Citation:
Date Presented:
February 5Abstract:
This thesis explores ethnic and gendered identity formation among indigenous communities in contemporary Ecuador. Using gender theory and ethnographic method, I propose a new conceptual framework for studies of ethnic identification and capitalist domination: “collective gender.” I draw upon ethnographic interviews and observations, in addition to material and spatial analysis, to make an argument for the masculinization of the Amazonian Kichwa and the feminization of the Andean Quechua as processes of performative identification.
In a resistance movement in 1990, ethnic articulation of group identities became a political claim. However, in the years following, US influence during the international war on drugs and the streamlining of military police created differential policing in the Amazon and Andes, which was adapted to create a division within the indigenous alliance. This obliterated a burgeoning political movement that threatened international and national capitalist interests in Ecuador, and makes this case study of identity formation even more pronounced, in historical context. I use historical methods to examine how free trade and militarized policing contributed to the long process of bifurcation of ethnic identity along gendered lines (from Quichua into two geopolitically and now ethnically separate groups, the Kichwa and Quechua). Currently, I am working to make sure the ethnography of the current moment and the historical context are working in service of one another, as opposed to creating intellectual confusion for the audience to this research.