The agency of non-human entity in the recent anthropology of the Indigenous Lowland South America

Bibliographic Data

ID2657789
AuthorsAlessandro Mancuso (0000-0001-8748-2097, University of Palermo, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume3
Issue2
Pages77-89
Publication date2015-06-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueANUAC (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2239-625X • E-ISSN: 2239-625X
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.7340/anuac2239-625x-171
OpenAlexW2800384118
LanguageEN
References cited5

In the last twenty years, agency has entered the field of anthropological studies of Lowland South America Indigenous Peoples as a term and a topic of concern. Ethnographical and theoretical treatment of this notion has intertwined here with the revisiting of the concept of animism, Viveiros de Castro's statements about 'amerindian perspectivism' and a broader 'ontological turn' in research orientation. In the paper I discuss this trend, focusing on how different notions of agency are used to talk about topics as shamanism and ontological status of artifacts as well as, more generally, of other non-human categories of beings. I pay attention too to dissonances and consonances in this field of study between approaches closer to socio-cultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics. Finally, I show how this meeting of the notion of agency with ethnography of Lowland South America has precipitated its deconstruction

Animism · Appropriation · Archaeology · Epistemology · Ethnography · Ethnology · Field research · Geography · Humanities · Indigenous · Perspectivism · Shamanism · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Indigenous Cultures and History · Indigenous Cultures and Socio-Education · Indigenous Studies in Latin America · Philosophy · Ecology

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