Tradition et pouvoir à Cuenca, communauté andine

In opposition to the classical monographes which are doing of the societies
they are describing static wholes where the progress comes and disturbs the
harmony, the author is trying in this study to reinsert three main notions :
these of time, conflict and reaction. The first one led him to rely upon
history and to make a diachronic study of such a society; the second one to
locate the play of confrontations and social conflicts, creators of dynamism
in that society, the third one to examine the mechanisms of defence and of
reorganisation opposed by the society to the pressures which assault it from
outside, emanating of the society which comprise and dominate it. In the first
part of this research, it could be seen the description of the traditional
social organisation such as the native formulation and a first ethnological
approach let appear, then such as it is really. That organisation relies part
iculsrly upon three institutions: the dualist system which divides the village
into two halfs, Qollana and Wanaco, theoretically residencial, endogamous end
rival, which maintain complemental but inegual reports; the System of the
social relationship (compaternity principally and relationship by oath) which
weaves between each of its members a large network of hierarchical relations,
oriented from the weak section to the strong one, but which in fact justifies
the domination of the ones upon the others; the system of the social and
normalized ascension where the members of each section share comptementary the
politic and religious burdens, but which dedicate the ones enrichment and the
others Impoverishment. In the second part, the author confronts inmediate data
with the empirical relidad, by systematic and quantitative analysis of social
and economic reports (land, property, production reports, politic
responsabilities, bands of compaternity) and also by the rituel and the
history, which do appear the existence of an unwedge between what it is said
and what it is. One could realize that the dualist system represents only a
precarious moment or even idealized of social stability. In front of the
dualism, warranting of the order, which is affirmed by the tradition, appear
the strengths of contestation which develop themselves generally under a
ternary form, and come and interpose themselves between the two groups in
presence. In the same time and as resuit, the social relationship are
modificated. The system reorganize itself to the new data while the tradition
which represents the instrument of social control, no ceases to affirm the
perennity of the equalltarian structures, to struggle against the diversity of
the experiences and of the social conflict and against the strengths of
domination which get away from it. Finally, a third part is consacred in a
theoretic way to the dynamic of change which rests upon the obligatory lack of
balance existing between two social groups. In that optic, other social
contexts have been considered, then other thecretic approaches, the
structuralism particulary which, flattening the t i m e and doing of the
dualism a simple frame to the matrimonial Institutions, strikes itself against
the Impossible imbrication of Irreconciliable structures without any
diachronic or politlcal perspective of what we call " tradition ". A society
is not a static whole. In a perpetual struggle between order and contestation,
old and new patterns coexist, found, oppose and develop them without either
sociologists or politic men could be able t o well-shape the societies which
are doing t h em in the moulding they have thought for them."