3. MULTILOCALITY, KINSHIP NETWORKS, AND TERRITORIAL RESILIENCE The concept of multilocality—the practice of maintaining multiple residences and productive activities across dispersed territories—is the defining characteristic of Andean adaptation to the geography of the Andes. From the perspective of conventional census-based assessment, multilocality is a “problem”—it complicates the identification of the affected population. From the perspective of livelihood resilience, it is an elegant solution: it reduces vulnerability to localised droughts, crop pests, market fluctuations, and climatic changes. Extended kinship networks are the instrument through which multilocality operates. A single census-registered household in a village may simultaneously maintain: siblings in the city in formal employment, relatives on the altiplano herding flocks, cousins in a temperate zone working commercial crops, and grandmothers in the village coordinating reciprocal labour (ayni, minka) that binds the entire network. The youngest member who migrates to the city maintains ties through monetary contributions and seasonal returns. The pattern of multi-month residence at different locations throughout the year is rational—it is not poverty or disorder; it is social architecture. This territorial system is invisible to methodologies that capture a single “census household.” When a family is registered in the village, what is lost includes: (1) the high-altitude herding activities of a sibling; (2) the cultivation rights of a sister in the intermediate zone; (3) the water and forest access agreements negotiated by an aunt in another community; and (4) the shop of a cousin in the city that generates income financing communal ritual practices. Resettlement that “compensates” the visible dwelling but not these dispersed assets effectively destroys the livelihood system years after the fact. Table 1 – Comparison of Assumptions: Conventional Resettlement vs. Andean Multilocality Dimension Conventional Assumption Andean Multilocal Reality Methodological Implication Unit of analysis Census household (residence) Extended kinship network (3–5 locations) Ethnography + SNA Time frame Static snapshot (census year) Cyclical annual patterns 12+ month observation Critical territory Residential plot only Dispersed (grassland, crops, water, forest) Multilocational mapping Functional networks Not assessed Ayni/minka = subsistence insurance Social network analysis Compensation approach Asset-based (land, cash) Multidimensional (access, reciprocity, identity) Wellbeing Framework Conflict risk Assumed low post-compensation High if territorial system not addressed Early LOM integration 69
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