Starting from Quirpini

The people of Quirpini, a rural community in the Bolivian Andes, are in constant motion. They visit each other's houses, work in their fields, go to nearby towns for school, market, or official transactions, and travel to Buenos Aires for wage labour. In this rich ethnography, Stuart Alexander Rockefeller describes how these places become intertwined via circuits constituted by the movement of people, goods, and information. Drawing on the work of Henri LeFebvre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Nancy Munn, Rockefeller argues that by their travels, Quirpinis play a role in shaping the places they move through. This compelling study makes important contributions to contemporary debates about spatiality, temporality, power, and culture.