This volume is the second of two that bring together the main findings of field research carried out in the central highlands of Peru between August 1970 and December 1972. The project was financed by a British Social Science Research Council (SSRC) grant made to Norman Long and Bryan Roberts of the University of Manchester. Its aim was to undertake a regional study of social change and development in an economically diversified area of highland Peru.

We were joined in the project by two contributors to this volume, Julian Lake and Gavin Alderson-Smith, both of whom were independently financed, the former by the SSRC and the latter by the Canada Council. Subsequently, Norman Long continued with his research in the central highlands and, in 1980, was awarded, together with Jorge Dandier, a further SSRC grant to extend the themes of the original project to include the Peruvian Department of Huancavelica and the Cochabamba region of Bolivia. Some of the preliminary findings of the latter research have been incorporated into the present volume, allowing us to update the material of the early 1970s.

Throughout the earlier research we were ably assisted by Teófilo Altamirano who, following his appointment to the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Lima, continued with work in the central highlands but broadened it to cover regional associations in Lima, the results of which are reported in this volume. The research effort was also aided by two Chilean anthropologists, Pilar Campafia and Rigoberto Rivera, whose investigations among highland puna communities are likewise contained in this book. They were based at the Universidad Catolica and later studied with Norman Long and Jorge Dandier at the University of Durham.