Action and value: community, livelihoods and indigenous struggle in Highland Ecuador
View/ Open
Partridge2014.docx (16.74Mb)
Date
26/11/2014Author
Partridge, Tristan Henry
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis is an ethnographic study of collaborative action and notions of value in
San Isidro, an indigenous community of c.90 families in Ecuador’s central highlands.
Drawing on Arendt’s theory of action as a mode of human togetherness, it focuses on
forms of activity that are both affective (appealing to particular values, principles and
practices) and productive (engaging in struggles to reorder social and economic
relations). These include communal gatherings, shared work-parties, assemblies,
meetings, campaigns and celebrations. Developing work by Lambek and Graeber,
the thesis explores how such actions are used to generate different kinds of ethical
and material value, the criteria people use to evaluate competing visions of hope and
possibility, and the related dynamics of division and cooperation. I argue that such a
focus on action and value allows us to build on insights from existing regional
literature which tends to interpret indigenous collective action as either
predominantly expressive (through cultural revival) or instrumental (in terms of
economic and political practice).
A core theme that emerges is how localised expressions of what people hold to be
vital or desirable interact with coordinated efforts to defend and secure livelihoods.
In San Isidro, such efforts contend with a limited land base, ongoing conflicts rooted
in histories of dispossession, and widespread patterns of migratory labour (mainly for
shift-work in the Amazon-based oil industry). At the same time, many residents
participate in collective work to maintain shared infrastructure, protest against land
inequalities, and manage areas of the communally-held páramo hills (registering as a
‘comunidad’ as recently as 2009). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted
over fifteen months, I analyse how such collaborative actions are combined with
everyday forms of paid and unpaid work, memories of conflict, and a sense of duty
toward future generations. Through chapters that focus on shared labour, coordinated
campaigns, the legacies of land reform and accounts of labour migration, the thesis
also examines how cooperation is fostered within a community that is increasingly
diverse in access to resources, income and outlook, and how those involved negotiate
the ruptures and tensions that intentional actions entail.
The following license files are associated with this item: