Paper short abstract:

Exploring the relation between the making of personhood and tuber biodiversity protection in the context of a Peruvian in situ seed bank, the paper addresses the role of conservation policies in reproducing the environment and the perspectives on fertility that are produced in this context.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout the Andes, discourse on the protection of biocultural diversity has become a pervasive feature of rural development programmes. In the Sacred Valley - Peru - six peasants communities supported by a local NGO have settled a Potato Park aimed at preserving tubers' agrodiversity and enhancing agriculture resilience to climate change. Drawing on ethnographic data from this in situ seed bank, the paper addresses the role of conservation policies in reproducing the environment and the perspectives on fertility that are produced in this context. How concretely is the existence of a park seen to affect seeds and tubers fertile potential? How is this potential related to social and individual reproduction? To tackle these questions the paper unfolds the 'cosmoeconomy' (da Col) of potatoes posited by peasants. In this Andean region, where tuber cultivation is expressed in the idiom of kinship, this cosmoeconomy points to a local articulation between tubers' biodiversity protection and human reproduction. Exploring the relation between the making of personhood and biodiversity protection in the context of institutional heritage practices unfolds an Andean conception of personhood intimately related to the ecological and spiritual environment - two dimensions that conflate in the figure of Pachamama, Mother Earth.