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Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to analyze the complex networks of relationships and interactions between human and non-human actors in relation to the increase of natural and/or anthropogenic disasters in the Chepang of south-central Nepal.

Paper long abstract:

The paper aims to analyze the complex networks of relationships and interactions between human and non-human actors in relation to the increase of natural and/or anthropogenic disasters in the Chepang of south-central Nepal.

In particular, environmental degradation and increased landslides after the devastating earthquakes that struck the Himalayan country in 2015, along with the mass entry into the country of Christian NGOs declaring war on animist traditions, are leading Chepang pande (shamans) to forge new alliances with non-human beings.

In such a drama of cosmic and global proportions, the pande increasingly tend to assume the role of political leaders, both at the human and non-human level. In their role of political leaders, the pande more and more frequently weave a complex web of diplomatic relations, alliances and conflicts with government representatives, missionaries, bureaucrats, NGOs, as well as with divinities and other-than human beings. Although the path of diplomacy is usually pursued, in certain cases the pande, in addition to being political leaders, become military leaders, undertaking fierce battles against neo-colonial and neo-liberal spirits.

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Exploring reciprocal relationships between humans, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and deities in Phushar village, Paro, Bhutan, during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study reveals how historical and prophetic narratives shape community responses to crises.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the intricate relationships between humans and local deities (Tsen, Chögyong) in Phushar village, Paro, Bhutan, in the context of health and ecological (im)balances during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Himalayan community, surrounded by nine temples, villagers engage in complex reciprocal relationships with divine entities to mitigate health crises and environmental disparities. Through ethnographic interviews conducted in collaboration with Yeshi Samdrup, Norbuling Rigter College, Paro, this study examines how special offerings to deities, organized by the village head, served as crucial interventions against the virus, reflecting broader cosmopolitical engagements with both enlightened and unenlightened beings.

The narrative of divine protection intertwines with oral histories of past epidemics and end-time prophecies (Maongpa Lungten) attributed to Padmasambhava. These prophecies, still vibrant in the community and nearby monasteries, frame the pandemic as part of ongoing ecological and spiritual crises, prompting a re-evaluation of human-nonhuman relations. The study argues that these interactions are not merely responses to immediate threats but are part of longstanding ethical practices that weave historical narratives and prophecies into contemporary responses to crises.

By focusing on the role of spiritual entities in health and ecological management, this research advances our understanding of how relational ontologies and local cosmopolitics shape health practices in the face of global environmental changes. It suggests that the liminality of more-than-human entities, such as viruses, together with divine beings, creates a dynamic field where health, disease, and ecology intersect, demonstrating the significance of spiritual and community responses in contemporary disaster management.

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This paper reflects on how Agroforestry Systems (SAFs) cultivated in damaged ecologies inside the Caititu Indigenous Land (Brazilian Amazon) facilitated access to food and to healing purposes, both matters which became central to the construction of the Apurinã body.

Paper long abstract:

Amazonian indigenous people have historically enhanced agrobiodiversity through forest management. The indigenous Apurinã, who faced a violent past in the rubber boom epoch, spread out in the Purus River and forcibly changed their relationship with the forest and their diet. Several Apurinã found shelter in the Caititu Indigenous Land, demarcated in the urban periphery of the city of Lábrea in 1991. Nowadays, they reclaim a better life among ruins of extractivism and urban displacement by cultivating Agroforestry Systems (SAFs). Though not a new practice, it was only in 2013, with their partnership with the Brazilian NGO Operação Amazônia Nativa (OPAN), that the Apurinã started to systematically cultivate SAFs through workshops and mutirões [communal works]. The partnership’s aim was restoring the Caititu’s damaged ecology while diversifying food production, but the Apurinã (re)appropriated several plants for medicinal usage.

In the Caititu Indigenous Land, the proliferation of a grass-type plant that increases fire’s incidence and suffocates seedlings, furão (imperata brasiliensis), is undermined during SAFs implementation, in which specific plants feed the soil and reforest its environment, such as ingá (inga edulis). While food is proscribed and/or restricted for the construction of the Apurinã’s body, several SAFs plants were (re)appropriated in different forms to heal and strengthen the body, as by snuffing tobacco with cumaru (dipteryx odorata) ashes. This ethnography of Amazonian indigenous human-plant relationships reflects on how the Apurinã’s SAFs blurs usual distinctions between ‘food’ and ‘medicine’ by interconnecting the construction of the Apurinã’s body with their reclaim of environmental health

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This digital ethnography explores the multiple entanglements between humans and SSRI antidepressants, providing a comprehensive understanding of the ontological displacements emerging in both human lived experiences and SSRI ontologies as 'pharmakon'—shifting as technologies of care and/or harm.

Paper long abstract:

While biomedical research has extensively explored the quantitative effectiveness of antidepressants and the social sciences have focused on pharmacological markets, ethnographic approaches to lived experiences with antidepressants are limited. This project addresses the unexplored lacunae of the lived experiences with antidepressants, emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding into how SSRI antidepressants can produce both care and harm.

To investigate the lived experiences and transformative impact of SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressant treatment on people’s daily practices, I engage with grassroots online mental health support communities through digital ethnographies. Specifically selecting semi-public English-speaking communities on the 'Discord' social platform dedicated to mental health peer support, the methodology emphasizes active participation from the researcher following a framework that brings together digital ethnography, praxiography, and auto-ethnography. This includes ethnographic interviews and workshops to collectively produce and think with digital media representing the lived experiences of SSRIs.

This study explores the intricate entanglements between humans and SSRIs, offering a comprehensive understanding of the ontological displacements arising from these human-SSRI relationships as ‘pharmakon’, as well as the role of SSRIs as a technological intervention. The preliminary findings of the fieldwork contribute to an understanding of the SSRI-human entanglement as multiple ontological displacements, including examples such as emotional blunting, loss of libido, transformed bodily experiences, and a conflicted sense of self—among the various changes associated with taking antidepressants on the human side. Simultaneously, these entanglements transform the ontology of antidepressants, shifting their ontologies as either medicine or poison, a technologies of care or harm.

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Paper short abstract:

The afro-descendant communities in the Recôncavo Baiano are marked by Afro-Catholic devotion and healing practices that refer to an hybrid ontology. Plants, artifacts, ritual gestures are part of a complex vital process that presents entanglements between human and more-than-human beings.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the practices of popular therapists from the afro-descendant communities in the Recôncavo Baiano (Brazil), strongly marked by Afro-Catholic devotion. These healing practices refer to an hybrid ontology, in fact the healers use plants, animals and artifacts, perform ritual gestures, invoke spiritual beings as part of a the complex vital process that presents entanglements between human and more-than-human beings. In this sense, it must also be understood that postures, procedures and statements involved in devotional and religious care (purifications and blessings, offerings, possessions) extend to the environment (bush, sea, movements of the sun and moon) in a relationship of continuity.

Therapeutic fabrications may certainly be considered in dialogue with Ingold’s systemic (eco) theory (2013), which defends the porosity between human and non-human, organism and environment, living being and artifact. However, we must not keep out the importance of agentivity, in addition to the concept of animicity: being alive and open to the world in the presence of a profusion of vitalities does not exclude the “making live” by invisible agents. Local knowledges about healings practices configure the actions of these agents in vital processes and promote a “regime of coactivity” between humans and non-humans (Pitrou, 2016), notably through ritualistic skills that comprehend body techniques and actions about different elements and materials.

Following these connections, this work considers the relevance of the pragmatic perspective to analyze the junction between therapeutic techniques and artifacts (fabrications) and vital processes (growths), in order to map some configurations of the local hybrid ontology.

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Paper short abstract:

Our contribution aims to reflect on the (im)possibility of dialogue between human agents - as patients, patients' families and medical staff - and non-human agents - as spirits, ancestors and divinities - in an ethnographic research with children diagnosed with disabilities and their families.

Paper long abstract:

As part of the research project "Integra: Between biomedicine and local therapies. Crossed looks on Mental Health in Mozambique", our contribution aims to reflect on the (im)possibility of dialogue and integration between human agents, as patients, patients' families and medical staff, and non-human agents as spirits, ancestors and divinities.

In a context characterized by austerity measures, cuts in international funds and an armed conflict in the north of the country, Mozambique finds itself in a new economic, moral, and financial crisis.

It is in this scenario that families find themselves to manage their children's disabilities while navigating a plurality of precautions and strategies in a context of social vulnerability. The presentation shows, from one hand, how divinations, promoted by traditional healers, do not always mitigate uncertainty, nor the efforts of healers to manage these invisible forces are always successful. Some traditional interpretations tend to put at stake the responsibility for disability to third parties or invisible forces. This tend to increment symptoms of collective insecurity creating conflicts at the level of the household and of the neighborhood. On the other hand, conventional medicine, commonly gives uncertain and hasty diagnosis offering, almost exclusively, a pharmacological intervention.

During their search for meaning – in between failures and previous attempts – families risk to find themselves in a "paralysis of action". They struggle to move among the plurality of interpretative models searching for a solution of pacification and purification in order to activate the therapeutic device that introduces changes in their children’s life.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses healing and care in the context of urban migration to the Japanese Miyako Islands. Drawing attention to the ways newcomers experience and act upon the healing properties of the islands, I explore how notions of care shape the social and ecological environments of Miyako.

Paper long abstract:

Within the borders of Japan, the Miyako Islands are primarily known for their emerald-green sea with healing (iyashi) properties. Especially since 2015, the remote islands have become a popular destination for relatively young emigrants who “flee society” (shakai kara nukedasu) to find alternative ways of living and working outside of the urban centers of Japan. This community of migrants is characterized by their efforts to care for Miyako’s natural world—newcomers’ way to “do something in return” (ongaeshi suru). In this paper, I explore the ways how Japanese migrants experience the healing powers of Miyako’s soil, sea, and non-human inhabitants and the ways these experiences are translated into environmental initiatives. Understanding local practices and experiences of care as relational, I argue that these are shaped by sociocultural understandings of nature and place that largely originate elsewhere. These conceptualizations have nevertheless fargoing consequences on the ground as they change local land- and seascapes. Moreover, based on hybrid ethnography, I demonstrate how practices of care are important mechanisms for in-and exclusion and as such shape social life on Miyako. Drawing attention to the variety of discourses and experiences amongst newcomers, I aim to provide meaningful insights into the situatedness of environmental care and its social implications. Moreover, by providing a case from the Japanese context, I hope to contribute to debates within the environmental humanities and beyond on the complexity and ambiguity of healing and care in the context of contemporary migration flows.

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Paper short abstract:

Place-making and healthy bodies are intrinsically affected by each-other in Kayapó worlding. As multiple species take active role in making places, they also take part in the construction of a healthy Kayapó body. In such a world, skin and bark entangle and become a cosmological body.

Paper long abstract:

Walking into the forest with Kayapó interlocutors is like going to the market: one always returns with the basketry full with edible crops, staples and fruits. Several medicines and materials of body-marking and -making are also found during the trekkings. In an Era of ecological crises, trekkings constitute a Kayapó mode of place-making. Although the construction of the Kayapó personhood necessarily implicates a Kayapó cosmological body, i.e. a body that embodies Kayapó entanglements and interdependencies in the world, one often overlooks that such human bodies are constituted by more-than-human bodies through relations that go beyond eating. In this paper I wish to discuss Kayapó theories and practices of place-making and territoriality as intrinsically grounded in their conception of body and health. For instance, genipap painting repels spirits who bring diseases; therefore, a healthy body must be always painted. In order to produce the ink, one must explore the forest interior and intimacy in search for bàri-pra-ô tree. In such expeditions, vines, tree barks and sap are collected with purpose of healing. Bàri-pra-ô’s bark is burnt until it becomes charcoal, which, in combination with genipap fruit, will originate the ink. The ink stays for up to two weeks, entangling tree’s bark and human’s skin in order to compose the final product: a cosmological body able to endure the illness spirits and other forces may bring. With this and other examples, I argue for a conception of healthy body-making as indissociable from place-making and territorial politics.

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Paper short abstract:

With a focus on mining in the rural Ecuadorian Amazon and the complex processes that result from recourse interests, cases of indigenous communities approach local health experiences. An analysis of substances and socioecological effects directs to human-nature relations in the Anthropocene.

Paper long abstract:

The Amazon rainforest is a biodiversity hotspot and a complex ecological system in Latin America relevant for local people and other plant and animal species, including the links between different forms of life. Even when several conventions like the Nagoya Protocol or the Ecuadorian constitution (2008) support the rights of nature and people, damages in the (protected) area(s) occur due to profit interests in oil and wood. Various US and Chinese oil companies are being charged for irreversible ecological harm in forests or disrespect of human and indigenous rights.

In Ecuador, compared to other Latin American countries like Brazil or Peru, less land is used for mining activities. Still, when local resources like the air and water become a medium to transport harmful or even toxic substances, this affects not only the highly biodiverse environment but also people in mining areas, e.g., by limited nutritional sovereignty or access to fresh water. An analysis of conditions of livelihood, health, and labor recognizes exposure to harmful substances in a transformed landscape. Could mining substances and introduced processes affect human-nature relations and the bodily constitution in Ecuadorian indigenous territories, leading to transformed environmental perceptions?

With this paper about exploited and harmful substances in the soil of the local Amazon rainforest and mining-related processes in nature, during the conference, I aim to discuss this topic to prepare a field research project or a part of my aspired Ph.D. studies at the University of Barcelona.

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Paper short abstract:

Plants are central in Candomblé’s healing rituals, where they participate in complex assemblages with other vegetal, mineral, animal, technological, spiritual and human beings, and act according a hybrid ontology (as lines of forces and fluxes, and as individualized conscious beings).

Paper long abstract:

In Candomblé, health and the continuation of life are dependent on a complex dynamic of interactions involving all more-than-human beings (humans, objects, artifacts, the environment, animals, plants, minerals, the ancestors, spiritual beings, forces). These beings exist and act according multiple situated practices and an ontology based on relationality, multiplicities, continuities, creativity, not-excluding possibilities, and transitions. In fact, all beings are relational, composite and incomplete, with porous boundaries and spread bodies, part of a meshwork of life flows and individualized subjects, with their own will, desires, consciousness, feelings, and experience.

Plants intervene and manifest in different forms in healing rituals in Candomblé, that are, usually, a combination of “medicine” and “offer”, since they have in view transmitting, making the human being “participate” of specific modulations of lifeforce, and to establish flows and movements of forces in the cosmos.

Plants are especially used in baths, that aim at balancing and strengthening a person’s energy, and at making him or her participate in specific modulations of lifeforce. Baths are ritually prepared with the intervention of assemblages composed by human, spiritual, technological and natural beings. Plants are chosen according their therapeutic properties, qualities, characteristics, their form of life and dwelling, their relationships with other more-than-human beings, the oracle’s advice and myths. In the process that starts with plants’ collection and continues after the healing rituals, plants manifest also their multiple and transient forms, their capacity to produce participations and transitions, their force, consciousness, efficacious action, and their relationships with other more-than-human beings.