Negotiating hybridity in highland Bolivia: indigenous moral economy and the expanding market for quinoa

Abstract

Scholars often highlight the capacity for cooperation and reciprocity as one of the most outstanding features of Andean peasants, but also raise concerns that these traditional strategies necessarily wither and fade as Andean people and places are increasingly incorporated into capitalist markets and processes. This study examines how non-market cooperative and reciprocal economic practices are affected as rural Bolivians expand production to meet a growing international demand for the Andean pseudo-grain quinoa. Based on the grounded experiences of rural Bolivians who are negotiating the modernisation and martketisation of agricultural production for the first time, I find that increasing incorporation into global markets need not undermine the moral economy of rural people, and may in fact strengthen their commitment to reciprocal and cooperative strategies. In contrast to claims that the spread of modern markets and technologies will weaken and ultimately replace cooperative strategies, I argue that reciprocity practices are important components in the construction of a new, hybrid economic space. Within this space, where economic strategies are based on moral sentiments as well as market logic, reciprocity provides a socially and ecologically appropriate ‘toolkit’ with which rural people negotiate their uneven incorporation into global capitalistic processes.

Keywords:

• peasants
• quinoa
• development
• globalisation
• cooperation
• reciprocity
• hybridity
• moral economy
• Bolivia
• agrarian question

Notes

¹During the twentieth century, rail companies employed large groups of men to gather yareta, a highly combustible evergreen perennial that was used to power the trains that brought minerals from Andean mines to ports in Chile.

²The most outstanding of quinoa's impressive nutritional qualities is that it is rich in a very high-quality protein that provides a nearly full set of amino acids. In particular, it is outstandingly high in lysine, which is absent in other grains.

³Quinoa yields best in dry, semi-desert conditions and is frost resistant. In addition, because of its intolerance to heat and requirements for equal length of day and night during flowering, quinoa does not yield nearly as well under more favourable conditions at lower altitudes and at more northern latitudes. Experiments in the United States and Canada have been promising, but the most sustained effort to find an appropriate variety for Northern American climates has not turned out as well as was hoped (Larsen 2004). The amount of quinoa produced outside of the Andes is so low that it does not appear in FAO statistics (FAOSTAT 2009).

⁴In 2007, Bolivia produced 45% of the world supply of quinoa (FAOSTAT 2009).

⁵Bolivia controls 90% of world exports for quinoa, which are made up primarily of the real variety (Lopez-Garcia 2007).

⁶Incidentally, this number exceeds the village's needs and at least one of these tractors operates primarily in neighbouring villages because there is little need for its services in San Juan.

⁷A pseudonym; the names of all research participants have been changed here.

⁸See Scott (1998), especially Chapter 8, for discussion.

⁹There is some concern that industrial production of quinoa for distribution by the market will reduce genetic diversity (Hellin and Higman 2005), though studies suggest that erosion of genetic diversity of quinoa in Bolivia is less than expected for a commercial product (del Castillo et al. 2007).

¹⁰But quinoa is not always a simple substitute for cash. Depending on the relationship between the people involved, exchanges involving quinoa can entail their own behavioural norms that diverge from the standard rules of capitalist exchange. Mink'a payments, discussed below, are a prime example.

¹¹ Mink'a is a Quechua word that is not regularly used or understood in San Juan, though the practice of exchanging labour for in-kind payment is a regularly used strategy there. However, since it corresponds to the use of mink'a in the literature, I use the common word of mink'a here.

¹²Interestingly, while the cash wage is higher for men than for women, the in-kind wage – which is based on custom – is usually equivalent. Similarly, the ayni exchange does not discriminate between the sexes and a woman may repay a man's ayni and vice-versa. These traditional mechanisms resist the deeply engrained discrimination against women that is widespread in Bolivian society.

¹³Mayer (2002) also identified the reliance on mink'a as an insurance mechanism used by campesinos in Peru.

¹⁴The landmass that pertains to the community of San Juan is quite large, but is pocked by hills and outcroppings of volcanic rock and sand and salt flats, making the majority not arable. Some of the newly identified fields are at a distance of up to a one-hour drive by truck or motorcycle.

¹⁵Carimentrand and Ballet (2010) suggest that this system can lead to rising inequality between households as it is generally the richest families that have access to the necessary resources to convert the pampa to quinoa fields, appropriating common pasture into property whose benefits accrue privately. Recent reports attest to rising conflicts over land as households expand production and former community members migrate back to home villages to take advantage of the high price of quinoa (see Friedman-Rudovsky 2012).

Additional information

Marygold Walsh-Dilley received her PhD from the Department of Development Sociology and is currently a post-doctoral associate there. Her research focuses on agrarian change and rural development, non-market economies, indigeneity, and globalization.