To thrive in the environment they were given with, the Andean people created an ideology that put the family paramount. The community was seen as a whole and bonds were made due to the fact that they both needed one another. Stern shows us the importance of these bonds when he is talking about Andean tincu, "The tincu concept of the 'just' or 'perfect' referred to the necessary pairing of distinct entities"(pg.9). They overall betterment of the community could not be achieved without being allied with neighboring communities. This lead to terracing and better protection of land, helping the Andean people as a whole. The rise of families came though marriage, gaining inclusion to ayllu's with power, and sounded very much like a chivalrous system in Europe. This ideology of ancestor worship, as well as the need to have a close net system of bonds with other ayullas was a direct cause by the ecological needs to disperse the population.(pg.9)
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Stern and Ideology
The first chapter of sterns book is largely dedicated to discussing Andean ideologies. I fell the most powerful part of the chapter was the introduction of ayllu, an extended family brought together by the belief of a common god-being ancestor (pg6). This strange and very interesting ideology was formed due to the economical need to disperse communities. The smaller, dispersed communities of the Andean let the people exploit different micro environments found in the region. These regions were found between 2,800 to 4,600 meters, and almost 2,00 difference! This extreme range was another key to the need of smaller ecological centers. The families would be experts in their products of harvest, and left bartering with others second hand to their own production.The expansion of the Andeans was driven by a desire to control these different micro environments and also allowed for crop failures to be less crippling (pg.4-5).
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I agree, Andrew. Steve Stern places emphasis on the ayll, and in the extension of creating larger and smaller kindreds with strategic exogamous marriages in order to create new ayllus in the beginning chapter. The Andean ideology was dependent upon their terrain features and the availability of their resources. Since the mountain ranges were vast, the Andean societies were broken up into smaller communities. And since their impulse was built around self-sufficiency, it allowed direct control of scattered microenvironments. By containing a network with overlapping kinship connected to ancestral generations, individuals and families found their identity and the means for survival. The Andean communities had a collective sense of property and even with the ability for social mobility were at a collective movement.
ReplyDeleteI also would add that the Andeans used term ayni (root word for measured reciprocity in both Quechua and Aymara languages) this captured the spirit behind the labor relationship within the community. In the Quechua language, it meant “to work the same for another, as him for me” With this virtue, it encouraged a particular understanding of rights and obligations, for justice and of vengeance. The Andean peoples were judged by their balances in their act of moral quality. They had two sides to everything and each side served a greater purpose.