The Human Condition in Latin America

Wolf, Eric R., & Edward C. Hansen, The Human Condition in Latin America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.

From the authors’ Preface:

Our work is an introduction to Latin American society which aims at defining the existential conditions under which most Latin Americans live. To this end we have compiled documents and primary sources from both analysts of and participants in the Latin American drama. We have attempted to present materials which would serve as diagnostic portraits of various facets of contemporary Latin American societies. From these portraits we have inductively woven our own analyses of the broader social phenomena which the portraits exemplify. The forms of analysis are as varied as the portraits themselves by deliberate design; we have tried to expose the reader to the richer traditions of societal analysis. These forms include ethnographic description, history, kinship and network analysis, investigation of social stratification (along the classic lines of class, status, and power), and finally, a description of culture, here viewed as particular sets of symbolic representations. We have also tried to give our work something of a narrative flow, both in choice of materials and also by cutting out footnotes except where absolutely necessary.

Reviewed in American Anthropologist © 1974.

Reviewed in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Eric Robert Wolf (February 1, 1923 – March 6, 1999)[1] was an anthropologist, best known for his studies of peasants, Latin America, and his advocacy of Marxian perspectives within anthropology.