The Space and Place of Inka Domination in Northwest Argentina

GIFFORD, CHAD; ACUTO, FÉLIX A.

San Francisco

Congreso; 99th American Anthropology Association Annual Meeting; 2000

American Anthropology Association

In the last decades Social Theory has been vastly enriched with the incorporation of the spatial dimension in its theorization about social life. The connection between social relationships and practices with spatial structures was taken into account, and space was no longer conceived as a simple container where social life was established, but as a means through which societies were produced and reproduced. Social space or spatiality (such as landscapes or places) actively participates in the constitution of social agents, for example in aspects such as their socialization, the creation of their identity, and formation of their worldview. Likewise, spatialities are deeply involved in the production and reproduction of power, inequalities, and relations of domination. Therefore, space plays a key role as an arena where cultural representation is foregrounded. In the case of the Inkas, their main capital (Cuzco) was considered not only as the center of the world, but also as a scenario were status, power and relations of domination were represented. Cuzco?s spatiality were divided according to certain principles that established, represented and naturalized social inequalities and Inkas rights of domination on Andean world. This spatial order was also transported and reproduced along their vast empire, by settling sites that replicated Cuzco and by creating landscapes through which Inka?s worldview was not only communicated, but imposed as well. In this paper we will present an specific case, Calchaquí Valley (Argentina), in which Inka domination involved the re-structuration of the landscape and the creation of places oriented to materially and symbolically represented Inka experience and worldview, and hence justify their domination front of local society.