 30:122–124, 1931 There is a marked disposition among social anthropologists to make their work a contribution to the understanding and control of life; probably it does no harm to be a little presumptuous. At any rate, few students of the simpler peoples want their work to result in merely a miscellany of curious information, and many quite definitely strive to derive from it general knowledge of human ways. No behavior in nature so challenges the usefulness of the scientific method as does human behavior. Some of us are disposed to accept that challenge, and to turn our scientific interest toward the “what happens, and why” in the ways of men. If we are interested in what happens, it seems best to study it while it happens. It is true that we want to know the history of the people we are studying, because that helps us to learn what experiences have broughtabouttheirpresentcharacteristicbehavior.But the history of non-literate peoples is poor in intimate materials. Many more facts are knowable about changes that go on before one’s eyes. 8.0. Ethnography 287 There is reason to suppose that such changes may be more easily understood in simpler societies, where the factors in the situation are relatively few. This gives the student of the folk peoples an advantage. In Yucatán, we believe, for several reasons this advantage can be pressed. The essentially insular character of Yucatán defines the field of study. The history of the Maya and of the contact of Indian and Spanish civilization is being intensively studied by competent specialists. There exist within a small area communities exhibiting a range of civilization from the primitive tribe to the urban aggregate. And finally, many of these communities, under the influence of modern industrial civilization, are undergoing striking changes. With this viewpoint and these hopes, we have begun the study of selected communities that lie along this range of civilization. We are seeking to make the studies of the separate communities comparable with one another and we are trying to describe changes that are going on. The entire resulting description T H E C A R N E G I E M A Y A 288 ETHNOGRAPHY should have a dynamic character; it ought to sketch out a process, the process of becoming civilized. This year Alfonso Villa and I pursued a study of Chan Kom, a village lying about 12 miles [19.3 km] south of Chichén Itzá. Circumstances there were extremely favorable, due to the goodwill gained in the neighborhood by Miss MacKay of the Chichén Itzá staff and to Villa’s two years of selfless service in the village as a teacher. We were therefore able to study the community with the friendly cooperation of its inhabitants . Materials were collected representing the entire round of life of the people. Included are detailed materials on the utilization of the land and the expenditure and division of labor, and considerable information on both Christian and pagan elements in the religious belief and practice. We tried, furthermore, to report not merely the abstract patterns of custom, but also the living community which is the carrier of those customs, and the changes which both customs and community are undergoing . The particular interest of Chan Kom in connection with the larger project lies in the fact that Chan Kom stands right on the frontier of changes now going on among the Maya. The people are still a homogeneous folk people, dependent upon oral tradition and largely isolated from the world. Yet they are deliberately seeking to relate themselves to the more modern civilization of the towns, encouraging education, sanitary reforms and horticulture. In organizing a cattle cooperative to care for cattle offered by the Socialist government of the State, the villagers arranged to have the shaman perform the ceremony of blood-sacrifice to exorcise evil spirits from the new herds. Chan Kom looks both forward and back. This Chan Kom study is to be kept unfinished, for the full significance we would like it to have will be realized only if it fits into the series of similar studies forming a description of culture and civilization in Yucatán. A part of my time was therefore spent this year in preparing for these other studies. We wish to include some study of Mérida, for only there is the full participation influence of modern industrial civilization realized. Therefore...

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