Paper short abstract:

Drawing on the 'practice-concept' uywa(si)ña, I try to show that the study of the relation between ontogenesis and attentionality, as it is brought forth in Aymara cosmopraxis offers an important venue to rethink critically notions such as "agencement" and "environmental education".

Paper long abstract:

How does the soil rear us? What does it mean, in practice, to be e-ducated and protected by "a house", "a mountain", a deceased mother, all potential uywiris? These and other related questions emerge while talking with Aymara families about their 'becoming' jaqi (Aymara people) with(in) pachamama. Etymologically, following Ingold and Vico, humans are above all people of the soil, who bury their dead (humus-human). Studying Aymara cosmopraxis allows us to see how human families, via everyday and ritual visiting practices -'minor gestures'-, grow intricate relations with the soil they till, the soil-earth hat shelters their dead, that affords wak'as and allows them to rear plants and animals. Through such naturalsocial reciprocity, plants and animals, forebears and other presences educate -and also protect- them and make them attentive to what humanification is all about. About how people make themselves 'humans' (jaqi) over and over again via patient, enskilling movements of affective corresponding with and attending to other potential or actual lines of life. In the paper, we elaborate on why it is necessary to criticize mainstream theorizations about 'agency' (intentionality, interaction, volition) and to look for anthropological ways -exposing ourselves to people's practices and the lines of life they correspond with- for studying the naturalsocial "agencement" in terms of attentionality. How Aymara families, emergent collectivities that are "sited in the encounter" (Manning), attend in an undergoing but active way to that what enfolds them -that what has seen them grow- and thus is educating them, in multiple manners.