Introduction to the Dossier: "Ethnic groups and Nations in Latin America: history and comparation"

Abstract

The present volume of American Memory is substantially composed of contributions discussed in the Working Group “Ethnicities and nation in Latin America: history and comparison”, met on the occasion of the VII Anthropology Meeting of MERCOSUR, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in July 2007. The set of works presented here offers diverse contexts in which the dispute over the meanings of classifications between social groups is played out. That is to say, they refer to situations in which classifications - ethnic, racial or national - show their role and political significance. The struggle over the connotation of social classification categories or their scope of application, and their incidence and relationship with the policies of various states is thus discovered as a terrain that crosses the colonial and republican periods.