Papers by Ernst Halbmayer
Revista Española de Antropología Americana, 2025
Esta es la introducción a un dossier sobre Cataclismos y transformaciones planetarias en las soci... more Esta es la introducción a un dossier sobre Cataclismos y transformaciones planetarias en las sociedades indígenas istmo-colombianas: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/REAA/issue/view/4723
Revista Española de Antropología Americana, 2025
The World that Gets Damaged. Human Transgressions, Cataclysmic Punishments and the Partial De-Cre... more The World that Gets Damaged. Human Transgressions, Cataclysmic Punishments and the Partial De-Creation of the World among the Yukpa
The absence of marked end-of-the-world scenarios and cyclical cataclysms is embedded in the Yukpa conception of a world in process. Owaya tamorhiya, the world under construction, is characterized by processes of differentiation and alteration, whose shaping of spatio-temporal, ontological and social differences, as well as the introduction of agriculture, have given rise to the present world. Owaya akayi, the world that is damaged, on the other hand, refers to the partial dissolution of these differences, a slight return to owaya tamorhiya and, therefore, to a partial de-creation of the world. The causes of these world damages are human transgressions and cataclysmic punishments, imposed by deified creator figures and personified
natural phenomena. The Yukpa’s linking of classical cataclysmic motifs with Christian moralization
La ausencia de escenarios marcados del fin del mundo y de cataclismos cíclicos se integra en la visión de los yukpa de un mundo en proceso. Owaya tamorhiya, el mundo en construcción, se caracteriza por procesos de diferenciación y alteración, cuya conformación de diferencias espacio-temporales, ontológicas y sociales, así como la introducción de la agricultura, han dado lugar al mundo actual. Owaya akayi, el mundo que se daña, en cambio, se refiere a la disolución parcial de estas diferencias, un leve retorno a owaya tamorhiya y, por tanto, a una decreación parcial del mundo. Los causantes de estos daños mundiales son las transgresiones
humanas y los castigos cataclísmicos, impuestos por figuras creadoras deificadas y fenómenos naturales personificados. El hecho de que los yukpa vinculen motivos cataclísmicos clásicos con la moralización cristiana y los debates climáticos globales es ilustrado por tres daños mundiales prominentes: eclipses, diluvios y pérdidas de cosechas.
Sorcery in Amazonia. A Comparative Exploration of Magical Assault, 2025
Whitehead’s Dark Shamans remains a significant contribution to the study of kanaima, particularly... more Whitehead’s Dark Shamans remains a significant contribution to the study of kanaima, particularly for a new generation of scholars with fresh perspectives and extensive ethnographic experience in the region. His historical analysis—situating kanaima within colonialism, warfare, and the introduction of steel goods and firearms—has been largely corroborated by recent research. However, his critiques of legalistic and socially embedded interpretations have downplayed perspectives emphasizing revenge, sorcery accusations, and the structural role of sorcery in society. His tripartite distinction of Patamona shamanism continues to be a useful heuristic, though debates persist regarding the fluidity of these categories and the distinction between shaman-kanaima and non-shaman kanaima. While Whitehead highlighted connections between kanaima and plant shamanism, new research suggests an inverse dynamic in which plant spirits exert mastery over kanaima. A notable weakness in Whitehead’s framework is his cosmological linkage of kanaima and piya to Makunaima and Piai’ma, which appears to impose external hierarchical logics onto Patamona and other circum-Roraima groups. Moving forward, scholarship on the Guiana region must account for both intra-Indigenous diversity and distinct socio-cosmological ontologies, challenging the classical Amazonian model of venatic shamanism as a one-size-fits-all framework for historical and theoretical analyses.
Conflict and Society, 2024
Starting from the ambivalence and contradiction of social categories at the margins, this introdu... more Starting from the ambivalence and contradiction of social categories at the margins, this introduction points out the potential of a perspective from and on the margins for a Critical Anthropology of Security. We conceptualize security from the margins as discourses and practices concerned with the social reproduction of marginalized actors, and security concepts and strategies used to negotiate, and establish notions of a “good life.” Security from the margins is characterized by the positionality, temporality, and (in)visibility of marginalized actors and security practices, which, taken seriously, illustrate the diversity of specific threats, practices, and concepts involved in increasingly complex (in)security situations. Marginalized security practices not only aim to minimize negative security risks but generate positive options that secure living conditions at the margins.
Juan Camilo Niño Vargas y Stephen Beckerman (ed.) UNIVERSOS CHIBCHAS. Nuevas aproximaciones a la unidad y la diversidad humana del área istmo-colombiana, 2024
La muerte no ocurre en un único instante, como ha argüido Hertz en un
trabajo clásico sobre el en... more La muerte no ocurre en un único instante, como ha argüido Hertz en un
trabajo clásico sobre el entierro secundario (1960, 28). Así sucede en la región istmocolombiana, en donde son prominentes las nociones sobre una muerte gradual e, incluso, las prácticas de entierro secundario1. En el caso de pueblos de lengua chibcha como los bribrí, los guna o los kogi, un tipo particular de desplazamiento, de tránsito, pareciera ocurrir cuando alguien muere, de lo cual surgen varias cuestiones. ¿Qué pasa durante el viaje que inician las personas fallecidas? ¿Por qué el juicio moral que atraviesan se considera de especial importancia? ¿Cómo apoyan los vivos a los muertos durante ese viaje? ¿Cómo sus comportamientos recrean principios cosmológicos generales? En últimas, ¿cómo se conceptualiza el acto de morir si este no es el final de la vida? El presente capítulo intenta aclarar estas cuestiones.
Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America (eds. Ernst Halbmayer & Anne Goletz). Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2023
The times of origin in Amerindian mythology are both highly transformational and the source of ne... more The times of origin in Amerindian mythology are both highly transformational and the source of new formations and relations. My central argument is that by looking at the mythical time of origin among Chibcha-and Carib-speakers, different ontological principles are made visible. This chapter is an attempt to develop this argument by asking how the times of origin relate to the present and which logics of creation, transformation, and creativity can be identifi ed. My choice of Chibcha-and Carib-speaking groups as examples for Amazonian and Isthmo-Colombian logics results from ethnographic work with the Yukpa, a northwestern outpost of contemporary Carib-speakers, living in the Venezuelan-Colombian border region in the Sierra de Perijá. The Yukpa live in close proximity to Chibchan-speaking groups like the Kogi, Ika, and Wiwa of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Ette, living at the middle reaches of the Ariguaní River, and the Barí who are settled south of the Yukpa. Only the Yukpa' s northern neighbors, the Wayuu, are of Arawakan linguistic stock. This contemporary Carib-speaking group' s unique location stimulated my work on Carib-speaking groups (Halbmayer 2010, 2012) and my more recent engagement with the Isthmo-Colombian Area (Halbmayer 2020a, 2021). It has also triggered my reflection on differences between Chibcha and Carib mythologies and the intermediary position of the Yukpa.
Creation and Creativity in Lowland South America, 2023
In conclusion we argue that the volume' s chapters show specific Indigenous Lowland South America... more In conclusion we argue that the volume' s chapters show specific Indigenous Lowland South American forms of creativity and summarize their central characteristics in terms of five dimensions: first, the continuity from the creative potentials of mythical times to the present, or between first-and second-order creativity; second, their relational quality and the crucial role played by other-than-human beings as creative agents; third, their generative quality that is based on ideas and the need to reconstruct relationships; fourth, their processual quality that becomes manifest in the importance of transmutation, or intersemiotic translation, between different creative genres, nonlinear forms of temporality, and specific contextual resignifications; and fifth, a specific relationship between the forms of creativity described in myths and those of contemporary creative practices.
Kraus. M & Halbmayer E. (Hg.) Die Roraima-Orinoco- Expedition. Ein Forschungstagebuch (1911–1913), 2023
Theodor Koch-Grünberg hat im Laufe der Reise mit unterschiedlichen indigenen Gruppen ethnografisc... more Theodor Koch-Grünberg hat im Laufe der Reise mit unterschiedlichen indigenen Gruppen ethnografische und linguistische Daten erhoben, von vielen weiteren Gruppen hat er gehört, ohne sie direkt zu treffen. Aber auch nicht-indigene Akteure spielen eine zentrale Rolle für das Gelingen dieser Reise. Das Tagebuch vermittelt das Spektrum der unterhaltenen Beziehungen. Diese sollen uns als Ausgangspunkt für die Darstellung der indigenen und nicht-indigenen Gruppierungen, die das Forschungsfeld charakterisieren, dienen. Wir werden erstens nach den strukturellen Bedingtheiten und inhärenten Machtstrukturen des Forschungsfeldes fragen, zweitens die indigenen Gruppierungen, mit denen Koch-Grünberg direkten Kontakt hatte, skizzieren und drittens exemplarisch veranschaulichen wie Koch-Grünbergs Forschungen von späteren Forschern rezipiert wurden. Dies werden wir entlang der einzelnen Reiseabschnitte tun, die in Intensität und Dauer sehr unterschiedlich verlaufende Beziehungen mit den Indigenen umfassen
Handbuch Friedenspsychologie, 2023
Anthropological peace research investigates the socio-cultural conditions and dimensions for peac... more Anthropological peace research investigates the socio-cultural conditions and dimensions for peaceful, (more-than-)human coexistence. The starting point for this was research on Peace-ful Societies in the 1960s, which was later extended to Peace Systems. Since the 2000s, an-thropological research in the field of transitional justice and local peacebuilding has been concerned with peace-building processes in multidisciplinary research fields. This changed the object of anthropological peace research and its interdisciplinary reception. Research on Peaceful Societies tended to focus on small, often indigenous and partly essentialised com-munities, and worked with classical theoretical approaches such as evolutionism, symbolic anthropology and ethno-psychology, but was scantly noticed outside its own discipline, with the exception of behavioural research. The more recent anthropological peace research takes a broad spectrum of social actors beyond small indigenous societies into consideration, focuses on peace-building processes and enriches the interdisciplinary exchange with ap-proaches, concepts and methods such as ethnography, frictions and a focus on local perspec-tives and strategies for action. These research fields jointly highlight socio-cultural conditions – such as symbolic orders and values, violence-reducing strategies and procedures, social and economic structures – that enable societies and social groups to establish and maintain peaceful coexistence. This may offer fruitful insights for peace psychology. Interlinking these fields of research more closely and bringing recent theoretical debates, such as the ontolog-ical turn or a decolonial anthropological practice, more strongly into interdisciplinary dia-logue seems necessary for further consolidation of anthropological peace research in an in-terdisciplinary context.
Keywords: Anthropological Peace Research, Peaceful Societies, Nonwarring Societies, Non-killing Societies, Peace Systems, Transitional Justice, Local Peacebuilding, Peace Communities
Revista Española de Antropología Americana, 2022
Many studies, even those conducted in the field of the Americas, still argue that graphic communi... more Many studies, even those conducted in the field of the Americas, still argue that graphic communication necessarily builds on coding units of speech. However, in recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the narrowness of this concept by focusing on Indigenous and pre-Columbian societies, who favore(d) non-glottographic systems over written speech. This paper concerns the development of a semiological multidimensional theory and methodology to analyze Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems (GCSs) in Mesoamerica, Amazonia, the Isthmo-Colombian Area and the Central Andes. The aim of this theory and methodology is to understand how and in what ways Indigenous societies communicate and encode knowledge using graphic units. Placing emic concepts and epistemologies increasingly at the center of the investigation comes with a rethinking of Western concepts of writing, and a change of perspective. The proposed model provides access to new analytical dimensions that have not been considered in an integrated way so far. Graphic units are not only studied in relation to each other and on the semantic level, but in the broader context in which they arise. Three examples are used to demonstrate the complexity of graphic communication based on semasiographic principles and test the proposed approach focusing on various forms of Yukpa graphic expressions in Colombia and Venezuela and framed graphic units of the Tiwanaku culture in the Central Andes, Peru.Keywords: graphic communication systems; the indigenous Americas; semiological theory and methodology; decolonizing epistemologies.
Estudios Latinoamericanos, 2021
The search for ontological principles specific for the Isthmo-Colombian region developed slowly d... more The search for ontological principles specific for the Isthmo-Colombian region developed slowly during the last decade and started from ethnographic data and anthropological experiences which diverge in specific ways from the ideal-typical ontological notions of animism or analogism. The paper present reflections on a set of ontological principles, which-based on the current state of analysis-allow to characterize a variety of Isthmo-Colombian socio-cosmologies in non-essentialist terms and in delineation to Amazonian animism, which became used as interpretative frame also for contemporary indigenous groups further north. Thus, rather than proposing the existence of a specific and rigid Isthmo-Colombian ontology I will try to summarize a number of basic principles along which local socio-cosmologies differ from the great ontological schemes like animism and analogism. By making some ontological links between the Isthmo-Colombian area and Mesoamerica visible the paper invites to rethink local principles in ontological terms, while avoiding the imposition of theoretically attractive, but only partially fitting ontological schemata, which may cause selective misreadings and biased interpretations of local ontological principles.
Sociologus, 2021
The current planetary crisis goes hand in hand with a critical deconstruction of the ontological ... more The current planetary crisis goes hand in hand with a critical deconstruction of the ontological foundations of Western modernity. A broad range of post-modern and post-colonial approaches have questioned the nature/culture distinction and ask how to better understand notions of life and their implications.
Thus, the modernist epistemology is widely challenged in current discussions inspired by post-humanism and new materialism, in the anthropology of gender, the anthropology of nature, and science and technology studies.
The papers presented in this special issue are selected from two events organized by the editors: a plenary session at the German Anthropological Association (GAA) in Marburg in 2015 entitled “Toward an Anthropology of Life in Times of Multiple Crises” and a conference on “Trans-Environmental Dynamics: Understanding and Debating Ontologies, Politics, and History in Latin America” held at the LMU in Munich in 2015, funded by the Thyssen Foundation and supported by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. Sadly, one of the contributors to this special issue, Elke Mader, passed away on 8th of August 2021 after a long illness. She did pioneering work with her long-term fieldwork among the Shuar and Achuar in Amazonian Ecuador
and Peru between the late 1970s and 2000. More recently she worked on global Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan and participatory audiences (Dudrah, Mader, Fuchs 2015) and focused on the anthropology of rituals (this issue) and myths (Mader 2008) as well as on global cultural processes, film and social media.
This special issue inquires into distinct conceptualisations of the world and thus discusses notions of life and personhood, and their consequences. Specifically, the authors ask how environments and life are politically performed, reconfigured and enacted in moments of ecological crisis. In doing so, the papers are concerned with the ontological, political and ecological dimensions of life in indigenous,
modernist and extra-terrestrial conceptions and focus on its boundaries,
fuzziness and transformations. The guiding questions are deliberately provocative: How are the perception of the environmental crisis and the enactment of conflicts and violence related to ontological conceptions ranging from naturalism to animism? More provocatively, what are the consequences for conceptions of personhood and life if sociality goes beyond relations among humans, and if notions of life do not coincide with the biosphere but reach beyond the terrestrial?
These challenging questions concern distinct notions of life, which have become a central topic in anthropology, the humanities and beyond. The politics of life have been a focal point in diverse fields of study, such as research on humanitarianism (Fassin 2007, 2009), reproductive technologies, biotechnology and biomedicine, with an emphasis on emerging forms of life and biopower (Rabinow and Rose 2006; Rose 2009; Raman and Tutton 2010; Milanovic, Merleau-Ponty, and Pitrou 2018). Life has also been a central concern when considering
a damaged planet in the ruins of capitalism (Tsing 2012; Tsing et al. 2017).
In terms of indigenous notions of life, images of public wealth and wellbeing (Santos-Granero 2015) have been related to Amerindian political economies of life (Santos-Granero 2012a, 2012b, 2019) and the “good life” (buen vivir). The rights of nature and the “good life” have become a political and academic topic, inspired by decolonial and post-development positions (Acosta 2010, 2013; Mollo 2011; Gudynas 2011a, 2011b; Altmann 2013, 2014). Notions of life have been associated with animism (Praet 2013a), analogism (Pitrou, Valverde Valdés, and Neurath 2011) and related to vital, ritual (Angé and Pitrou 2016; Pitrou 2017),
mythical and technical processes (Halbmayer 2016; Pitrou 2016). What these approaches have in common is that ontological dimensions figure prominently, challenging classic naturalistic conceptions of the world.
This special issue contributes to the intersections among these debates on ontologies, life-making processes and the notion of life itself. The papers draw on rich ethnographic experiences with indigenous groups in Latin America (Cova, Mader, Praet) and Southeast Asia (Sprenger). While each author investigates a specific set of issues arising out of their local research, five cross-cutting themes emerge: (1) notions and theories of life, and (2) specific forms of crisis and conflict, as well the consequences of ontological plurality. Building on these reflections,
the articles focus on (3) ontological transformations and ritualizations, as well as (4) the consequences of fluid forms of personhood and (5) fuzzy forms of life. Rather than providing a summary of each paper, below, we detail how the individual papers contribute to these five dimensions.
Tabula Rasa, 2020
How to cite this article: Halbmayer, E. (2020). Dancing the newborns, becoming warriors, and subd... more How to cite this article: Halbmayer, E. (2020). Dancing the newborns, becoming warriors, and subduing enemies: The children's dance as formation of vitality, strenght and resistance among the Yukpa.
Tabula Rasa, 2020
El presente número de Tabula Rasa incluye estudios etnográficos recientes que intentan entender l... more El presente número de Tabula Rasa incluye estudios etnográficos recientes que intentan entender la diversidad cultural del área comprendida por la baja
Centroamérica (Creamer & Haas, 1985; Lange & Stone, 1984; Linares, 1979; Stone, 1966) y la parte central del noroeste de Suramérica. También conocida como
área chibcha (Kirchhoff, 1943), intermedia (Costenla Umaña, 1991; Haberland, 1957; Langebaek y Cárdenas Arroyo 1996), región histórica chibcha-chocó (Cooke, 1992) o parte del área circuncaribe (Steward, 1948).
Tabula Rasa, 2020
El baile de los niños yukpa, el primer ritual para los recién nacidos, tiene como fin formar pers... more El baile de los niños yukpa, el primer ritual para los recién nacidos, tiene como fin formar personas fuertes, intrépidas y valientes, capaces de resistir los ataques de los enemigos. Este artículo analiza este ritual en términos de sus diferentes fases y las formas predatorias específicas que sustentan su lógica. Se argumenta que el ritual expresa una forma de depredación diferente a las nociones amazónicas. En lugar de centrarse en la exopráctica de incorporar al Otro, promulga una formación endopráctica de vitalidad, fuerza y resistencia expresada en términos vegetales, de fermentación vigorizante del tami, la masa del maíz molido, y la superación de las restricciones y la vulnerabilidad asociadas con las restricciones de la covada. Al mismo tiempo, los enemigos simbólicos son eliminados ritualmente y la violencia es mimetizada y representada entre los participantes del ritual. Esto no solo produce personas fuertes e intrépidas y acaba con la reclusión parental, sino que crea las condiciones para atacar a los enemigos.
Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica, 2020
Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica, 2020
Systematic comparative conceptualizations of kinship and clanship in the Isthmo–Colombian Area ar... more Systematic comparative conceptualizations of kinship and clanship in the Isthmo–Colombian Area are still lacking. Data on kinship for many indigenous groups of the region are rudimentary, often inconclusive, and even contradictory.
The few systematic studies that were undertaken include Young’s
and Le Carrer’s work on Ngobe kinship (Le Carrer 2010; Young 1970, 1968), Margiotti’s (2009) study of Kuna kinship and, more recently, Niño Vargas’s (2017a, 2017b) still mostly unpublished research on Ette (Chimila) kinship. This chapter makes comparative use of existing information on kinship terminologies and marriage practices of a larger number of groups. It aims to draw some preliminary conclusions and to instigate further research on the status of kinship in the area. Among the groups under consideration are 11 contemporary Chibchan groups; the Chocoan Emberá; as well as groups associated with the wider Intermediate Area, such as the more southern Nasa (Paez) and the Barbacoan Kwaiker.
IDENTIDADES NOVAS CONFIGURAÇÕES EM TERRITÓRIOS MÚLTIPLOS, 2018
Steps towards a Dialogue on Objects_Museums, Objects, and Narratives, 2019
English translation from:
Michael Kraus / Ernst Halbmayer / Ingrid Kummels (eds.) 2018 Objetos co... more English translation from:
Michael Kraus / Ernst Halbmayer / Ingrid Kummels (eds.) 2018 Objetos como testigos del contacto cultural. Perspectivas interculturales de la historia y del presente de las poblaciones indígenas del alto río Negro (Brasil/Colombia). Estudios Indiana, 11. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut / Gebr. Mann Verlag, 7-52.
Indigenous Modernities in South America, 2018
This book’s contributions have offered an attempt to understand indigenous modernities as contemp... more This book’s contributions have offered an attempt to understand indigenous modernities as contemporary indigeneities that creatively overcome the first Enlightenment’s either/or distinction between the traditional or primitive and the modern. The book argues that indigenous peoples are not simply modern in terms of being co-constituted by the expansion of Europe. Indigenous modernities have developed from specific ways of engaging with, resisting, rejecting, adopting and transforming Western expansion and the impact of modern nation-states. Through these processes indigenous groups have been
transformed in profound ways.
What can be gained by theorizing indigenous modernities and what are the lessons learned from this book’s contributions? As stated in the Introduction, indigenous peoples are neither modernity’s Other nor the starting point of human evolutionary development. When we conceive indigenous peoples relationally, as co-produced by colonialism and the modern state, then they appear as a modern phenomenon, constituted not in terms of inherent essential attributes but through the relationship with what is considered non-indigenous (de la Cadena and Starn 2007: 4).
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Papers by Ernst Halbmayer
The absence of marked end-of-the-world scenarios and cyclical cataclysms is embedded in the Yukpa conception of a world in process. Owaya tamorhiya, the world under construction, is characterized by processes of differentiation and alteration, whose shaping of spatio-temporal, ontological and social differences, as well as the introduction of agriculture, have given rise to the present world. Owaya akayi, the world that is damaged, on the other hand, refers to the partial dissolution of these differences, a slight return to owaya tamorhiya and, therefore, to a partial de-creation of the world. The causes of these world damages are human transgressions and cataclysmic punishments, imposed by deified creator figures and personified
natural phenomena. The Yukpa’s linking of classical cataclysmic motifs with Christian moralization
La ausencia de escenarios marcados del fin del mundo y de cataclismos cíclicos se integra en la visión de los yukpa de un mundo en proceso. Owaya tamorhiya, el mundo en construcción, se caracteriza por procesos de diferenciación y alteración, cuya conformación de diferencias espacio-temporales, ontológicas y sociales, así como la introducción de la agricultura, han dado lugar al mundo actual. Owaya akayi, el mundo que se daña, en cambio, se refiere a la disolución parcial de estas diferencias, un leve retorno a owaya tamorhiya y, por tanto, a una decreación parcial del mundo. Los causantes de estos daños mundiales son las transgresiones
humanas y los castigos cataclísmicos, impuestos por figuras creadoras deificadas y fenómenos naturales personificados. El hecho de que los yukpa vinculen motivos cataclísmicos clásicos con la moralización cristiana y los debates climáticos globales es ilustrado por tres daños mundiales prominentes: eclipses, diluvios y pérdidas de cosechas.
trabajo clásico sobre el entierro secundario (1960, 28). Así sucede en la región istmocolombiana, en donde son prominentes las nociones sobre una muerte gradual e, incluso, las prácticas de entierro secundario1. En el caso de pueblos de lengua chibcha como los bribrí, los guna o los kogi, un tipo particular de desplazamiento, de tránsito, pareciera ocurrir cuando alguien muere, de lo cual surgen varias cuestiones. ¿Qué pasa durante el viaje que inician las personas fallecidas? ¿Por qué el juicio moral que atraviesan se considera de especial importancia? ¿Cómo apoyan los vivos a los muertos durante ese viaje? ¿Cómo sus comportamientos recrean principios cosmológicos generales? En últimas, ¿cómo se conceptualiza el acto de morir si este no es el final de la vida? El presente capítulo intenta aclarar estas cuestiones.
Keywords: Anthropological Peace Research, Peaceful Societies, Nonwarring Societies, Non-killing Societies, Peace Systems, Transitional Justice, Local Peacebuilding, Peace Communities
Thus, the modernist epistemology is widely challenged in current discussions inspired by post-humanism and new materialism, in the anthropology of gender, the anthropology of nature, and science and technology studies.
The papers presented in this special issue are selected from two events organized by the editors: a plenary session at the German Anthropological Association (GAA) in Marburg in 2015 entitled “Toward an Anthropology of Life in Times of Multiple Crises” and a conference on “Trans-Environmental Dynamics: Understanding and Debating Ontologies, Politics, and History in Latin America” held at the LMU in Munich in 2015, funded by the Thyssen Foundation and supported by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. Sadly, one of the contributors to this special issue, Elke Mader, passed away on 8th of August 2021 after a long illness. She did pioneering work with her long-term fieldwork among the Shuar and Achuar in Amazonian Ecuador
and Peru between the late 1970s and 2000. More recently she worked on global Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan and participatory audiences (Dudrah, Mader, Fuchs 2015) and focused on the anthropology of rituals (this issue) and myths (Mader 2008) as well as on global cultural processes, film and social media.
This special issue inquires into distinct conceptualisations of the world and thus discusses notions of life and personhood, and their consequences. Specifically, the authors ask how environments and life are politically performed, reconfigured and enacted in moments of ecological crisis. In doing so, the papers are concerned with the ontological, political and ecological dimensions of life in indigenous,
modernist and extra-terrestrial conceptions and focus on its boundaries,
fuzziness and transformations. The guiding questions are deliberately provocative: How are the perception of the environmental crisis and the enactment of conflicts and violence related to ontological conceptions ranging from naturalism to animism? More provocatively, what are the consequences for conceptions of personhood and life if sociality goes beyond relations among humans, and if notions of life do not coincide with the biosphere but reach beyond the terrestrial?
These challenging questions concern distinct notions of life, which have become a central topic in anthropology, the humanities and beyond. The politics of life have been a focal point in diverse fields of study, such as research on humanitarianism (Fassin 2007, 2009), reproductive technologies, biotechnology and biomedicine, with an emphasis on emerging forms of life and biopower (Rabinow and Rose 2006; Rose 2009; Raman and Tutton 2010; Milanovic, Merleau-Ponty, and Pitrou 2018). Life has also been a central concern when considering
a damaged planet in the ruins of capitalism (Tsing 2012; Tsing et al. 2017).
In terms of indigenous notions of life, images of public wealth and wellbeing (Santos-Granero 2015) have been related to Amerindian political economies of life (Santos-Granero 2012a, 2012b, 2019) and the “good life” (buen vivir). The rights of nature and the “good life” have become a political and academic topic, inspired by decolonial and post-development positions (Acosta 2010, 2013; Mollo 2011; Gudynas 2011a, 2011b; Altmann 2013, 2014). Notions of life have been associated with animism (Praet 2013a), analogism (Pitrou, Valverde Valdés, and Neurath 2011) and related to vital, ritual (Angé and Pitrou 2016; Pitrou 2017),
mythical and technical processes (Halbmayer 2016; Pitrou 2016). What these approaches have in common is that ontological dimensions figure prominently, challenging classic naturalistic conceptions of the world.
This special issue contributes to the intersections among these debates on ontologies, life-making processes and the notion of life itself. The papers draw on rich ethnographic experiences with indigenous groups in Latin America (Cova, Mader, Praet) and Southeast Asia (Sprenger). While each author investigates a specific set of issues arising out of their local research, five cross-cutting themes emerge: (1) notions and theories of life, and (2) specific forms of crisis and conflict, as well the consequences of ontological plurality. Building on these reflections,
the articles focus on (3) ontological transformations and ritualizations, as well as (4) the consequences of fluid forms of personhood and (5) fuzzy forms of life. Rather than providing a summary of each paper, below, we detail how the individual papers contribute to these five dimensions.
Centroamérica (Creamer & Haas, 1985; Lange & Stone, 1984; Linares, 1979; Stone, 1966) y la parte central del noroeste de Suramérica. También conocida como
área chibcha (Kirchhoff, 1943), intermedia (Costenla Umaña, 1991; Haberland, 1957; Langebaek y Cárdenas Arroyo 1996), región histórica chibcha-chocó (Cooke, 1992) o parte del área circuncaribe (Steward, 1948).
The few systematic studies that were undertaken include Young’s
and Le Carrer’s work on Ngobe kinship (Le Carrer 2010; Young 1970, 1968), Margiotti’s (2009) study of Kuna kinship and, more recently, Niño Vargas’s (2017a, 2017b) still mostly unpublished research on Ette (Chimila) kinship. This chapter makes comparative use of existing information on kinship terminologies and marriage practices of a larger number of groups. It aims to draw some preliminary conclusions and to instigate further research on the status of kinship in the area. Among the groups under consideration are 11 contemporary Chibchan groups; the Chocoan Emberá; as well as groups associated with the wider Intermediate Area, such as the more southern Nasa (Paez) and the Barbacoan Kwaiker.
Michael Kraus / Ernst Halbmayer / Ingrid Kummels (eds.) 2018 Objetos como testigos del contacto cultural. Perspectivas interculturales de la historia y del presente de las poblaciones indígenas del alto río Negro (Brasil/Colombia). Estudios Indiana, 11. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut / Gebr. Mann Verlag, 7-52.
transformed in profound ways.
What can be gained by theorizing indigenous modernities and what are the lessons learned from this book’s contributions? As stated in the Introduction, indigenous peoples are neither modernity’s Other nor the starting point of human evolutionary development. When we conceive indigenous peoples relationally, as co-produced by colonialism and the modern state, then they appear as a modern phenomenon, constituted not in terms of inherent essential attributes but through the relationship with what is considered non-indigenous (de la Cadena and Starn 2007: 4).