Tecnodiversidad y maíz. Sugerencias para la búsqueda de una cosmotécnica mesoamericana / Techno-diversity and maize. Suggestions for the search of a Mesoamerican cosmotechnics

In this essay, through the concepts of cosmotechnics and technodiversity proposed by Yuk Hui, I present an exploratory sketch regarding the search for a Mesoamerican cosmotechnics from the perspective of the deep relationship that pre-Hispanic cultures have maintained with maize since ancient times. I consider that this relationship expresses a particular Mesoamerican cosmotechnics that—in Hui’s terms—manages to unify “the cosmic order and the moral order through technical activities” in these societies, even to the present day. Similarly, I argue that the biological, agricultural, and gastronomic techniques—such as the milpa, chinampas, and nixtamalization—which have historically been woven around maize are an example of technodiversity that has persisted and withstood the onslaught of the capitalist logic. Finally, I affirm that this cosmotechnics has the potential to be configured as a cosmopolitics that must first overcome the obstacles of nationalist and identity discourses that became prevalent in post-revolutionary Mexico through the indigenist turn, and that are currently configured around the defence of traditional maize against the attempts to introduce its transgenic equivalent in recent decades

Sketch · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Innovation and Socioeconomic Development · Latin American rural development

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• Contexts of offerings and ritual maize in the pictographic record in Central Mexico

  Open Access•E Mazzetto, Natàlia Moragas Segura•Scripta Instituti Donneriani…•2015

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• The Question Concerning Technology in China

  Gabriele De Seta•Asiascape Digital Asia•2017

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• Ritual exchange and the fourth obligation

  Open Access•Christopher T Morehart, Noah Butler•Journal of the Royal Anthropologica…•2010

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