Gendered Practices and Landscapes in the Andes: The Shape of Asymmetrical Exchanges

Abstract

this article describes practices and relations of farming, herding, and cooking that produce and reproduce people and places in culture-specific ways in one region of the central Andes. It also explores how these practices have been changing in relation to regional and global processes surrounding agricultural modernization. the study begins with a look at the degradation of steep slopes and the reduced productivity and social value of women who manage these slopes for small livestock grazing and fuel wood collection. Starting with an ethnographic exploration of local practices and relations of difference, the scope widens to encompass asymmetrical relations of exchange at play in markets, migrations, and development projects, and to consider political decisions and policies that contribute to the uneven terrain on which these exchanges take place. implications for environmental management and conservation include methodological options for approaching environmental problems as integrally social and ecological and for considering these problems in multiscale frames of reference that allow us to examine links among local phenomena and regional or global processes.