The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 93, July 1989 - April, 1990 Page: 414

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

the Southwest became integrated into the world economic system be-
tween the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The author's fun-
damental purpose is to understand the nature of social change. He
attempts to do this by drawing on world-system theory and by contrib-
uting his own theory of incorporation, which involves the process
through which peripheral regions become part of world systems. Hall
argues that social change associated with the emergence of a "modern
world-system" (p. I2) results from the confluence of forces at global,
regional, and local levels. The world-system provides the basic context
with which the peripheral region interacts. The dynamics of this interac-
tion influences local social organization in the periphery, which changes
according to structural characteristics. Thus, the dynamics of social
change will usually vary from group to group within the periphery de-
pending on the nature of their existing social order.
Using the Southwest, and primarily New Mexico, as an example of
how this incorporation process influences local societies, Hall traces the
region's interactions with four "state societies": (1) the pre-Columbian
Mesoamerican states (1350-1500); (2) Spain (1500-1821); (3) Mexico
(1821-1848); and (4) the United States (1848-188o). As each of these
state societies interacted with the Southwest, they created pressures on
local social organization that resulted in constant (though uneven)
change during the five centuries. Hall analyzes the nature of social
change within the various Native American societies, as well as on the
Mexican population of the region, and shows how these processes var-
ied from group to group. For those who survived the United States
conquest of the Southwest, the process culminated in their transforma-
tion into ethnic groups.
While the treatment of Texas is marginal in this study, the overall
framework should be of interest to historians of Texas. The broad con-
ceptual approach provides an excellent basis for discussion in the class-
room, even for those not particularly interested in world-system the-
ory. Complemented with more specific works, this volume could serve
as a classroom text for a survey course on the Southwest.
Institute of Texan Cultures JERRY POYO
The New Deal in the Urban South. By Douglas L. Smith. (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Pp. 287. Preface, notes,
bibliography, index. $29.95.)
The New Deal had a wide-ranging and ultimately revolutionary im-
pact on the cities of the Old South-this is the major conclusion of this
impressive book by historian Douglas L. Smith. Smith's historical re-

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