The Duplex Nature of Indigeneity: Navigating Identity in the Ahuehuepan Diaspora

Using a variety of sources, perspectives, and methods, Schryer takes a duplexity approach, which allows understanding the complexity of social reality and its complementary nature--it identifies fields, clusters, and layers as interconnected components of social life. The innovative methods consist of the combination of ethnographic description and an ethnohistorical census that provides information on every person going back to approximately 1850. That census is further examined with the use of inferential and non-inferential statistical techniques, archival research in locations not normally accessible to scholars, Facebook, phone interviews conducted over several years, and help from Nahuatl-speaking people whose perspectives on the findings generate additional information and insights.

Unique in this presentation, which dips into the lives of generations of people to draw insight on those who lay claim to transnational Indigeneity, Schryer's work contributes to research and theoretical discussion in the field of migration and globalization studies through a close examination of one Indigenous community over the course of many years, utilizing a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods in anthropology.