Factor étnico y conocimiento antropológico

As a result of an extensive fieldwork period in the Peruvian Andes, and of various research and teaching terms at different academic institutions in Peru, Mexico, Bolivia and Nicaragua, the author develops a reflection upon specific practices within the collective of anthropologists. This paper analyzes the usage of professional strategies that respond to the anthropologist's need of linking the normative sphere of the discipline with essential elements of sociological nature, such as the ethnic factor or the central or peripheral condition of the anthropologist. The author initiates a search for explanations to this problem, starting from the conflictive framework of unsymmetrical relationships between metropolitan centers of production of theoretical knowledge and the centers where it is received, which persist unaltered to this day. This is done not only from the traditional politological perspective, but also from within the fields of epistemology and sociology of knowledge.