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Chapters: Social Class in Ecuador. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 56. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Ecuador's elite includes Sierra latifundistas (large landowners), Costa agro-exporters, financiers, and industrialists. Commercial and industrial interests overlap with those of agriculture, as families in finance and industry often maintain at least a token interest in agriculture. Indeed, the purchase of land with the profits of commerce has long been considered a critical step in improving a family's standing. In addition to this overlap, there are strong intragroup ties among the elite; kinship and marriage contribute to cohesion. Newly rich families try to turn their economic success into social capital by marrying into older, established families. Historically, the basis of class in Ecuador lay in the control of land and the labor of those who lived on it. The Spanish conquistadors found the region devoid of valuable minerals and the ready wealth mining provided, so the combination of land and Indians welded together in vast haciendas formed the basis of the colonial economy. The few who held land constituted a rural oligarchy. The rest of society depended on this pivotal group, in varying degrees, for livelihood, political participation, and social identity. Hacienda owners spent much of their time in their urban residences; cities existed principally to serve their wants. The small, ill-defined middle levels of urban professionals found employment serving the commercial and administrative needs of the hacienda. Artisans likewise produced mainly for hacendados. The hacienda with its resident labor force was the center of the Sierra elite family's influence. The landowner's power within his domain was nearly absolute. Ideally, the hacendado exercised this power beneficen...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=24760281 ... Read more

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"Political Anthropology of Ecuador, the 1984 publication of the Society for Latin American Anthropology (formerly the Latin American Anthropology Group), is a collection of nine original ethnographic and ethnohistoric studies on the political life of Ecuador's indigenous peoples. As contributions to political anthropology, the studies focus on issues of contact between these indigenous societies and the larger Ecuadorian polity, as well as issues of internal political organization and conflict. A central argument of the book is that predictions of the demise of indigenous cultures have underestimated the cultural resiliency of these peoples. As John H. Bodley has written, "Anyone concerned with the future of cultural diversity in the world, and with the outlook for small-scale, indigenous cultures, in Latin America, will appreciate this stimulating and useful collection of papers." The contributors include Louisa Stark, Jeffrey Ehrenreich, John Hudelson, Frank Salomón, Judith Kempf, E. Jean Langdon, Leo Chavez, Barbara Butler, and Pita Kelekna." ... Read more

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From the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century, haciendas dominated the Latin American countryside. In the Ecuadorian Andes, Runa-Quichua-speaking indigenous people-worked on these large agrarian estates as virtual serfs. In "Remembering the Hacienda: Religion, Authority, and Social Change in Highland Ecuador", Barry Lyons probes the workings of power on haciendas and explores the hacienda's contemporary legacy. Lyons lived for three years in a Runa village and conducted in-depth interviews with elderly former hacienda laborers. He combines their wrenching accounts with archival evidence to paint an astonishing portrait of daily life on haciendas. Lyons also develops an innovative analysis of hacienda discipline and authority relations. "Remembering the Hacienda" explains the role of religion as well as the reshaping of Runa culture and identity under the impact of land reform and liberation theology. This beautifully written book is a major contribution to the understanding of social control and domination. It will be valuable reading for a broad audience in anthropology, history, Latin American studies, and religious studies. ... Read more

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As indigenous peoples in Latin America have achieved greater prominence and power, international agencies have attempted to incorporate the agendas of indigenous movements into development policymaking and project implementation. Transnational networks and policies centered on ethnically-aware development paradigms have emerged with the goal of supporting indigenous cultures while enabling indigenous peoples to access the ostensible benefits of economic globalization and institutionalized participation. Focused on the Andean countries of Bolivia and Ecuador, Indigenous Development in the Andes is a nuanced examination of the complexities involved in designing and executing "culturally appropriate" development agendas. Robert Andolina, Nina Laurie, and Sarah A. Radcliffe illuminate a web of relations among indigenous villagers, social movement leaders, government officials, NGO workers, and staff of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank.

The authors argue that this reconfiguration of development policy and practice permits Ecuadorian and Bolivian indigenous groups to renegotiate their relationship to development as subjects who contribute and participate. Yet it also recasts indigenous peoples and their cultures as objects of intervention and largely fails to address fundamental concerns of indigenous movements, including racism, national inequalities, and international dependencies. Andean indigenous peoples are less marginalized, but they face ongoing dilemmas of identity and agency as their fields of action cross national boundaries and overlap with powerful institutions. Focusing on the encounters of indigenous peoples with international development as they negotiate issues related to land, water, professionalization, and gender, Indigenous Development in the Andes offers a comprehensive analysis of the diverse consequences of neoliberal development, and it underscores crucial questions about globalization, governance, cultural identities, and social movements. ... Read more

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In colonies like Quito, order was typically maintained by local, private law enforcement, while weak and impoverished bureaucratic infrastructures receded into the background. Judicial administration was therefore open to the influences of social networks, rumor, and reputation. Upholding justice was a communal rather than a state-run enterprise, and the dominating rules were social and theological rather than legal.
Herzog's combination of legal and historical analysis challenges the traditional paradigm in which the state was born under Spain's Catholic monarchs and only later exported to Spanish America. Her research reveals a more integrated and less oppositional relationship between the state and early modern society. Including both a specific case study and an innovative framework for the study of interactions between society, law, and the state, Upholding Justice will interest scholars of history, Latin American studies, anthropology, law, and political science.
Tamar Herzog is Associate Professor of History at the University of Chicago.
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Blanca Muratorio introduces us to Rucuyaya Alonso, a Quichua elder from the Upper Ecuadorian Amazon. Grandfather Alonso's story spans a century, as his narrative incoporates oral tradition learned from both his father and grandfather. The book alternates between chapters of Alonso's life history, and chapters analyzing the history of the world around him--the domination of the missionaries and the state, the white settlers' expropriation of land, the debt-peonage system during the rubber boom, the world-wide crisis of the 1930s, and the booms and busts of the iternational oil market.Muratorio explains the larger social, economic, and ideological bases of white domination over native peoples in Amazonia. Her analysis of Quichua culture shows how through everyday practices of accommodation and resistance, and through expressions of humor, irony, and anger, the Quichua Indians were able to protect their cultural identity, their ethnic dignity, and their symbolic systems against the hegemonic forces of a white-dominated world. ... Read more

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A must-read for any student of Ecuador's upper Napo region.
Dr. Muratorio does an excellent job at combining first person oral narratives with a well-researched historical discussion and critique of the Pano Runa of Ecuador's upper Napo region.Employing James Scott's model ofresistance, Muratorio demonstrates how the Runa have employed diversestrategies to struggle against hegemonic forces from missionaries andrubber barons, to the assimilationist state apparatus.The book highlightsthe cultural value of the Rucuyaya or grandfather, and laments thedisaggregation of traditional family structures under the constraints ofnew economic arrangements.The book was originally published in Spanishunder the title "Rucuyaya Alonso." ... Read more

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Native to a high valley in the Andes of Ecuador, the Otavalos are an indigenous people whose handcrafted textiles and traditional music are now sold in countries around the globe. Known as weavers and merchants since pre-Inca times, Otavalos today live and work in over thirty countries on six continents, while hosting more than 145,000 tourists annually at their Saturday market. In this ethnography of the globalization process, Lynn A. Meisch looks at how participation in the global economy has affected Otavalo identity and culture since the 1970s. Drawing on nearly thirty years of fieldwork, she covers many areas of Otavalo life, including the development of weaving and music as business enterprises, the increase in tourism to Otavalo, the diaspora of Otavalo merchants and musicians around the world, changing social relations at home, the growth of indigenous political power, and current debates within the Otavalo community over preserving cultural identity in the face of globalization and transnational migration. Refuting the belief that contact with the wider world inevitably destroys indigenous societies, Meisch demonstrates that Otavalos are preserving many features of their culture while adopting and adapting modern technologies and practices they find useful. ... Read more

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A perfect follow-up for a visit to Ecuador
Upon the recommendation of the owner of the mountain lodge where we stayed in Otavalo, Ecuador, I ordered Andean Entrepreneurs following our return home.Lynn Meisch has written a highly readable book about the people and commerce of that region, well-researched and full of interesting detail.It is warm and human, reflecting her love of the Otavaleños, with whom she lived for long periods of time.It was fascinating to learn so much about the music, the style of dress, customs, families, entrepreneurial spirit, and long-standing skill with weaving and textiles among these kind people with whom I had enjoyed an interesting visit.This book will be quite valuable for anyone contemplating a visit to Ecuador, or who has returned from time spent there. ... Read more

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The United States and the countries of Latin America were all colonized by Europeans, yet in terms of economic development, the U.S. far outstripped Latin America beginning in the nineteenth century. Observers have often tried to account for this disparity, many of them claiming that differences in cultural attitudes toward work explain the U.S.'s greater prosperity. In this innovative study, however, Camilla Townsend challenges the traditional view that North Americans succeeded because of the so-called Protestant work ethic and argues instead that they prospered relative to South Americans because of differences in attitudes towards workers that evolved in the colonial era. Townsend builds her study around workers' lives in two similar port cities in the 1820s and 1830s. Through the eyes of the young Frederick Douglass in Baltimore, Maryland, and an Indian girl named Ana Yagual in Guayaquil, Ecuador, she shows how differing attitudes towards race and class in North and South America affected local ways of doing business. This empirical research clarifies the significant relationship between economic culture and racial identity and its long-term effects. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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A new brand of populist politicians has risen to power in the late 1980s and 90s. They have kept the Manichaean and moralistic populist discourse of their predecessors while pursuing different economic programs. The old nationalist and distributive policies of past populist regimes have been replaced by neoliberal policies that have privatized state enterprises, eliminated protective tariffs, and concentrated income. In Populist Seduction in Latin America, Carlos de la Torre shows that populism did not disappear, as expected, with the modernization of society. Combining the study of populist discourse with an analysis of the social and political setting for the emergence and persistence of populism, de la Torre argues that the durability of populism is explained by the deficient incorporation of the popular sector's into Latin American democracies. ... Read more

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String Figures are designs woven on the hands with a loop of string. The designs portray a variety of subjects, both concrete and abstract, and often require a high degree of dexterity to make.Prior to Westernization, nearly all pre-literate societies were familiar with string figures, including those of Oceania, Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan, Africa, the Arctic, and North and South America. The extent of their distribution suggests that string figures are ancient--perhaps even relics of the stone age.The international String Figure Association was founded in 1978 by Dr. Hiroshi Noguchi, a Japanese mathematician, and Rev. Philip Noble, an Anglican missionary stationed in Papua New Guinea. The primary goal of our organization is to gather and distribute string figure knowledge, so that future generations will continue to enjoy this ancient pastime. We also encourage the invention of new figures and enjoy sharing them with one another. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Ecuador's elite includes Sierra latifundistas (large landowners), Costa agro-exporters, financiers, and industrialists. Commercial and industrial interests overlap with those of agriculture, as families in finance and industry often maintain at least a token interest in agriculture. Indeed, the purchase of land with the profits of commerce has long been considered a critical step in improving a family's standing. In addition to this overlap, there are strong intragroup ties among the elite; kinship and marriage contribute to cohesion. Newly rich families try to turn their economic success into social capital by marrying into older, established families.Historically, the basis of class in Ecuador lay in the control of land and the labor of those who lived on it. The Spanish conquistadors found the region devoid of valuable minerals and the ready wealth mining provided, so the combination of land and Indians welded together in vast haciendas formed the basis of the colonial economy. The few who held land constituted a rural oligarchy. ... Read more