Cheran
Subtitle: a Sierra Tarascan village
By: by Ralph L. Beals ; with an introduction to the 1973 edition by the author and a new foreword by George M. Foster.
Contributors: Foster, George McClelland, 1913-; United States. Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and Cultural Cooperation.
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Norman
Language: eng
Number of pages: 225
Subjects: Tarasco Indians -- Social life and customs; Cherán (Mexico) -- Social life and customs
Description: Cheran, situated in west-central Mexico, was one of the most isolated mountain towns until about 1940, when a paved highway connected it with a highway serving Guadalajara and Mexico City. With Cheran poised for rapid modernization, Beals and other anthropologists arrived in 1940 to begin an intensive study of the Tarascan community and its five thousand inhabitants before their lives were inextricably altered by modern life.

After two years of gathering data about Cheran geography, agriculture, manufacturing, food use, government, religious ceremonies, fiestas, and general lifeways, Beals published their findings as Publication No. 2 of the Smithsonian Institution's Institute of Social Anthropology.

Cheran is a valuable resource for today's anthropologists, providing a solid, empirical foundation for comparison to similar communities and for tests of acculturative theories. This paperback edition contains a follow-up introduction the author wrote in 1973 and a new foreword by George M. Foster that discusses the impact of Beals's groundbreaking work on further studies of Cheran and similar communities.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 223).
Originally published: Washington, D.C. : Institute of Social Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, 1946.
"Prepared in cooperation with the United States Department of State as a project of the Interdepartmental Committee on Cultural and Scientific Cooperation".