Strategies of Adaptive Mobility in the Colombian‐Ecuadorian Littoral 1

Abstract

A stratification model groups families in a hierarchal arrangement according to a set of variables. Such a model is convenient but is generally not productive in providing explanations of variations in social organization within the lower stratum of a complex socioeconomic system. A model of a successful social mobility sequence supplements a stratification model by allowing investigators to focus on complementary groupings at the local level. In the Pacific lowlands of Colombia and Ecuador, peasants, proletariat, and local middle‐class entrepreneurs are bound by the strategies people adopt in a four‐phase sequence of successful mobility. The sequence, viewed as a developmental cycle, is part of a structure in which peasant organization transforms to proletariat organization and successful proletariat organization evolves into the activities of the local entrepreneurs. The four‐phase sequence itself is part of a larger sociopolitical system manipulated by the local elite who make up a dispersed ambilineal ramage linked to community economics and politics through series of affinal and attenuated affinal bonds.