Abandonment of an Andean Technology. The case of 'Andenes'

Abstract

Technology is a dynamic concept, a social and historic product, adequate to the needs of a society which adopts some kind of organization to come with the challenges its environment status. The Andean social institutions had to accomplish -apart from other functions- to be a coordinated instance of the technical necessities of production, being terracings, somehow, the material expression of its organization, the colective capacity to maintain or reproduce the system they rely on. From this assesments, the author analizes the reason why the abandon of a technical practice and financially apropiated to the agricultural activities on hillsides from a study of the breaking points which contemporary andean institutions present, with the original model of organization, whenever her opinion is that these points explain not only the abandon, but impose limits to the possibilities of a successful rehabilitation.