| Sumario: | Andean Studies cohered, in large part, around the shared notion of reciprocity as a central element of indigenous Andean culture, and reciprocity ( ayni) continues both as an active practice among Andean communities and an idealized form of human interaction that is called upon in political and other movements. However, the uses of ayni in contemporary political discourses have been critiqued as essentializing and antiquated. This article proposes a re-theorization of reciprocity as a moral-symbolic economic practice that is socially reproduced through the material practices of everyday life. Reimagining reciprocity in this way frames cooperative practices within the Andes as dynamic and shifting forms of interaction that serve ethical, symbolic, and economic purposes, and thereby avoids treating Andean reciprocity as a traditional artifact. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in three highland Bolivian communities, this work finds that reciprocal interaction forms an important site in which Andean communities are reproduced. [agriculture, Andes, Bolivia, ethnicity, theory]
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