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Guinea Pigs: Food, Symbol and Conflict of Knowledge in Ecuador (Global Issues) by Eduardo P. Archetti is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Guinea Pigs: Food, Symbol and Conflict of Knowledge in Ecuador (Global Issues) about?

<p><p>Guinea pigs have been reared and eaten by indigenous people in the Andes since ancient times, and it seemed rational to development planners to &#8216;modernize&#8217; their production. When these development projects ran into trouble, a team of anthropologists was invited to study the reasons for this lack of success. This intriguing book is the product of that study.<p>What the author shows is that guinea pigs have a meaning in the social and ritual life of Ecuadorian peasants which is far from mundane. Rejecting the attempts of some anthropologists to reduce the production of guinea pigs and the festive life of the Andean community to a quest for protein, he explores the full complex of social and cultural practices which centre on this animal, and uses his study of its role within Andean culture to provide telling insights into how that culture itself is constituted -- its values, beliefs and attitudes. By working in a variety of communities with different ecological and ethnographic characteristics, the author has made a major contribution to ethnographic accounts of Ecuador and to the more general study of ritual, consumption and indigenous knowledge. He points us, in p

Author

Eduardo P. Archetti

Publisher

Routledge

Published

1997

Language

EN

ISBN

9781000323832

Subjects

Travel, Pets, Anthropology