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Race, ‘Culture,’ and Mestizaje: The Statistical Construction of the Ecuadorian Nation, 1930–1950
Author(s) -
Clark A.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6443.00060
Subject(s) - peasant , race (biology) , census , ideology , identity (music) , national identity , politics , sociology , gender studies , population , ethnology , geography , political science , demography , law , archaeology , aesthetics , philosophy
This article analyzes two statistical projects carried out in Ecuador: social reformer Dr. Pablo Arturo Suarez’ 1934 study of peasant and worker living conditions, and the first national census of 1950. These projects are analyzed to reveal the cultural and political conceptions of those who produced them, anxieties about the prospects for national development, and new categories of social identity under construction. They were instrumental in constituting specific notions of the nature of the national population, in which problems of race were simultaneously accentuated and denied. As such, they were part of the process of constructing a national ideology of mestizaje in Ecuador.