1821 Guadalajara, Mexico exhibited surprising mobility within its population. Using data from the back-to-back censuses of 1821 and 1822, this study argues that mobility affected almost every individual who lived in Guadalajara during that time period. The methodology used traces individuals who persisted from one year to the next to determine overall rates of mobility. An analysis of short-term stability and change within this set of historically identifiable individuals, families and households reveals a process of mobility that not only has been neglected by studies based on aggregate data, but that is often at variance with the findings of those studies. The evidence shows that a significant portion of the extensive movement of individuals to and from the wards is short term and often cyclical, rather than long term and permanent. Additionally, data sets from 1811–1813 and 1839–1842 are used as "control groups" to conclude that the mobility in 1821–1822 was not a unique historical event based on circumstances, but an overarching trend throughout the nineteenth century.
For the past million years, individuals have engaged in multitasking as they interact with the surrounding environment and with each other for the acquisition of daily necessities such as food and goods. Although culture is often perceived as a collective process, it is individual people who use language, experience illness, expend energy, perceive landscapes, and create memories. These processes were sustained at the individual and household level from the time of the earliest social groups to the beginnings of settled agricultural communities and the eventual development of complex societies in the form of chiefdoms, states, and empires. Even after the advent of “civilization” about 6,000 years ago, human culture has for the most part been created and maintained not by the actions of elites—as is commonly proclaimed by many archaeological theorists—but by the many thousands of daily actions carried out by average citizens. With this book, Monica L. Smith examines how the archaeological record of ordinary objects—used by ordinary people—constitutes a manifestation of humankind’s cognitive and social development. A Prehistory of Ordinary People offers an impressive synthesis and accessible style that will appeal to archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and others interested in the long history of human decision-making.
The eight essays included in this volume examine the dominant narrative of Texas history and seek to establish a record that includes both Mexican men and women, groups whose voices have been notably absent from the history books. Finding documents that reflect the experiences of those outside of the mainstream culture is difficult, since historical archives tend to contain materials produced by the privileged and governing classes of society. The contributing scholars make a case for expanding the notion of archives to include alternative sources. By utilizing oral histories, Spanish-language writings and periodicals, folklore, photographs, and other personal materials, it becomes possible to recreate a history that includes a significant part of the state¿s population, the Mexican community that lived in the area long before its absorption into the United States.These articles primarily explore themes within the field of Chicano/a Studies. Divided into three sections, Creating Social Landscapes, Racialized Identities, and Unearthing Voices, the pieces cover issues as diverse as the Mexican-American Presbyterian community, the female voice in the history of the Texas borderlands, and Tejano roots on the Louisiana-Texas border in the 18th and 19th centuries. In their introduction, editors Monica Perales and Raúl A. Ramos write that the scholars, in their exploration of the state¿s history, go beyond the standard categories of immigration, assimilation, and the nation state. Instead, they forge new paths into historical territories by exploring gender and sexuality, migration, transnationalism, and globalization.
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