Description: Can we address the issue of nationalism without polemics and restore it to the domain of social science? Claudio Lomnitz-Adler takes a major step in that direction by applying anthropological tools to the analysis of national culture. His sweeping and innovative interpretation of Mexican national ideology offers an entirely new theoretical framework for the study of national and regional cultures everywhere. Exits from the Labyrinth confronts the study of national culture through a meticulously reasoned analysis of culture and ideology in two vast, internally differentiated regions - Morelos and the Huasteca in Mexico. After proposing a vocabulary and a conceptual framework for the analysis of cultural regions, Lomnitz-Adler describes many aspects of the local and regional cultures. In each case, he begins by placing the region within Mexican political and economic space (Morelos more central, in proximity to the capital, the Huasteca more peripheral). He explores key elements of Mexican cultural and intellectual history and shows that, because these regions have strikingly different ways of tying in to Mexican official history, the comparison between them has significant implications for the study of national culture. Lomnitz-Adler's informative ethnographic and historical research is then tied to two specific aspects of Mexican national ideology and culture: the history of legitimacy and charisma in Mexican politics, and the relationship between the national community and racial ideology. Provocative and profound, Exits from the Labyrinth discusses the Latin American essayist tradition in relation to contemporary anthropology and incorporates the best of both intellectual approachesinto its own exploration of Mexican nationalism. Since the subject of nationalism is extremely important now, given the upsurge of regionalism and nationalism in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the author's emphasis on the conceptualization of culture in space will contribute to discussions in many areas.

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