ABSTRACT
This essay represents the last chapter of The Folk Culture of Yucatan, the book-length presentation of the findings from his series of Yucatan community studies. While it provides a succinct summary of the results, it also reflects difficulties Redfield had reconciling some of the empirical evidence his studies had turned up, particularly regarding Guatemalan communities that revealed themselves to be unexpectedly secular in character. Another interesting aspect of this chapter is Redfield’s effort to ground his work in the theoretical work of Emile Durkheim, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Henry Sumner Maine. Redfield did not explore these linkages in depth, but the very fact that he was drawing upon such sociological theorists in an ostensibly anthropological work was distinct in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and his work served for many students of this era as a bridge to these theorists. Finally, this chapter represents the first full presentation of Redfield’s influential “folk-urban continuum” construct, and the complete text served as standard reading for doctoral students in anthropology and sociology from the 1940s into the 1950s.
