Michelle Bigenho: Anthropology of the Andes
This course was offered in Spring 2000.
Anthropologists, as well as travelers, conquerors, priests, journalists, novelists, and "natives" have constructed numerous accounts through which the Andean region has been imagined. But these imaginings seem to vary as widely as the diversity of their authors: as a place steeped in highland indigenous traditions; as the idealized place of the Inca Empire; as a romanticized rural place of self-organized communities where an ethos of collective action outweighs that of individual interest; as the original source of the coca leaf; as the birthplace of a Maoist guerrilla movement; as a place where people have been "disappeared" by the military, and a group of mothers does not march around a plaza in public protest as they do in Argentina. Through discussions of these representations and the role of anthropology in the representative process, this course brings together historical and ethnographic views of the Andes (primarily Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia) with a critical perspective on this region's contemporary situation. Within these contexts the course also introduces students to the ways anthropologist address issues of human rights, politics, ethnicity, nation-ness, symbolic meaning, and cultural transformation.
This course is taught at the 100-level.