Constitutional Law, the new indigenous subject and the State: a new research agenda

Abstract

The discovery of the indigenous citizen was the major finding of the social sciences in Peru in the twentieth century. In the field of legal research, however, this discovery is new and, it might be said, almost absent. The anthropology of legal and political models can and should reverse this absence of the indigenous subject, and indigenous social reality, from the sciences of the State, political power and constitutional law.
It is therefore necessary to design a new research agenda to gather contributions from these disciplines. The causes and consequences of constitutional law in Peru must be explained from an interdisciplinary legal, sociological, anthropological, cultural standpoint, taking into account the contributions of political science.
This article outlines that agenda in order to answer a general methodological question: How has Peruvian Constitutional law dealt with the cultural differences of its citizens in the past, and how does it do so in the present? It also attempts to answer specific questions like: What has been the cultural and ideological basis that has supported its development? In favor of which cultural group has political law been constructed in this country? And finally it provides hypothetical answers describing the discourse of Peruvian Constitutional law regarding multicultural society.