SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis addresses issues about the domain of identity in an urban colonia popular of Guadalajara, Mexico, with a particular focus on the Theology of Liberation evangelization proposed in its parishes. The thesis raises questions about the way in which self and identity can be anthropologically analyzed in such a context, and it discusses the relevance of this type of focus in the present scenario of urban Mexican anthropological Investigation. Micro and macro structural approaches are brought together to analyze self and Identity in the process of migration, in religious, medical, ritual and gender fields and to show how these fields are interconnected. Self and identity are analyzed as processes which arise in language and social interaction rather than as 'inner' essences or collective psychological traits. These processes, albeit complex, point to a common thread: an oscillation, pluralism and coexistence rather than a linear evolution between 'traditional' and 'new' elements. The definition and creation of these elements is contextualized in particular sets of power relations among family kin, and the creation of knowledge between clergy and laymen, and medical 'experts' and patients. These elements are also contextualized in representations of past and present experience in rural and urban places expressed through metaphors of space and time. From this analysis it emerges that self and identity embrace - to different degrees - issues of belonging, performative experience, connectedness, moral continuity and interdependence rather than autonomy, self-sufficiency and self-introspection.