Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex, and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life

Narrating Native Histories

by Andrew Canessa

Drawing on extended ethnographic research conducted over the course of more than two decades, Andrew Canessa explores the multiple identities of a community of people in the Bolivian highlands through their own lived experiences and voices. He examines how gender, race, and ethnic identities manifest themselves in everyday interactions in the Aymara village. Canessa shows that indigeneity is highly contingent; thoroughly imbricated with gendered, racial, and linguistic identities; and informed by a historical consciousness. Addressing how whiteness and indianness are reproduced as hegemonic structures in the village, how masculinities develop as men go to the mines and army, and how memories of a violent past are used to construct a present sense of community, Canessa raises important questions about indigenous politics and the very nature of indigenous identity.


Andrew Canessa is Director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Essex.

"Andrew Canessa makes superb use of more than twenty years of ethnographic experience with Andean villagers of Wila Kjarka to give us a beautifully detailed and intellectually stimulating account of the changing meanings of 'indian' and 'indigeneity' in Bolivia. His focus on the intimate and the public spaces of everyday life, and on the local and the translocal flows of people, ideas, and things, provides a wonderfully engaging picture of how villagers in the Andes think of themselves and others. His deep commitment to the people of the village gives us a refreshing and important perspective on the concept of 'indigeneity,' which is too often taken for granted in the context of contemporary identity politics. Intimate Indigeneities will prove very attractive to students and scholars alike."—Peter Wade, author of Race and Sex in Latin America

"Focused on topics of great interest to contemporary readers—race, inequality, gender, sexuality, social and political change, education, military service, and domestic violence—and written with verve and style, Intimate Indigeneities draws on long-term, detailed ethnographic work that is impressive and rarely achieved. Andrew Canessa presents unique, novel knowledge about a place, a time, and a people."—Mary Weismantel, author of Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes

"Using telling case histories, Andrew Canessa explores how indigeneity appears in the local and national arena, what it means to be indigenous in contemporary Bolivia, and why the villagers he has studied for more than twenty years reject this term. This is a major contribution, a splendid example of a twenty-first-century ethnography."—Jean E. Jackson, coeditor of Indigenous Movements, Self-Representation, and the State in Latin America

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Ethnography, History

344 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this a few years ago and wrote a book review for NACLA and it was interesting to see how I focused on different aspects now that I re-read it for grad school. At bottom though this was a fascinating ethnography and had a lot of really interesting discussions about modernity, identity, and community life.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have never read this book on my own. It was a required text for a class. Loved it! So much insight on the Andes area!