ABSTRACT
Relations between Europeans and Native Americans and between Catholic lords and Muslim subjects are often explained by reference to profit maximization and assumptions about functionalist economics. The chapter begins by taking apart two supposedly sixteenth-century phrases often used today to back such explanations, and then turns to the economic record from Oaxaca and Valencia to critique, in more detail, economic functionalist assumptions about Christian/non-Christian social relations in both places. Other motives for Catholic practices are suggested, connected to the control of materiality (in sections on jurisdiction and evocation), before shifting to consider simultaneous attempts by Muslims and Native Americans to control the physical relics of their past—and thus redirect their future.
