David Nugent
National Endowment for the Humanities
Resident Scholar 2001-2002
Alternative Democracies: The Evolution of the
Public Sphere in 20th Century Peru
David Nugent's current project originated when he was finishing the research
for his 1997 book, Modernity at the Edge of Empire, in Chachapoyas,
Peru. "People were talking about democracy in ways I did not recognize," Nugent
recalls. "I realized later that I was unconsciously immersed in our
own model of 'normative' democracy. Exposure to a radically different democracy
made me wonder why local people's definition was so different from our
own, and what the social conditions were that produced it." The resulting
book, Alternative Democracies: The Evolution of the Public Sphere in
20th Century Peru, traces the emergence of a transnational movement
of participatory democracy that arose in Chachapoyas in the 1920s to challenge
both the state and the ruling elite.
During this period the central government and local
elites collaborated to exclude much of the population from political life, and
to systematically violate the rights and protections granted them in Peru's constitution.
In response, a political movement called APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria
Americana, or the Popular Revolutionary American Alliance) established an intricate,
subterranean political structure to offer the justice, order, and protection
generally associated with 'the state' but sorely lacking in northern Peru. APRA's
interpretation of 'rule by the people' paid scant attention to political rituals
associated with procedural democracy, such as voting, elections, and representation.
Instead, APRA asserted that a society was democratic only to the extent that
all members of the community were guaranteed an equal and active voice in day-to-day
decisions regarding economic, social, political, and cultural life.
The underground political structure created by APRA
sought to provide people with what the state and the elite had long denied them—the
ability to have a direct and powerful voice in their everyday affairs. Although
many of the organizing techniques used by APRA such as peer surveillance, underground
courts, and a rigidly-enforced discipline and moral code seem counter to normative
definitions of democracy, they were designed to help realize APRA's interpretation
of popular rule.
"Democracies everywhere refer to 'rule by the people,'
but how people interpret popular rule varies enormously. Our habit of referring
to European democracy as normative is shortsighted and ethnocentric, for it privileges
one particular expression of democracy over all others and prevents us from recognizing
that the world has produced a broad range of democracies. All are worthy of the
attention and analysis of social scientists," said Nugent.
Affiliation at time of fellowship: Associate Professor, Department
of Anthropology, Colby College
