"One day in January 1981, I was at Plaza de Armas, the square outside the palace of government in Lima. I observed a nationalistic manifestation which had its background in a border conflict between Peru and Ecuador[...]. This nationalistic manifestation was just one of many others with the same content which I later experienced in Peru. They were manifestations which never gained any massive popular support. I started to think about a form of nationalism which is institutionalised and manipulated from the top of society, and about what sort of strategies it could use. If there were alternative forms of nationalism, alternative popular movements, what sort of expression they would take and in what sort of social spheres of society these "alternative" would work. From this point of view, I am going to describe and analyse the Andean Quechua culture of Peru."   Summary (PDF)