Yanantin and Masintin in the Andean World: Complementary Dualism in Modern Peru

Conclusions: The Global and the Local: Reflections on Yanantin

171 CONCLUSIONS The Global and the Local: Reflections on Yanantin Thus ends the personal narrative. Some who read an early version of the manuscript wondered if by comparing Western and Andean philosophical models in this way I was trying to make a political statement about the superiority of the latter over the former. Others wondered the same thing about my choice to use autoethnography as my method of inquiry, which, in some ways, rebels against the traditional ethnographic aim to keep researcher and participant in more or less separate psychological domains. One reader took issue with the inclusion of the aspects of the narrative that made reference to George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And then there were those who felt the narrative wasn’t enough of a political statement; that I should include a discussion of what the subject matter and the methodology had to say about the greater context of postcolonial fieldwork, ethnographic interpretation, and its relevance to global interaction. Was I trying to make a political statement with this work? Yes and no. On the “no” side, when I started this project what I really wanted to do was to satisfy my own scholarly interest about what yanantin means to the conclusions 172 indigenous Andeans living in the region of Cuzco, Peru. As time went on, my focus then expanded to include a more personal challenge, to see if it was possible to make a shift in my own philosophical presumptions in order to integrate this complementary vision within my own, Western-based paradigms (which, it has been argued, tend to approach the polarities in a much more antagonistic way). Regarding my methodological choice, as noted in the introduction, it very quickly became apparent to me over the course of my research that the intersubjectivity of autoethnography was the best, if not only, way that I could illuminate those aspects of the phenomenon of Andean complementary dualism that had become important to me—that is, how this ideology is understood both by my Andean participants and by me as a cultural outsider. My method of inquiry was therefore driven by what would work best for the subject and situation, rather than by an intention to make a methodological statement. I recognize that it would not be too much of a stretch for a reader to assume that I included Amado’s statements regarding George W. Bush and Barack Obama in order to push a particular political perspective and agenda. One early reader of the manuscript felt that any and all discussion of U.S. politics and policies should be removed entirely, as it would be jolting to readers who had, by that time, settled comfortably into the timeless and spaceless quality of the narrative. From an aesthetic standpoint, I agree that the inclusion of these two political figures is somewhat jarring to the narrative flow. I also recognize that by including them I risk alienating readers who do not share the political perspectives that Amado was espousing. Had I been writing a work of fiction, I likely would not have included those details. But this is not a work of fiction. It is intended to reflect the lived truths of a phenomenon to the best of my and my research participants’ abilities to articulate them. It seemed to me that if I were to remove these aspects of my participant’s perspective I would be committing several sins of qualitative research. First, as social scientists we make an ideological and ethical commitment to reveal lived truth to the best of our understanding. Therefore, any and all data that seem significant for illuminating the subject of study should be presented for the reader’s consideration regardless of the researcher’s—and, potentially, the readers’—personal biases. Given that, how dare I deny the reader the opportunity to consider all the data pertaining to this subject? Second, how dare I consider denying Amado the forum to express what he considered to be a significant truth regarding the The Global and the Local 173 manifestation of yanantin in his lifetime? To do so would be both a practical and ethical violation of the aforementioned agreement of qualitative inquiry. Finally, by removing aspects of the dialogue that I was somewhat personally and aesthetically uncomfortable with, I would be disregarding a primary premise held by many forms of qualitative inquiry: that personal and cultural knowledge is rooted in the historical...