This volume assembles for the first time in English a selection of the work which a group of Peruvian development specialists of peasant background have initiated since 1987. Their starting point is that development itself is the problem because its epistemologies and practices are alien to the indigenous peasantry. Instead, they believe that the native cultural and agricultural systems in the Andes are very much alive, environmentally respectful, and embody a viable, even if totally different, mode of being and understanding from the industrial West. The contributors to this volume, all of them Peruvians, present different facets of this Andean worldview which, while able to absorb elements from other cultures, exists on its own terms and within its own ongoing cosmology.

'The work of PRATEC is singular - the originality of their approach, clear vision of their collaborators, and careful cooperation with campesinos. I know of no other movement in Latin America which would rival its radical character or power of articulation.'
Wolfgang Sachs, author of Planet Dialectics and editor of The Development Dictionary