Indigenous knowledge as emancipation. The yachay tinkuy between sociology and indigenous movements in Ecuador.

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 20th century, academic sociology in Ecuador has produced legitimate knowledge about society. This knowledge is based on a prior conception that reinforces exclusion mechanisms. Indigenousness is understood in terms of hegemonic racialization, which leads to the indigenous population being considered as in need of paternalistic protection and, consequently, the indigenous movement being made invisible. This ignores the yachay tinkuy or confrontation of knowledge from the indigenous movement, which not only presents political demands but also its own knowledge that includes a re-reading of the indigenous in its own terms. For structural reasons, Ecuadorian academic sociology was not able to enter into the yachay tinkuy and thus continued to reproduce the invisibilization of indigenous movements and peoples. 

This text compares the development of the conceptualization of the indigenous in Ecuadorian sociology and in the indigenous movement on the basis of key texts. To this end, it focuses on the hegemonic racialization of the indigenous in sociology and its development, and on the response proposed by the indigenous movement as a producer of knowledge.