HONORS • ARTS & SCIENCES • 261
WORLD CIVILIZATIONS I:
CULTURE, ECOLOGY, AND CRISIS IN THE ANDES
SPRING 1995
NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE COURSE
Required Texts
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Allen, Catherine
1988 The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Silverblatt, Irene
1987 Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Overview
This class is the first in a series of three offered this year by the Honors Program around the theme of "People Living at Extreme Altitudes or Latitudes". This quarter, we focus on people living in the Andes of South America. We will explore the ways indigenous Andean people cope with the ecological rigors of their mountain environment and confront the economic and political challenges of immersion in early states, contemporary nation-states, and global networks. We will consider the historical influences of Inka civilization and the Spanish conquest on present Andean lifeways, worldview, and identity. We will examine Andean ecology, social organization, religion, ethnic identity, economic development and politics in their historical and contemporary dimensions. Specific topics will range from the practical to the expressive: from distinctive crops and agricultural technologies, organization of time and space, barter, exchange, and revolutionary violence, to art, dance, ritual, and pilgrimage. The readings have been selected with an eye toward case studies and personal histories, and several ethnographic films will be used to bring the people into our lives.
Learning Objectives
• Establish a comparative basis for the study of mountain populations and other societies where fragile, low-yielding environments play a major role in structuring social and cultural patterns. The full 3-course series allows you to make direct comparison between the Andes, the Arctic, and the Himalayas.
• Understand the connections between the material bases and social and ideological systems of large-scale cultures, using the ancient civilization of the Inka and the contemporary Quechua and Aymara societies as examples.
• Examine the effects on the indigenous peoples of the Andes of what has been variously called the European "conquest", "discovery", "encounter", and "invention" of America, and follow the continued development and transformation of Andean culture and social identity to the present.
• Explore the continuity and change through time of Andean conceptions of time, space, and spirit.
• Consider issues and problems of current concern to people in the Andes and to others in the Third World -- including inequality, environmental sustainability, and human rights -- and explore what our relationship is, and what our response should be, to them.
• Recognize and enjoy high-quality writing and film making, and produce original thinking and writing of our own
Assigned Reading
The lectures will usually elaborate on the readings, so it's important that you keep up with the reading, completing each book chapter or Reader article in advance of the class session for which it is assigned. The full bibliographic citation for each of the Reader articles can be found in the Table of Contents at the beginning of the course packet.
As you read, try to understand the logic and meaning of each reading from the author's point of view. Treat each reading as if it were an "ethnographic text", a clue to another system of meaning. The readings will give you entry into two worlds: the world of the author, and the world of the people who are the subject of the study. Read critically. One can judge scholarship on several criteria -- soundness of logic, reliability and validity of method, the fit between the argument and data -- beyond any aesthetic, political, and philosophical judgements that you may have. Read synthetically, understanding and evaluating the reading not only by itself, but in relation to other readings in a lesson, in the course, and in your life.
Exams
There will be two exams, a Midterm and a Final. The Midterm will be a short essay-style take-home exam. The Midterm will be handed out on November 1st and will be due by 9:30 am (the beginning of class) on Thursday, November 9th. The Final will be a comprehensive, open-book exam, covering material from the entire quarter, testing for comprehension of broad themes and main points rather than memorization of detail. You will encounter a mix of question types on the Final, including true-false, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, and matching. Examination questions will come from the lectures, readings and films, and will be assembled from contributions by the class. Make-up exams will be essay-style and only given in the case of personal emergencies.
Written Assignments
Other than the two exams, you will be expected to hand in 3 other assignments:
1) Exam Questions. There is an art to writing fair, significant, and irrefutable exam questions. I'm going to give you the chance to try your hand at it. The whole class will participate in the construction of the final exam. You will be expected to turn in 10 exam questions during the quarter, 5 on November 9th and 5 more on December 4th. The questions can be in true/false, multiple choice, matching, or fill-in-the-blank format. This should generate a sizeable pool of the questions you think are important (and presumably know the answer to) in this course. I will select a balanced representation of the best, and add a few of my own, for the final exam. I will hand out some tips on question writing and some samples during the second week of the quarter to give you some guidance.
2) Film Review. Over the course of the quarter, we will see 10 films on the people and cultures of the Andes. You are expected to write a 2-3 page, typed and double-spaced review of one of these films. You can submit your review at any time during the quarter (it's best to write it while the film of your choice is still fresh in your mind). The latest you can submit your film review for credit is at 10:30 am on December 13th, the morning of the final exam. I will provide you with a handout with format suggestions before screening the first film.
3) Special Project. You
have wide latitude for designing your special project on the Andes. If you are a weaver, you might like to try
your hand at weaving an example of Andean pallay
(pattern). If you are a mathematician, you might like to make a khipu, an ancient Andean recording system. Whatever your major, you are welcome to adapt the
assignment to your own abilities, interests, and needs. A typical written project based on library research should
be about 6-8 pages, typed and double-spaced.
If you are producing some other kind of material or performance project, you should provide a 2-page summary of
your procedure and what you have learned from the experience. You will all be expected to provide a paragraph proposal
of the topic you have selected and what you intend to do along with your Midterm on November 9th. Special projects are due on Monday, December 4th.
In general, I look for the following in evaluating written projects:
• Ability to use key terms from the lectures and readings in context
• Ability to understand and summarize concepts and arguments contained in the readings
• Ability to develop an argument and support it through the use of concrete examples drawn from your readings, personal experience, and other sources
• Ability to synthesize the readings. You should try to relate ideas drawn from the readings, films, and lectures together, comparing and contrasting them to each other.
• Ability to determine what further research questions and kinds of data would be needed to resolve an issue to your satisfaction and to that of the scientific community
• Ability to organize your ideas and express them clearly, concisely, and creatively
• Ability to cite sources and provide references when you quote somebody or adopt their idea
You may write in English or Spanish. In fairness to those that get their work in on time, late assignments will be docked one grade point for each day late, unless excused in advance.
Extra Credit
If you feel a need to improve your grade, or are quite happy with your progress but would like to do a little something extra, you are invited to make an informal 10-15 minute presentation to the class on a topic of your choice related to "Culture, Ecology, and Crisis in the Andes". The presentation should involve some outside research, analysis, or experience on your part (for example, impressions from your trip to Quito, a critique of some theory or perspective that we have encountered in our readings, a book report on some of your outside research, etc.). You should clear the topic, the credit, and a place for yourself in the schedule with me in advance. Other than that, the floor is yours!
Lecture Notes
Photocopies of the lecture outlines and transparencies used in class each week will be available every Friday morning after 10 am at the photocopy service in Odegaard Undergraduate Library.
Course Grades
Grades will be computed on the following basis:
Task Weight Date Due
| 5 Exam Questions 05% Nov. 9th | 5 Exam Questions 05% Dec. 4th |
| Midterm Exam 25% Nov. 9th | Film Review 15% Dec. 13th |
| Project Proposal ----- Nov. 9th | Final Exam 25% Dec. 13th |
| Special Project 25% Dec. 4th | Total 100% |
I will not grade on a curve, but rather, on the quality of your work. Extra credit points, if any, will be added to your grade point after the above have been calculated.
I hope that you enjoy the class. Feel free to provide input on the direction we are going, and on what more I can do to make the experience valuable for you. I hope that each of you will take advantage of the opportunity to meet with me at least once during the quarter on an individual basis. Welcome aboard!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The articles in this Reader are listed below in the order that you will encounter them:
Reinhard, Johan
1992 Sacred Peaks of the Andes. National Geographic 181(3):84-111.
Bodley, John H.
1994 Early States: Andean Civilization. p. 181-193. In Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States, and the Global System.
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Wright, Ronald
1992 Inca: Invasion, Resistance, Rebirth. In Stolen Continents: The Americas through Indian Eyes Since 1492. p.
64-83, 177-199, 275-291. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Weatherford, Jack
1988 Silver and Money Capitalism. In Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World. p. 1-20.
New York: Crown.
Taussig, Michael T.
1980 The Devil in the Mines. In The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. p.143-154. Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press.
Weitz, Charles A.
1981 Weathering Heights. Natural History 90(11):72-84.
Berry, Wendell
1981 An Agricultural Journey in Peru. In The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural. p. 3-46.
San Francisco: North Point Press.
National Resource Council
1989 Lost Crops of the Incas: Little Known Plants of the Andes with Promise for Worldwide Cultivation. Select Excerpts.
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Kloppenburg, Jack Jr.
1991 No Hunting! Biodiversity, Indigenous Rights, and Scientific Poaching. Cultural Survival Quarterly 13(3):14-18.
Harrison, Regina
1989 Potato as Cultural Metaphor: Acceptance of and Resistance to Difference. In Signs, Songs, and Memory in the
Andes: Translating Quechua Language and Culture. p. 172-195. Austin: University of Texas Press.
West, Terry
1981 Llama Caravans of the Andes. Natural History 90(12):62-73.
Bastien, Joseph W.
1980 Rosinta, Rats, and the River: Bad Luck is Banished in Andean Bolivia. In Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious
Lives in Non-Western Cultures. Nancy Auer and Rita M. Gross, eds. San Francisco: Harper and Row.
Harrison, Regina
1989 The Dimensions of Quechua Language and Culture. In Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes: Translating Quechua
Language and Culture. p. 9-19, 85-86. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Murra, John V.
1986 José María Arguedas -- Introduction to a Quechua Poet. Cultural Survival Quarterly 10(3):8-9.
Arguedas, José María
1986 A Call to Some Doctors. Cultural Survival Quarterly 10(3):10-11.
1985 The Dispossession. In Yawar Fiesta. Translated by Frances Horning Barrclough. p. 10-18. Austin: University
of Texas Press.
Carter, William E.
1978 The Children Know. In Faces of Change: Five Rural Societies in Transition. p. 11-21. Norman N. Miller, ed.
Lebanon, NH: Wheelock Educational Resources.
Bastien, Joseph W.
1978 First Haircutting. In Mountain of the Condor: Metaphor and Ritual in an Andean Ayllu. p. 103-114. Prospect
Heights, IL: Waveland.
Sanders, Thomas G.
1978 The Spirit Possession of Alejandro Mamani. In Faces of Change: Five Rural Societies in Transition. p. 53-62.
Norman N. Miller, ed. Lebanon, NH: Wheelock Educational Resources.
Bodley, John H.
1994 Andean Development: Andean Peasantry and the Cornell-Peru Project. In Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States,
and the Global System. p. 356-359. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Lobo, Susan
1991 The Fabric of Life: Repatriating the Sacred Coroma Textiles. Cultural Survival Quarterly 13(3)40-46.
Schultz, Emily A. and Robert H. Lavenda
1995 EthnoProfile: Northern Peru (Rondas Campesinas). In Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition
(Third Edition). p. 387-390. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Winn, Peter
1992 Children of the Sun. In Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean. p. 239-263. New York:
Pantheon.
Vargas Llosa, Mario
1990 Questions of Conquest: What Columbus Wrought, and What He Did Not. Harpers Magazine 281(1687):45-53.
Ross, Eric
1978 Film Review: Blood of the Condor (Yawar Mallku). American Anthropologist 80:204.
Rosenberg, Tina
1991 Dialectic. In Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America. p. 145-215. New York: William Morrow.
COURSE SEQUENCE
Week 1 Introduction
[37 p.]
9/27 Overview
9/28 Metaphor of the Mountain (Read: Reinhard 1992; Bodley 1994a)
Week 2 Inka [120 p.]
10/2 Andean Civilization (Read: Silverblatt, Introduction & Ch. 1)
10/3 Inkan Cosmology (Read: Silverblatt, Ch. 2-3)
10/4 Imperial Rule (Read: Silverblatt, Ch. 4-5)
10/5 Film: Our God the Condor
Week 3 Spanish Conquest [125 p.]
10/9 Transformations Under the Spanish (Read: Wright 1992 "Invasion"; Silverblatt Ch. 6-7)
10/10 Resistance and Defiance (Read: Silverblatt Ch. 8-9)
10/11 Devil in the Mines (Read: Weatherford 1988; Taussig 1980)
10/12 Film: I Have Spent My Life in the Mines
Week 4 Acculturation [67 p.]
10/16 Defense of Indigenous Peoples (Read: Wright 1992 "Resistance"; Silverblatt Ch. 10-11)
10/17 Syncretism in the Andes (Read: Wright 1992 "Rebirth")
10/18 Organization of Calendar and Space
10/19 Film: Q'eros: The Shape of Survival (Read: Weitz 1981)
Week 5 Subsistence, Sustenance, and Survival [125 p.]
10/23 Andean Ecology and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (Read: Berry 1981;
NRC 1989, Kloppenburg 1991)
10/24 Peasant Technologies/Appropriate Technology (Read: Harrison 1989a)
10/25 Peasant Economy (Read: West 1981)
10/26 Film: The Quechua
Week 6 Supernatural Relations [125 p.]
10/30 Rites for the Earth (Read: Allen 1988, Into & Ch. 1; Bastien 1980)
10/31 Saints and the Civil-Religious Hierarchy (Read: Allen: 1988, Ch. 6)
11/1 Pilgrimage in the Andes (Read: Allen, Ch. 7 & 8)
11/2 Film: Martin Chambi and the Heirs of the Incas
Week 7 Cultural Identity [65 p.]
11/6 Preserving Language Diversity (Read: Harrison 1989b; Murra 1986; Arguedas 1986)
11/7 Coca and Cultural Identity (Read: Allen 1988, Ch. 4, 5 & 9)
11/8 Ethnicity (Read: Allen 1988, Epilogue; Arguedas 1985)
11/9 Film: The Children Know (Read: Carter 1978)
Week 8 Family and Household [50 p.]
11/13 Sexual Division of Labor (Read: Allen, Ch. 2)
11/14 Rites of Passage (Read: Bastien 1978)
11/15 Patterns in Cloth
11/16 Film: Spirit Possession of Alejandro Mamani (Read: Sanders 1978)
Week 9 Peasant Community [30
p.]
11/20 Reciprocity (Read: Allen 1988, Ch. 3)
11/21 Community Decision Making
11/22 Film: Icemen of Chimborazo
11/23 No Class: Thanksgiving
Week 10 Development Strategies [50 p.]
11/27 Applied Social Change (Read: Bodley 1994b)
11/28 Popular Movements (Read: Lobo 1991; Schultz and Lavenda 1995)
11/29 Limits to Progress (Read: Winn 1992; Vargas Llosa 1990)
11/30 Film: Blood of the Condor (Kane Hall 23A RM 19; Read: Ross 1978)
12/1 Film: Blood of the Condor (Repeat: 9-10:15 am, Kane Hall 23A RM 19)
Week 11 Conflict, Crisis and Change [70 p.]
12/4 Violence and Power (Read: Rosenberg 1991)
12/5 Reform or Revolution?
12/6 Film: La Vida Es Una Sola (Kane Hall 23A RM 19)
12/7 Final Thoughts
12/8 Film: La Vida Es Una Sola (Repeat: 8:45-10:10 am; Kane Hall 23A RM 19)
Week 12 Finals
12/13 Final Exam: 8:30-10:20 am
