This thesis is based on an ethnographic investigation of indigenous childrearing theories of the Saraguros of southern Ecuador, with particular emphasis on the effect they believe their childrearing practices to have on infants’ and toddlers’ moral apprenticeship. To understand this learning process, I focused on children from newborn to age three and their caregivers, using everyday decisions involving babywearing and sleep practices as a window onto the ways apprenticeship is practiced among Saraguros and their particular moral standards. The moral apprenticeship of Saraguro babies is therefore considered as a product of local learning styles, constructions of childhood, and infant care practices, which create cultural self-fulfilling prophecies regarding young children’s development and capabilities. Their experiential learning system is being challenged by national children’s rights programs, which are informed by universalized visions of proper childhoods, rendering early childhood in Saraguro an interesting site from which to view the process of cultural change. / ix, 211 leaves ; 29 cm

Historical notions of Noble Savagery have been contemporarily translated and massified in popular culture so that traits that “Indigenous People” are believed to possess, are conflated with those of the Noble Savage of lore and taken for granted as truth. The Noble Savage is the embodiment of the tourist’s notion of the authentic; the more traits Indigenous people are assumed to share with the western notion of the Noble Savage the more authentic they are deemed, and the more attractive they are to the visiting tourist. In Saraguro tourism and incanismo mutually validate and reinforce each other. Tourists valorize their own preconceived notions of indigenous culture, and in turn validate incanismo through participation in Incaic cultural performances. Neo-Incans are objectifying and consuming their own dreams though the tourist gaze, and the resultant cultural commodification and the (re)appropriation of a nobler past has led to cultural revalorization of an indigenous elite. / viii, 213 leaves; 29 cm