Shonto Revisited: Measures of Social and Economic Change in a Navajo Community
Shonto Revisited: Measures of Social and Economic Change in a Navajo Community, 195501971
WILLIAM Y. ;ZDAMS
University of Kentucky
LORRAINE T. RUFFING Ad elp h i University
Between 1954 and 1956 the senior author of this article carried out a detailed social and economic study of the community of Shonto, situated in what was then a particularly remote corner of the Navajo Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona. In 1972 the junior author returned to d o a restudy of the same community. A comparison of the data obtained in the two studiesprovides unique measures of social and economic change, and also of social and economic persistence, during a period of unprecedented growth and modernization of the Navajo Reservation. [social change, economic change, Navajo J
FOR MORE THAN A GENERATION ethnographic studies of the American Indian have been, more often than not, studies of culture contact and change. Almost n o one since the early 1930s has undertaken to produce an old-fashioned “precontact ethnography,” for the lifeways of native Americans have been changing almost before our eyes, and it was ali too obvious that the traditional past was receding beyond our grasp. The impermanence of native culture has, in consequence, been very much in our consciousness; so much so that students of North American Indians have played a leading part in the development of theories and conceptual approaches t o the study of cultural change. In spite of our continuing preoccupation with this subject, very few quantitative measures of culture change have been undertaken. Because tribes o r communities have rarely been studied twice in the same way, we are usually obliged either t o compare the subjective impressions of earlier investigators with quantified data from the present day, or subjective impressions of today with the baseline studies of earlier periods. Without comparable and quantified data both before and after a specified interval of time, change can only be
WILLIAM Y. ;ZDAMS
University of Kentucky
LORRAINE T. RUFFING Ad elp h i University
Between 1954 and 1956 the senior author of this article carried out a detailed social and economic study of the community of Shonto, situated in what was then a particularly remote corner of the Navajo Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona. In 1972 the junior author returned to d o a restudy of the same community. A comparison of the data obtained in the two studiesprovides unique measures of social and economic change, and also of social and economic persistence, during a period of unprecedented growth and modernization of the Navajo Reservation. [social change, economic change, Navajo J
FOR MORE THAN A GENERATION ethnographic studies of the American Indian have been, more often than not, studies of culture contact and change. Almost n o one since the early 1930s has undertaken to produce an old-fashioned “precontact ethnography,” for the lifeways of native Americans have been changing almost before our eyes, and it was ali too obvious that the traditional past was receding beyond our grasp. The impermanence of native culture has, in consequence, been very much in our consciousness; so much so that students of North American Indians have played a leading part in the development of theories and conceptual approaches t o the study of cultural change. In spite of our continuing preoccupation with this subject, very few quantitative measures of culture change have been undertaken. Because tribes o r communities have rarely been studied twice in the same way, we are usually obliged either t o compare the subjective impressions of earlier investigators with quantified data from the present day, or subjective impressions of today with the baseline studies of earlier periods. Without comparable and quantified data both before and after a specified interval of time, change can only be
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