Overview
- Provides a history of sustainability among the indigenous Andean community of the Q’ero since the 1960s
- Focuses on the relationship between ecological sustainability and mining extractivism
- Analyzes the increasing importance of indigeneity in the national politics of Peru in the last few decades
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability (PSAS)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The Social Organisation of a Native Andean Community (1969–1977)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
In this book, social anthropologist Steven Webster provides an ethnohistory of sustainability among the indigenous Andean community of Hatun Q’ero since the 1960s. He first revisits his detailed ecological research among the remote Q’ero in the high Andes of Southern Peru in 1969–1970 and 1977. At that time, Q'ero was a community comprised of several hamlets in converging valleys based primarily on alpaca herding at about 4,300 meters, and composed of about 400 persons in about 80 families. He then relies on the few ethnographies by other anthropologists to document changes in Hatun Q'ero by 2020 , spanning 1980-90s when the nation was immersed in agrarian reform followed by virtual civil war between Maoist guerrillas, the government, and the highland peasantry. Through all of these ideological and political-economic developments the sustainability of Q'ero as an integral ecological and social community as well as a famously Incaic cultural tradition becomes a global as well as national issue.
This book argues that while the commercial expansion of ceremonial and shamanist tourism can be seen as extractivist similar to industrial mining, the assertive form of independence characteristic of the Q'eros appears to remain sustainable in the face of both these extractive threats. While the Q'ero community is internally reinforced by their reciprocal relationship with the same non-human forces these forms of extraction seek to exploit, they are externally reinforced by the global as well as national rise of indigeneity movements. Ironically, given the moral force developed in some aspects of shamanist tourism, it can even be argued that it supports environmental sustainability against climate change, globally as well as in Q'ero. This book analyzes the increasing importance of indigeneity in the national politics of Peru as well as the other Andean nations in the last few decades, but it remains to set this form of identity politics in its wider “intersectional” context of social class and ethnic conflict in the Andes.
Reviews
“Steven Webster's brilliant book Returning to Q'ero compares and discusses in a very subtle and passionate way his ethnography of the Q'eros of the Peruvian Andes between 1969 and 1977 with more recent researches in order to trace the history and the evolution of contemporary issues of this Andean society of the Cuzco region. I myself was fortunate to accompany the Q'ero in their pilgrimage to Quyllurit'i in 2017 (América Crítica 4(1), 35-52, 2020).” (Geremia Cometti, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Strasbourg, France)
“Returning to Q'ero, 1969-2020, an excellent work by Steven Webster, is as far as I know the most complete anthropological approach to Q'ero society and culture. Given the paradigmatic character that the Q'ero culture has for Andean anthropology as a contemporary representative of the Inka civilization, I consider this contribution to be of prime importance.” (Juan V. Nuñez del Prado, Professor of Anthropology, paqo, and advocate of Q'ero efforts to sustain the global environment)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Returning to Q'ero
Book Subtitle: Sustaining Indigeneity in an Andean Ecosystem 1969-2020
Authors: Steven Webster
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04972-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-04971-2Published: 02 January 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-04974-3Published: 03 January 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-04972-9Published: 01 January 2023
Series ISSN: 2945-6657
Series E-ISSN: 2945-6665
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXXVIII, 379
Number of Illustrations: 24 b/w illustrations
Topics: Anthropology, Ethnography, Social Anthropology