PREFACE 



The Institute of Social Antliropology is one of 

 the many tangible responses to the growing sense 

 of a need for closer cooperation and greater under- 

 standing between the peoples of the United States 

 and of the other American Republics. It was 

 created within the Smithsonian Institution to 

 carry out cooperative research and teaching in 

 the field of social anthropology as part of the 

 broad program of Cooperation with the American 

 Republics under the State Department's Interde- 

 partmental Committee. 



The purpose of the Institute of Social Antliro- 

 pology is to send scientific personnel to those 

 coimtries which have expressed a desire to under- 

 take a cooperative program of teaching and re- 

 search in social or cultm-al anthropology. Social 

 science methods are developed and a body of 

 important data is obtained tlirough university 

 training of selected students followed by a period 

 of field training in connection with a research 

 project. The field program is carried out by the 

 cooperating institutions, but other persons or 

 institutions with special interest in the project 

 are invited to collaborate, so that advantage may 

 be taken of many diversified skills in subjects 

 relevant to the problems. 



Research iaterest centers in broad, social 

 science studies of selected communities which 

 represent samples of the basic popidations of the 

 country in question. Such studies will be thought 

 of as "anthropological" because they prmcipally 

 concern peoples whose blood is partly or wholly 

 Indian and whose culture, though not strictly 

 aboriginal, contains an important element of 

 indigenous practices and is often still organized 

 in native patterns. But the studies are not re- 

 stricted to preliterate cultures, wliich is the tra- 

 ditional field of antlu-opology. On the contraiy, 

 they follow certam modern trends in the analysis 

 of contemporary cultiu'es, wliich they seek to 

 understand in terms of the environmental, his- 

 torical, and other processes that have produced 



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their modern content and organization and of the 

 potentialities they contain for futiu-e change. 



An important part of the cooperative program 

 of the Institute of Social Anthropology is the 

 publication of research results. The publications 

 will serve three purposes. First, the information 

 they contain will contribute to a scientific for- 

 mulation of the developmental and functional 

 processes of cidtnre. Particularly, it will con- 

 tribute to an understanding of the formation of 

 modern cidtures. Second, the publications will 

 provide specific and accurate data on which any 

 successful action programs affecting the peoples 

 concerned must be based. Third, they will afford 

 an accurate picture of the peoples who constitute 

 so great an element of many of the American 

 Republics. Existing publications on these coun- 

 tries represent them disproportionately in terms 

 of the city dweller or of special classes. There 

 are extraordinarily few books from which the 

 general reader can obtain an adequate and scien- 

 tifically acciu-ate accoimt of the diversified peoples 

 of indigenous ancestry. 



One of the cooperative progi-ams of the Insti- 

 tute of Social Anthropology is with the Escuela 

 Nacional de Antropologia of the Instituto Na- 

 cional de Antropologia e Historia of Mexico. 

 Tliis program involves teaching anthropology, 

 cultural geogi-aphy, linguistics, and related sub- 

 jects at the Escuela and field research among the 

 Tarascan Indians of the State of Michoacan in 

 Mexico. The research program for investigations 

 among these Indians had already been formulated 

 and partly can-ied out in recent years by the In- 

 stituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia in co- 

 operation with, the Departaniento Aut6nomo de 

 Asuntos Indigenas of Mexico and the University 

 of California. It is fortunate that the Institute 

 of Social Antlii'opology will be able to fiu-ther the 

 work begun by these institutions not only by 

 direct participation in the field research but by 

 publishing some of the results already obtained. 



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