FOR A CARTOGRAPHY OF CHILDHOOD: DOMESTICITY AND DOMESTICATION IN ANDEAN COMMUNITIES

Abstract

An analytical comprehension of the native ways of perceiving the relationship and management practices that societies have with plant communities at the Andes, conduces us to highlight the place that the local practices of mutual nurturing have, as a relational metapattern between humans and non humans. Studying these practices leads us to consider a new optic to address domestication processes and management practices of plants, being the analysis of its spatiality an essential aspect. In this paper we will look at the way in which the exercise of nurturing redefines domestic spaces in a broader sense that the “household” has in a restrictive meaning, allowing the domestic –although not always domesticated- status of some plant populations at a local level, having an impact in the evolutionary trajectories of those taxa involved. Plant nurturing will take us to consider different spots which are essential in the reproduction of the network of amplified sociability, being necessary to analyze not only the places of cultivation but also the places for storage and their role in the nurturing of seeds.