Community, Greatness, and Misery in Mexican Life (1949)

Abstract

Jorge Portilla criticizes the practicality of sociological notions of community, which conceive of it as an “organic association” in which one finds oneself at birth, and binds one “by a solidarity of which [one] is not the author,” by an “unconscious emotional ground” of those who make it up. These conceptions seem to think of society in terms of its instrumental reality, or lack thereof, and thus do not reflect social reality. He suggests that one think of community in its everydayness, or pre-ontologically. Ultimately, for Portilla, the only account of community that resonates with the Mexican experience is one in which the community, like a person, has a face, which is responsive and can be held accountable. In this sense, the Mexican is neither a collectivist nor an individualist about community, since he seeks a responsive concept of community, a dialogical community.