Premium
Industrialization and ethnic change in the Lower Chubut Valley, Argentina
Author(s) -
WILLIAMS GLYN
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1978.5.3.02a00100
Subject(s) - ethnic group , welsh , salience (neuroscience) , hegemony , optimal distinctiveness theory , sociology , gender studies , political science , development economics , political economy , geography , economic geography , economics , social psychology , anthropology , psychology , archaeology , politics , law , cognitive psychology
The study of ethnicity must involve a social as well as a cultural component. I argue that ethnic salience relates to the connection between the ethnic group and changes in the wider economic structure. Drawing upon data from the Lower Chubut Valley, Argentina, I demonstrate that economic development has involved the loss of hegemony by the Welsh ethnic group, which experienced a collective downward mobility. A decline in the economic fortunes of the Welsh farmers has resulted in the development of a cultural division of land use and the formation of ethnically homogenous mutual aid networks. On the other hand, the same process has generated secularization and language erosion among members of the same ethnic group. As a result, ethnicity is in the process of changing from being seen in cultural/institutional terms to being viewed in terms of social closure.