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Papers by Joe Quick

Defending against out-migration: Rural precarity, tourism, and hope in Quilotoa, Ecuador

Tourist Studies , 2024

This article explores themes of precarity and hope through histories of tourism in Quilotoa, Ecua... more This article explores themes of precarity and hope through histories of tourism in Quilotoa, Ecuador. The initial embrace of tourism among Quilotoans in the late 1980s responded to prevailing conditions of precarity in the livelihoods of young migrant laborers from Quilotoa and other rural indigenous communities of the Ecuadorian highlands. The sense of hope that prevailed among Quilotoans by the mid 2010s was rooted in their collective management of tourism as a shared resource, and their shared feeling that tourism provided a bulwark against the intense pressure to migrate that was still felt by young people in neighboring communities. Yet the collapse of tourism in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the precarity of tourism itself, and many young Quilotoans have once again been forced to leave home in search of precarious wage labor opportunities. This article identifies how the ebbs and flows of hope, precarity, tourism, and labor migration are linked in Quilotoa, and how they are managed collectively by the Center for Community Tourism that oversees tourism there.

Identity, Development, and the Politics of the Past: An Ethnography of Continuity and Change in a Coastal Ecuadorian Community Daniel Bauer (Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2018)

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review

Competing Models of Ecocultural Belonging in Highland Ecuador

Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, 2020

Chapter 21 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity proposes an approach to the study of... more Chapter 21 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity proposes an approach to the study of ecocultural identities that is inspired by the Andean metaphysical concept of pacha, or world. Coupled with emerging theoretical trends in the humanistic social sciences, this concept provides a framework for understanding the friction that often develops between Indigenous peoples and state bureaucracies. To illustrate this approach, Quick and Spartz consider a contest of authority that arose in June 2014, when a delegation from the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment attempted to enlist Indigenous Kichwa members of the Green Lake Quilotoa Community Tourism Center in the Socio Páramo conservation program. At issue in the conflict were questions of who should have the authority to determine how ecological resources are protected and on what grounds that authority rests. Drawing on extensive ethnographic and oral history data collected in Quilotoa, the authors explore how competing forms of environmental responsibility and ecocultural identity are intimately linked to inherently divergent models of civic participation.

The Presentation of Collective Self in Touristic Life: Dancing and Painting for Touristic Consumption in Highland Ecuador

Front and Back Stage of Tourism Performance: Imaginaries and Bucket List Venues, 2020

Through their enthusiastic engagement with the international tourist economy, members of the “Gre... more Through their enthusiastic engagement with the international tourist economy, members of the “Green Lake Quilotoa” community-based tourism center in Quilotoa, Ecuador have learned to present their culture to visitors according to the genre conventions of folkloric performance. This phenomenon has manifested in the choreographed dances that Quilotoan youths perform for during special events as well as the colorfully baroque style of painting that artists in Quilotoa and nearby Tigua have developed over the past two generations. These folkloric representations of culture satisfy the touristic demand for easily digestible morsels of indigenous culture, but they also provide Quilotoans with opportunities to reflect critically on indigenous culture and community.

Post-agrarian aspirations: tourism and rural politics in Ecuador

Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 2019

This ethnographic study examines post-agrarian aspirations and rural politics in Ecuador. After d... more This ethnographic study examines post-agrarian aspirations and rural politics in Ecuador. After decades of urban outmigration under a neoliberal agrarian order, many rural places have witnessed efforts to develop local tourism economies as a possibility to transcend stigmatised agrarian livelihoods and to (re)constitute communities. We build on anthropological studies of aspiration to explore how visions of post-agrarian futures are shifting the actors, scales and terms of rural politics in the present. Through two case studies, we observe how state actors have come to re-inscribe their role within post-agrarian imaginaries, partially rewriting the terms of state legitimacy in rural places.

On the Pursuit of Good Living in Highland Ecuador: Critical Indigenous Discourses of Sumak Kawsay, 2018

Sumak kawsay, a vision of good living originating in the thought of indigenous intellectuals, has... more Sumak kawsay, a vision of good living originating in the thought of indigenous intellectuals, has attracted many commentators since its incorporation into Ecuador’s 2008 constitution. But it remains unclear in much of the secondary literature how the discourse of sumak kawsay and its Spanish derivative buen vivir relate to the day-to-day experiences of indigenous people. We address this lack of clarity through a three-part exploration of Kichwa perspectives on the good life. First, we describe how day-to-day discussions are more likely to revolve around the actually existing life of struggle. Then we analyze an artistic genre that illustrates how decolonized indigenous lives might look. Finally, we examine how the decolonial political philosophy of sumak kawsay has emerged out of concerted collective efforts to overcome the life of struggle. We consider how these three instances of discourse relate to a long Andean history of looking to the past for an alternative to the hardships of the present, and conclude with a call to take indigenous perspectives more fully into account when concepts such as sumak kawsay are invoked by nonindigenous actors.

Conflicts, Territories, and the Institutionalization of Post-Agrarian Economies on an Expanding Tourist Frontier in Quilotoa, Ecuador

World Heritage and associated conservation-based tourism can generate significant national income... more World Heritage and associated conservation-based tourism can generate significant national income, yet the top-down efforts to open up new tourist destinations can displace communities that are meant to benefit. In Ecuador, the administration of Rafael Correa has invested substantially in both new infrastructure and community level training in order to steer world heritage visitors into a more diversified tourist sector. Our research examined the attempt of one community at the crater lake Quilotoa (Cotopaxi province) to maintain control of their economy in the face of increased state investments. We asked, under what circumstances is a community able to both define and defend a zone of locally managed economic development? To answer the question, we carried out a participatory GIS mapping project focused on sites of conflict and community assemblies and supplemented the mapping with an economic survey and detailed career histories. Our research finds that, since 1988, cycles of conflicts within the community of Quilotoa and between Quilotoa and its neighbors came to define an effective, yet informal, territorial boundary within which residents were highly committed to mobilize to defend their work and investments. Interviews show the importance of territory as political resources used by the community to escalate commercial conflicts into matters of wide public concern and ultimately establish the institutional basis of non-agricultural work.

Conference Papers by Joe Quick

Quinoa has long been associated with rural indigenous Andeans. It has sometimes been valorized an... more Quinoa has long been associated with rural indigenous Andeans. It has sometimes been valorized and sometimes denigrated on the basis of this association. Most recently, it has taken on an ancestral quality in the discourses that circulate both amongst the Kichwa agriculturalists with whom I work in central Ecuador and in the marketing campaigns that promote it in the world market. In both contexts quinoa is framed as an ancestral super food, but the motivations for this discourse are rather different in each case. In this paper I discuss how these two discourses relate to one another and to parallel discourses about health, culture change, and connection to place. I show that in spite of formal similarities between quinoa talk in Kichwa communities and the world market, global conversations contribute to a broader process that estranges quinoa from its Andean producers, turning it into “foreign food.”

Book Reviews by Joe Quick

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2020

Daniel Bauer's student-oriented book Identity, Development, and the Politics of the Past (2018) e... more Daniel Bauer's student-oriented book Identity, Development, and the Politics of the Past (2018) explores the emergence of indigenous identity among residents of Salangoa fishing community in coastal Ecuador. Bauer shows how contemporary Salangueño ethnic identities have been shaped by the confluence of practices and discourses that unfold at multiple scales. These include archaeological research and political contests at the local level, indigenous identity politics at the national level, the international circuits of the tourism industry, and transnational development discourses.

Blog posts by Joe Quick

Protecting Cultural Environments in Northern Wisconsin: Anthropology’s Contribution to a Tribal Initiative

Teaching Documents by Joe Quick

If the old cliché is true -if we really are what we eat -then it is equally true that we are wher... more If the old cliché is true -if we really are what we eat -then it is equally true that we are where we eat, how we eat, when we eat, who we eat with, and why we eat some things but not others. Each of these aspects contributes to the cultural meaningfulness of food.

Cultural anthropology is the study of humans, their interactions and relationships with one anoth... more Cultural anthropology is the study of humans, their interactions and relationships with one another, and their understandings of the world. To professional anthropologists, this means detailed, long-term engagement with people, sharing their lives in an effort to learn together with them. For everyone else, cultural anthropology is an invitation to be curious about the diversity of the human experience in the present and the recent past. This course will approach the discipline of cultural anthropology as a set of intellectual tools for pursuing our curiosity about humanity. During the course, we apply these tools to topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, economics, environment, and other aspects of the human experience.

When people think about tourism, most of them probably think about getting away from the stresses... more When people think about tourism, most of them probably think about getting away from the stresses and obligations of their everyday lives. They imagine traveling to new places, meeting unfamiliar people, tasting exotic foods, discovering ancient ruins, or simply relaxing on a beach and forgetting about it all. Anthropologists take a much more critical view. We ask questions about why people travel, how they travel, what impact tourism has on hosts and guests, and what tourism has to teach us about issues like globalization and social change. We seek to understand tourism as much more than leisure: we consider the economic, social, cultural, political, and even religious aspects of tourism.