Racism and social interaction in a southern Peruvian combi.

Processes of subordination and racialization that legitimate social hierarchies are produced in everyday face-to-face interactions. In the southern Peruvian Andes, interactions among individuals whose linguistic backgrounds are Quechua, Spanish or both are permeated by evaluation of racial status. This article looks at the interactions between both Quechua-speaking villagers and Spanish-speaking city dwellers who board a combi (minivan) to travel and share the same space for over 180 days a year. In their everyday interactions they build up subtle shifting boundaries through the debasement of interlocutors. In this process, boundaries that organize interaction are not constituted through categorical labels (e.g. Indian, cholo and mestizo) or self-ascription, as Barth (1969) posited long ago; rather, boundaries are constituted through the ascription of racialized attributes to subordinate interlocutors and claim a superior position. Such a process shows how relations of social oppression are produced and are part of the interactional order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]