The Navajo documents: a study of the economic representation and construction of the Navajo

In the mid 1930s, surveyors and other agents from the Bureau of Agricultura l Economics and the Soil Conservation Service descended on the Navajo Reser vation in the southwest USA. During their short stay, the surveyors produce d derailed reports on the extent of overgrazing and soil erosion on the res ervation. The reports, which contained maps, tables of numbers, accounts, a nd photographs claimed to depict and represent the real. As part of social survey research, popular in the UK and US from the turn of the century unti l World War II, the Navajo documents, as we refer to them. used a form of f amily budget or income and expenditure report to construct the Navajo econo mically. Indeed, Navajo families were referred to as consumption units or g roups. The economic construction of the Navajo permitted the construction o f an economic solution to the Navajo problem. In effect it was demonstrated economically, that the impact of stock reductions, thought necessary to pr event further soil erosion, could be offset by increased agriculture. In co ntrast to the economic claims, the stock reductions were an economic and so cial disaster for the Navajo. We approach the economic construction of the Navajo in and through the notion of representation. We draw upon the height ened discussion of this term in art theory in the 1970s and 1980s. We frame our analysis in terms of three relationships - namely. the relationship be tween representation and depiction, the relationship between representation and the copy and the relationship between representation and the real. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.