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A Land Without Gods: Process Theory, Maldevelopment and the Mexican Nahuas. By Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel Buckles. London: Zed Books, 1995. Pp.x + 374. 55.00/$69.95 and 19.95/$29.95. ISBN 185649 325 3 and 326 1 This book contributes to a growing anthropological literature on local patterns and processes of capitalist development in Mesoamerica. It addresses the recent history of Pajapan, a Nahua-speaking community in the Sierra de Santa Marta of southern Veracruz, documenting changing patterns of political and economic activity, ecological adaptation, and household and kinship organisation. The empirical content of the book is based on extensive field research using a typical and eclectic blend of anthropological methods, including surveys, structured and unstructured interviews, archival research, and participant observation. Impressive surveys of ethnographic, historical, and theoretical literature supplement the primary data.
A Land Without Gods begins (Chapters 1 to 3) with a lucid historical analysis of the politics of land tenure, cattle ranching, and peasant agriculture, the disruption of the status quo by the planned (but ultimately aborted) construction of a deep water port near the Laguna de Ostion, and the internecine land struggles that emerged in the port project's wake. This section of the book is well-balanced among theoretical discussion, literature review, and empirical analysis. The coverage of caciquismo and the more recent involvement of political parties, government bureaucracies, civil organisations, and the national press in local political disputes are particularly rich.
After a promising beginning, however, the book quickly loses much of its coherence, shifting abruptly first to economics (Chapters 4 and 5) and later to social organisation (Chapter 6) and symbolism (Chapter 7). In the economics chapters 'capital' is reified, even anthropomorphised, and imbued with unflattering personality attributes...