Ecological floor management in the equatorial Andes

Undoubtedly, the long process of domination that Andean communities have suffered during the last centuries, ended up fragmenting their traditional logics of economic and social organization. In spite of this, in certain specific places, certain practices of resource exploitation persist under a type of organization that was thought to have disappeared. This book is a treatise on the persistence of a type of Andean knowledge related to the management of ecological floors in vertical spaces (microverticality). It shows that the community of Nizag-Alauís-Ecuador, has subsisted thanks to the agricultural benefits of different ecological floors and despite the pressures and threats of the dominant social system, it continues to recreate itself to this day (2016). Community, kinship and reciprocal relationships are the institutions that sustain this economic and social system. Recognizing this type of traditional knowledge represents an opportunity to build new economic and social logics that transcend the agro-industrial development paradigms.