The parity in the Andean world

The present article discusses the theme of “parity” in the Andean world. The authors offer a discussion of this theme in ontological, cosmological and socioeconomic terms from a variety of perspectives: intercultural medicine, Kichwa cosmovision, traditional Chinese medicine, and social and cultural anthropology. The following considerations are a critical review of the paradigms of duality and complementarity, discussing concepts and practices of indigenous nations in Ecuador and Colombia, and theoretical models, like tetralectical and dialectical logics. The article finds that parity is the key concept that captures Andean social relations, relations between society and nature, the cosmic flow of life forces, and constitutes both socio-cosmic harmony and its imbalances and consequent inversion of space-time. The cosmological system of parity ideologically underpins the normative socio-cosmic co-existence of communal solidarity, while it legitimates the tributarian mode of production and vertical redistribution in Incan society. Considering the advances of post-structuralism on the ontologies of analogism, we conclude our essay with a view of ancestral cosmovision and the ancestral medicine of China.