To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Village - Softcover

Isbell, Billie Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0881331732 ISBN 13: 9780881331738

Publisher: Waveland Pr Inc, 1985

Synopsis

The result of ten years of studying the Quechua peasants of Chuschi in south-central Peru, this work is a structuralist attempt to uncover the mechanisms whereby the people of this Andean society struggle to protect the social and economic independence of their community from the outside world. The ethnographic strength of the book is a careful and insightful discussion of kinship and marriage as well as descriptions and interpretations of hydraulic, harvest, and fertility rites. Introductory notes by the author discuss guerrilla activities in the community that said, "To defend ourselves is to defend our traditions."

About this title

From the Publisher:

Consider these titles of related interest also available from Waveland Press: Bastien, Mountain of the Condor: Metaphor and Ritual in an Andean Ayllu; Weismantel, Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes.

Review:

"As a community study the book is a model of its kind, testifying to thorough and painstaking research mediated through close bonds of trust with the Chuschino villagers." -- M.J. Sallnow, Man

About this edition

• Publisher: Waveland Pr Inc
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0881331732
• ISBN 13: 9780881331738
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 289