Contribution short abstract:

Drawing on the perspectives of Amazonian healers this paper illuminates the entanglements of healing with other-than-humans. Processes of “(un)commoning” are evident in the (un)equal distribution of healing options and agency. Local healers strive to negotiate their roles within power relationships.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper aims to conceptualize the complexity of human-environment relations in Archidona, located in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. Ecological landscapes in the area have been shaped by longstanding processes of urbanization and overextraction of resources. In this context, the perspectives of local healers can reveal the continuously transforming entanglements of healing practices with other-than-human environments. Navigating “damaged” landscapes, local healers strive to (re)connect to spirit dueños inhabiting surrounding ecologies.

Drawing on ongoing ethnographic research and insights from critical medical anthropology, “healing” will be perceived as an “(un)common good”, which is (un)equally distributed across human and other-than-human milieus. Practices of “commoning” are expressed in the ways healing is embedded in the social lives of local healers, which strive to negotiate their roles in power-laden relations with biomedical and state actors, as well as other-than-human entities. “Curing” individual biomedically defined bodies will thus be extended to “healing” social and ecological bodies, which are formative of local epistemologies (cf. Scheper-Hughes & Lock 1987).

Critical medical anthropologists have illustrated how structural conditions shape the distribution of health and well-being across racialized, gendered and class relations (cf. Farmer et al. 2006). However, healing agency in Archidona is not only limited to humans but is extended to other animals, plants and spirit dueños. Local healing knowledge (e.g. samay, paju) is distributed among both humans and other-than-humans, which are perceived as subjects of healing and care. This paper argues that local healing practices are closely intertwined with land relations and the access of communities to resources.