Returning to Q'ero
Description
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 / Votes
"Steven Webster's fieldwork in the 1960's brings together his own dispersed sources - revised and rethought - in a treasure trove of unique information. Useful today because the Q'ero people have become guides for trekking tourists who seek experiences with shamanistic rituals in the high Andes around Mount Ausangate in Cuzco, Peru. The author contemplates the theoretical shifts that promote a new kind of ethnographic writing that respects the point of view of the practitioners' beliefs and how these are to be communicated across cultural differences." (Enrique Mayer, Anthropologist, Emeritus Professor, Yale University, USA)"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)
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Content
Prologue: a Retrospective Ethnohistory.-Part I: Q'ero and the Peruvian Andes 1969 - 1977.-Introduction: Participant Observation among the Q'eros [field-notes, 1972 preface, and 1977 journal].- Chapter 1: Earlier Empires [colonisations, nation, and hacienda dominion;1972 ms Chs 1-3 annotated with 1971, 1973, and 1981 articles (pseudonym dropped)].- Chapter 2: Runa, Cholo, Misti, and Wiracocha: Indigeneity and Ethnicity in the Andean Highlands [1972 ms Chs 1-3 annotated with 1971, 1973, 1980, and 1981 articles (pseudonym dropped)].- Part II: Ecological and Social Integration of a Transhumant Community in the Andean Highlands.- Chapter 3: Verticality and Transhumance [1972 ms Chs 4 and 5 with field-notes, annotated with 1971, 1973, and 1974 articles (pseudonym dropped)].- Chapter 4: Subsistence Cycles, Strategies, and Rituals of Reciprocity [1972 ms Chs 6 and 7 with field-notes, annotated with 1971 and 1973 articles].- Chapter 5: Domestic Groups, Kinship and Affinity, and Social Rank [1972 ms Chs 7 and 8 with field-notes, annotated with 1977 and 1974 articles (pseudonym dropped)].- Part III: Sustainability, Extractivity, and Q'ero since the 1970s.-Chapter 6: Indigeneity, Tourism, and Extractivism in the Cuzco Region [Chs 1- 5 above, in view of Salas de Carreño, de la Cadena, Gose, and Meyer (see attached bibliography)].- Chapter 7: Shamanism, Reciprocity, and Extractivism in Q'ero [Chs 1-5 above, in view of de Cometti, Wissler, and Salas de Carreño (see attached bibliography)].- Chapter 8: Sustaining Indigeneity against Commodity Fetishism [Chs 1-5 above, in view of Taussig, Gose, Graeber, and Webster (see attached bibliography)].- Conclusions.