Andean Llamas and Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 79

empire (seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and the consolidation of modernity).
These interpreters clearly saw themselves as having dominion over nature. The texts
seemed to fi t them well, even though some saw the need to place limits. Thus, as
Palmer ( 1992 , p. 82) explains, “These assumptions, which lie behind most uses of
stewardship, demonstrate that stewardship is an anthropocentric ethic, which con-
siders it to be better not only for human, but for the rest of the natural world, for
nature to be managed and made fruitful by human standards.” Stewardship, then, in
the context of technological prowess (and expanding empire), understands the Earth
in terms of its utility for (colonizing) people; it refers to the administration of nature
to assure the needs of empire. Palmer ( 1992 ) thinks stewardship can never be disas-
sociated from this meaning. David Ehrenfeld and Philip Bentley ( 2001 , p. 132)
rightly indicate the problem for today:
When stewardship is corrupted by power in the absence of restraint, it becomes ecological
tyranny and exploitation. This is the central problem of stewardship, a problem that has
always existed but has become critical only with the rise of modern technology and its side
effects, including overpopulation. With technology, humanity has achieved a power and a
presence that is utterly subversive of the practice of stewardship. Modern theorists have
despaired of fi nding noncoercive ways of resolving this tragic dilemma, and many environ-
mentalists have condemned stewardship itself as an inherently unworkable concept.

Still, stewardship can have different meanings in different socioeconomic and
political contexts; the material conditions in which stewardship is conceived inevi-
tably shapes the concept itself. Thus different historical praxis—material condi-
tions—can imbue stewardship with alternative meanings and can provide novel
insights for interpreting the Biblical texts that often are argued as the conceptual
origin of the idea of stewardship. The ancestral relationship between Aymara people
and llamas, including llama dung as a metaphor for peasant societies, offers such an
alternative interpretative framework.

7.2 Adam and Eve as Andean Peasants

The Ancient Near East (approximately fourth millennium BCE to the fourth cen-
tury BCE) was a society of peasants and pastoralists (Wright 1990 ). Studies of
peasant societies demonstrate several distinguishing characteristics (Chayanov
1966 ; Shanin 1971 ):

1. Production is motivated by, and oriented toward, the family unit, concerned with
providing basic needs.
2. Market ties are weak; the major concern is not accumulation of capital, but rather
equitable distribution within the family and village.
3. Labor is contributed by the family and the village through collective and recipro-
cal arrangements.
4. Land is the basis of livelihood, however land is not understood as private prop-
erty in the capitalist sense, but as family or community property.