From Unripe to Petrified

My motivation for writing this chapter is to call attention to a 'Feminine Symbolic' that I believe constitutes the core of Andean conceptualizations of gender. The argument that I will present is as follows: The feminine, as an abstraction, is an unmarked category, whereas the masculine is elaborated, or marked. In addition, androgyny is a primary force in the continual recreation and reproduction of the world motivated by female sex and desire, not by biological reproduction. Such a gender schema provides an alternative to Lacan's symbolic which makes patriarchy seem inevitable. The second half of this analysis deals with ethnographic materials largely drawn from my fieldwork in the village of Chuschi, department of Ayacucho, Peru in the 1970's. I examine gender formation along the life course and into the after-life

A return to the village: community ethnographies and the study of Andean culture in retrospective

This edited volume brings together several scholars who have produced outstanding ethnographies of Andean communities, mostly in Peru but also in neighbouring countries. These ethnographies were published between the 1970s and 2000s, following different theoretical and thematic approaches, and they often transcended the boundaries of case studies to become important reference works on key aspects of Andean culture: for example, the symbolism and ritual uses of coca in the case of Catherine J. Allen; agricultural rituals and internal social divisions in the case of Peter Gose; social organisation and kinship in the case of Billie Jean Isbell; the use of khipus and concepts of literacy in the case of Frank Salomon; and the management and ritual dimensions of water and irrigation in the case of Ricardo Valderrama and Carmen Escalante. In their chapters the authors revisit their original works in the light of contemporary anthropology, focusing on different academic and personal aspects of their ethnographies. For example, they explain how they chose the communities they worked in; the personal relations they established there during fieldwork; the kind of links they have maintained; and how these communities have changed over time. They also review their original methodological and theoretical approaches and findings, reassessing their validity and explaining how their views have evolved or changed since they originally conducted their fieldwork and published their studies. This book also offers a review of the evolution and role of community ethnographies in the context of Andean anthropology. These ethnographies had a significant influence between the 1940s and 1980s, when they could be roughly divided – following Olivia Harris – between ‘long-termist’ and ‘short-termist’ approaches, depending on predominant focuses on historical continuities or social change respectively. However, by the 1990s these works came to be widely considered as too limited and subjective in the context of wider academic changes, such as the emergence of postmodern trends, and reflective and literary turns in anthropology. Overall, the book aims to reflect on this evolution of community ethnographies in the Andes, and on their contribution to the study of Andean culture

Contentores, corpos e topologias: Uma análise integral da coleção arqueológica de Pampa Grande (Salta, Argentina)

A partir del análisis de la colección arqueológica de Pampa Grande (Salta, Argentina) se indagan diversos contenedores (animales, cerámicos, vegetales) en tanto cuerpos, junto a las operaciones topológicas que dan sentido a los mismos en contextos funerarios. Metodología: análisis de la colección arqueológica y documentación asociada junto a antecedentes bibliográficos. Conclusiones: se proponen otros vínculos y efectividades epistémicas para los contenedores lógicos de Pampa Grande a partir de movimientos (romper, voltear, combinar, asentar, envolver) que habilitan nuevos aspectos topo-lógicos tras o hacia la muerte, alterando sus capacidades afectivas y potencialidades.Originalidad: este artículo pretende aportar una nueva mirada sobre diversos elementos que conforman una colección arqueológica y que suelen ordenarse según la especialidad del investigador, antes que seguir las conexiones que el material mismo sugiere. Así, este trabajo aporta una red relacional alternativa que vincula diversos cuerpos contenedores desde un abordaje topológico que permite ir más allá de nuestra usual mirada académica sobre los mismos.From the analysis of the archaeological collection at Pampa Grande (Salta, Argentina) different containers (animals, ceramics, vegetables) are explored as bodies, together with the topological operations that confer meaning to them in funerary contexts. Methodology: Analysis of the archaeological collection and associated documentation together with bibliographical background. Conclusions: Other links and epistemic effectivities are proposed for the logical containers of Pampa Grande based on movements (breaking, turning, combining, settling, wrapping) that enable new topological aspects after or towards death, altering their affective capacities and potentialities. Originality: This article aims to provide a new look at the various elements that make up an archaeological collection and that are usually ordered according to the specialty of the researcher, rather than following the connections that the material itself suggests. Thus, this work provides an alternative relational network that links different container bodies from a topological approach that allows us to go beyond our usual academic view of them.A partir da análise da coleção arqueológica de Pampa Grande (Salta, Argentina), são questionados diversos contentores (animais, cerâmicos, vegetais) de corpos, junto às operações topológicas que lhes dão sentido em contextos funerários. Metodologia: análise da coleção arqueológica e documentação associada junto a antecedentes bibliográficos. Conclusões: propõem-se outros vínculos e efetividades epistêmicas para os contentores lógicos de Pampa Grande a partir de movimentos (quebrar, virar, combinar, assentar, envolver) que permitem novos aspectos topológicos após a morte ou em direção a ela, alterando suas capacidades afetivas e potencialidades. Originalidade: este artigo pretende contribuir com uma nova visão sobre diversos elementos que conformam uma coleção arqueológica e que costumam ser organizados segundo a especialidade do pesquisador, antes que seguir as conexões que o material em si sugere. Assim, este trabalho contribui com uma rede relacional alternativa que vincula diversos corpos contentores a partir de uma abordagem topológica que possibilita ir mais além da nosso usual olhar acadêmico sobre eles.Fil: Lema, Veronica Soledad. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Antropología de Córdoba. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades. Instituto de Antropología de Córdoba; Argentin

Culture Confronts Nature in the Dialectical World of the Tropics

As an anthropologist, I would like to suggest that the tropics provide a perceptual environment that promotes and enhances a particular 'science of the concrete, whereby perceived order in the environment is the basis for systems of classifications, epistemological structures, and cosmologies. In the American tropics, the science of the concrete takes on a particular character that results in epistemologies founded in what I will call dialectical, reversible dualism

Violence in Peru: Performances and Dialogues

I wish not only to influence my readers' perceptions of the political violence that has shaken Peru in the last decade and a half, but also to transform the relationship of researchers to such events and the rules of academic discourse about such events. The protest songs and art will not be analyzed in terms of subaltern art and hegemonic texts or in any of the usual oppositions such as traditional-modern, but rather in terms of hybridization in the exchange of ideological and cultural goods

Public Secrets from Peru

A play about political violence in Peru.In deciding to create a drama about violence in Peru, I have moved away from the usual academic discourse into the arena of performance. I have made this move for a number of reasons: foremost is my desire that English-speaking audiences (and readers) hear the words of those whose stories I and my colleagues have recorded because I know that tales of terror engender denial on the part of the listener. Perhaps dramatic form can provide a tolerable means of communication as a product of imagination, a fantasy, and to borrow a phrase that Taussig used in 1993 at a lecture at Cornell. It captures the 'reality of the really made up.' My hope is that by the end of this play, my interlocutor will have a new sense of the complex motivations of victimizers and victims caught in an increasing spiral of violence

To Defend Ourselves, Ecology & Ritual in an Andean Village

The ethnography, To Defend Ourselves, describes a series of rituals that maintain social structure and practices in the community of Chuschi, Peru. It was first published in 1978, with a second edition published in 1985 and a Spanish edition due out in the fall, 2005

The Ontogenesis of Metaphor: Riddle Games among Quechua Speakers Seen as Cognitive Discovery Procedures

The research for this paper was conducted in the Department of Ayacucho during 1975 and 1976 under the sponsorship of The National Institute of Mental Health grant number MH26118-02 and a grant from the Social Science Research Council. Billie Jean Isbell is responsible for the theoretical formulations in the paper, which she wrote in English. Fredy Amilcar Roncalla Fernandez, the coauthor, collected nearly all of the data. He is a native speaker of Quechua and without his native intuitions and careful translations, this paper would not have been written.Metaphor, it is argued, plays an important function in cognitive and semantic development of Quechua-speaking children who engage in riddle games. It appears that riddling among the Quechua functions as a discovery procedure as children expand their cognitive operative structures and semantic domains.The National Institute of Mental Health grant number MH26118-02; Social Science Research Counci