A Comparative Study of Systems of Social and Political Classification
In this article we will argue that although humans always migrated and mated, transgressions of socio-cultural group boundaries not necessarily engendered new categories of classification for mixed offspring. We will show, instead, that the presence or absence of mixed categories depends on the socio-political circumstances, ontologies, systems of kinship and reproduction that distinguish human groups that enter into contact, beginning with the example of how and why the Hispanic-American category of mestizo was introduced. The empirical background of this thesis is the comparative historical and/or ethnographic study of Colonial Hispano-American Society, of the Argentine Republic, of three Latin-American indigenous societies (Kuna, Tsachila and Candoshi), Catalan nationalism vis-à-vis Spanish immigrants, the Chamorro on the Mariana Islands, the inhabitants of Southern Moroccan Oasis, and the cast society in the north of India. The aim is to uncover the conditions under which « mixed » social categories are either politically inappropriate or logically unconceivable. The article will thus, furthermore, show that a category of « mixed » people is neither natural nor that its naturalization is, therefore, universal.