What constitutes a people? Persistent Peoples draws on enduring groups from around the world to identify and analyze the phenomenon of cultural enclavement. While race, homeland, or language are often considered to be determining factors, the authors of these original articles demonstrate a more basic common denominator: a continuity of common identity in resistance to absorption by a dominant surrounding culture.

Contributors:

William Y. Adams
George Pierre Castile
N. Ross Crumrine
Timothy Dunnigan
Charles J. Erasmus
Frederick J. E. Gorman
Vera M. Green
William B. Griffen
Robert C. Harman
Mark P. Leone
Janet R. Moone
John van Willigen
Willard Walker

George Pierre Castile has studied the Tarascans of western Mexico, focusing on the problems of adaptation to outside forces. He has also done fieldwork among American Indians of the southwestern and northwestern United States, with special emphasis on the ethnohistory of northwestern groups. His publications include North American Indians: An Introduction to the Chichimeca and Cherán: La adaptación de una comunidad tradicional de Michoacán. He became associate professor of anthropology at Whitman College in 1978.
 
Gilbert Kushner has conducted research in Israel focused on directed change in an administered community of immigrants from India. His research in the United States has been concerned with ethnic identity and applied anthropology. He is the author of Immigrants from India in Israel: Planned Change in an Administered Community (University of Arizona Press). Professor of anthropology since 1970 at the University of South Florida, he became chairperson of the department in 1971 and was associate dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences from 1972 to 1978.

“Dedicated to Edward H. Spicer, whose seminal work on cultural enclavement provides the conceptual framework which unifies the various chapters, this volume is rare in the overall strength and cohesion of the individual contributions. . . . This volume will be of interest to a broad spectrum of social scientists, while also being an excellent text for courses on culture change.”—Anthropological Quarterly
 
“The variety and richness of the case studies make the book an interesting and valuable guide to the understanding of cultural responses to dominance and social change.”—Journal of Developing Areas