ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relation between investments in intensified resource management, including agriculture, and societal integration in pre-Columbian South America. It defines the relations between "landesque" and "symbolic" capital, arguing that most pre-modern landesque capital had symbolic aspects, whereas not all symbolic capital had direct productive significance. It uses the concept of "symbolic capital" in a more tangible sense than Bourdieu does, denoting some kind of material infrastructure endowed with symbolic meaning. The chapter adds the notion of "natural capital" should be rejected as an oxymoron because the concept of capital always implies investment of labor. It advocates a wider understanding of "trade" as long-distance exchange embedded in non-commercial relations such as tribute, redistribution, and various other understandings of reciprocity. The chapter suggests that investments in different varieties of landesque capital in pre-Columbian South America have been associated with specific political economies, always embedded in particular cultural cosmologies including religion, concepts of reciprocity and social hierarchy.
