The Burden of Visions Amidst Reform

Peasant relations to law in the Peruvian Andes

Bibliographic Data

ID2466652
AuthorsLinda J Seligmann (James Madison University, corresponding author)
Year1993
Volume20
Issue1
Pages25-51
Publication date1993-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Ethnologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/ae.1993.20.1.02a00020
OpenAlexW2135514969
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited24

Passage of the 1969 Agrarian Reform Law in Peru became a critical moment in which various sectors of Andean society invoked distinct principles and deployed particular strategies in order to defend their rights to land and their visions of just labor relations and legitimate political authority. The principles they invoked and the strategies they used were careful responses to the new face and character of the state, the legal content of the reform law, and the dynamics of interethnic and class relations. Using archival evidence and field research from one rural district, this article argues that an examination of the ways Quechua-speaking peoples interpret legal principles and use laws reveals the complex ideological and socio-economic relationships between the nation-state and local communities, the bases for establishing and defending cultural autonomy, and the efforts of rural inhabitants to transform the structure and content of legal principles themselves. [highland Peru, Quechua, law and anthropology, agrarian reform, states and agrarian societies

Agrarian reform · Agrarian society · Autonomy · Geography · Ideology · Peasant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Vision · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Latin American history and culture · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America