Abstract
The chapter identifies some points of convergence in the founding phase of Andean and Alpine sociocultural anthropology. It focuses on the academic and friendship networks of the early protagonists, as well as on the cultural ecology approach, which was one of the main theoretical-methodological frameworks of these fields of study. As a first step toward a broader comparative reflection between these two regional disciplinary branches, the perspective of the history of anthropology allows us to look at the professional and personal ties between John V. Murra (1916–2006), one of the most influential authors in Andean anthropology, Eric R. Wolf (1923–1999), one of the central figures in Alpine anthropology, and their supervisor and teacher Julian H. Steward (1902–1972), promoter of the cultural ecology paradigm. By analyzing the assumptions and the critical developments of the cultural ecology method, the chapter brings into focus one of the main points of convergence of Andean and Alpine anthropology, but also a point of gestation of divergent thematic and theoretical trajectories. Finally, tracing the development of the comparative approach in the ecological anthropology of mountain areas, or mountain anthropology, from the 1960s to the 1980s, the chapter will emphasize how the critique to the cultural ecology within the framework of comparative ecological anthropology corresponds to the need, already framed by Murra and Wolf, of considering historical dynamics and the insertion of the mountain areas into a larger world-system.