Paper short abstract:

Two distinct ontological perceptions on nature are the Indigenous Amazonian perspectives and practices, and the Nature/Culture divide present in western scientific knowledge production, i.e., natural science. It is crucial to understand indigenous people’s relation to nature to bridge this divide

Paper long abstract:

This research demonstrates how in-depth ethnographic studies of indigenous perspectives and practices are crucial for understanding Amazonian indigenous people's relation to nature, thus providing an approach to bridge the nature/culture dichotomy. The partition of nature and culture in Amazonia as outlined in Levi-Strauss's La Pensée Sauvage, and further developed in his Mythologiques, discusses myths about relations between humans and non-humans in Amerindian societies validating a dichotomy between nature and culture. Some 25 years afterword the nature/culture discourse reemerged, advocating nature/culture dichotomy as nonexistent for Amerindians (Århem 1993; Descola and Palsson 1996; Lima 1996; Viveiros de Castro 1996). Indigenous Amazonian perspectives and practices, and the Nature/Culture divide present in western scientific knowledge production, i.e., natural science, are two distinct ontological perceptions on nature. Alternative realities become apparent in ethnography as from an indigenous perspective; Nature and Culture are interwoven and constantly emerging. In contrast, the natural science standard classification, as embedded in western scientific knowledge, imposes a divide between "nature" and "culture". This "mode-1 knowledge production" (Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001) of the established natural science disciplines advocate their ontology of knowledge production superior to indigenous knowledge productions. As most scientific disciplines aim for replicable results, Nowotny elaborated upon the Mode-2 knowledge production or interdisciplinary research, multivocal, generated in the context of application, and often resulting in new questions. Anthropology is such an integrative discipline in the Mode-2 knowledge production including specialists following both modes of knowledge production; a multidisciplinary collaboration is necessary to overcome the nature/culture divide.

Paper short abstract:

Modern humans have departed from “Red Queen co-evolution”. This paper considers deviated human traits in the bio-social environment. Exploration of causes, modes and future prospects of our runaway requires integration among various biological and sociocultural studies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers modern humanity from an evolutionary runaway perspective. In nature co-evolutionary mechanisms within a body or ecosystem usually constrain a single biological system or species from becoming out-of -sync. Ever since human ancestors started manipulating the environment, especially after the industrial revolution, our body and mind have left the Red Queen behind. Modern human characteristics include runaway traits such as obesity, allergy, extended longevity, accelerated sexual maturation, excessive parental investment, overuse of resources, large-scaled warfare, addiction to drugs, sex and gambling. We could runaway mainly because of our evolutionary heritage that lacks sufficient control/brake mechanisms. Evolutionarily premature steps without optimization have been put forward as mere adaptive response at neural/physiological/cognitive levels. In industrialized countries including Japan, modern physiological traits have become serious social problems. Other runaway traits such as sophisticated arts/sciences and empathy/belief towards imaginary objects may owe their cognitive bases to symbolic mind and language, also evolutionary achievements. In understanding modern humanity, an evolutionary perspective along with knowledge of variation across time and space are essential. Exploration of the causes, modes and future prospects of human runaway requires integration among molecular biology, physiology, neuroscience and sociocultural studies.

Paper short abstract:

Among the Jarawara, life and afterlife, Earth and the Upperworld and strictly connected. We can only understand the living beings, the humans, if we understand the dead beings. This paper will try to elucidate the connections between the Jarawara and the Upperworld in order to demonstrate how they conceive themselves and the Others.

Paper long abstract:

The Jarawara, who live in the brazilian Amazon forest, is a group from the Arawa linguistic family. To understand their concept of becoming and being human we need to have a close look at the process that takes place once they die, a body-process, as well as their after-death world in the upper layer (nemeya). This paper will try to examine those two factors, paying special attention to the relations that the Jarawara build, when alive, with their posthumous co-residents (the souls of their garden plants) as well as the relations with all other beings which are important to them (animals, trees, White, objects... ).

Paper short abstract:

This paper focus on the question about how to talk about a soul without reducing it to a mere image that represents the human body. In order to do so, this paper returns the ethnographic data of Bororo, Araweté and Yanomami and to the classic discussions that play an important part in current amerindian ethnology studies, through the texts of Bruno Latour, Tânia Stolze Lima e Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. In doing so, this paper proposes a reflection on different ways of thinking the notion of ‘soul’,stressing the ways it offers resistance to the stabilization, representation and condensation into a single image that stands for a body.

Paper long abstract:

The reading of a variety of ethnographies about lowland South-American societies and their cosmological systems reveals an interesting homology relation between the notions of "soul" and "image", treating the former as an "image" of the human body endowed with agentive capacity to relate with the "image" from the body of certain animals and with a specific class of supernatural beings, inhabitants of other cosmological levels. Relations with either those non-human images or with the class of supernatural beings (whose I will name for now on "spirits") may always be harmful, due to the risks of this image of the human body being captured, aggressed or even killed by those forms of alterity. The effects of those predatory activities will show up as diseases on the human physical body, or even its death resulting from the killing of its image/soul. In view of this ethnographic horizon, my aim in this paper is to amplify the comprehension on how this homology relation between "soul" and "image" gains its meaning in Amerindian ontologies. Furthermore, I also intend to face here the challenge of demonstrating that the effects of the strained cosmopolitical relations between those "images" of humans and the "images" of non-human alterity forms can resonate in the human body, thereby conceiving a chiasm between the "cosmopolitical" and the "imagetical", determining an image mode non-reducible to a mere representation of the physical human body.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses about the perspectivism and two sets of dicotomy soul/body, universalism/relativism of the Chepangs, an indigenous people of Nepal, by examing their prey/predator relations, and the traveling and tranformation of souls.

Paper long abstract:

In Chepang of Nepal, people hunt deer, which are typical animals as preys, with arrows. When humans eyes get bloodshot occasionally, people interpret that was caused by special power of deer eyes.

On the other hand, humans are also hunted by tigers, powerful and dangerous figures some of whom are not simply animals but transformed souls of the dead. In addition, humans are supposed to have tigers that activate people's hearts and cause hiccups inside their bodies. This kind of perception indicates that the concept of their souls connotes 'corporeity' instead of opposition to the bodies.

Shamans can send their own souls into underground world for saving the people's souls captured by the evils. Ordinary people who don't have such abilities are called as 'people of surface'. Their perception of the world shows such dichotomy of underground/surface.

The perception of the two divided world can refer to the relativism of the people, but the souls traveling through the two divisions shows their perspectivism and the universalism.

Paper short abstract:

Light and air are phenomenon we need in order to exist. Deprivation of either is known to be used as torture. This presentation will illustrate ventilation as the profound secret of existence (Sloterdijk 2004) and light as the basis for feeling at home in the world. Focus will be on periods of transition in people's homes where both light and air seemed to become more important.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents research results of two very common everyday life practices at home: The use of artificial lighting and the use of fresh air from the outside and into the home - the status people assigned to artificial lighting and air from the outside and into the home, situations of use and how/when sociality in actions relating to light and air appeared. Practices of lighting and ventilating the home turned out to be embodied, social and negotiated activities, enacted as firm sets of 'natural' behaviors. Some of the performed actions represented transitions that reflected other issues than those concerning air and lighting, dealing with identity formation and role shift, and significant for a social understanding of the practice.

Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to question the general assumption that fragmented motherhood,mostly apparent in the case of surrogate mothers, is new in history. Wet-nurses, women whose jobs was to breasfeed babies not their own already contributed in the past, as even today, to the debate.

Paper long abstract:

New Technologies of Reproduction have contributed to the fragmentation of motherhood, with surrogate mothers, for example, now maternity can be divisible into genetic, gestational and social. Having as a reference the ethnographic work about domestic wet-nurses in XIX/XX Spain. Peasant women that emigrated to different cities as Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla in order to work as domestic wet-nurses among the wealthiest groups of the society: aristocracy, burgeoise and Royalty, and based on a theory of reproduction that considered milk as menstrual blood that dissapeared during nine months and came back converted into milk through the process of breastfeeding (it means that milk besides being considered as food because of our condition as mammals, is an essential symbol of the reproductive process), the aim of this paper is to try to question the general statement that the social and biological aspects of motherhood have historically resided in one person until the advances in Assisted Reproduction. Wet-nurses, denominated in some situations: surrogate mothers", "mercenary mothers" or even ,"half mothers" already contributed in the past, as in presen times, to a social and cultural debate. This labor practice of breasfeeding others' babies already broke the cultural ideal of breasfeeding and maternity.

Paper short abstract:

From an Amazonian perspective, being human is a continuous transformative process of becoming. Mythologies, social memory, and related rituals of the indigenous Wayana people provide insight into these dynamic processes and interrelationships with social others, non-humans, and the environment.

Paper long abstract:

During my in-depth anthropological research among the indigenous Wayana people of the Eastern Guiana Highlands (Brazil, Suriname, and French Guiana), I recorded various indigenous narratives that aid in exploring the complex dynamic processes in the flow of life and different ways of bio-psycho-socio-cultural and political constructions of human/humanized life courses in conjunction with specific material-symbolic-eco-relations. Beyond the universals of Lévi-Straussian Structuralism and Viveiros de Castro's Perspectivism, we have to situate Amazonian myths in multiscalar historical processes. Firstly, these mythologies encourage rethinking the Nature/Culture divide, and reconsider the interrelationships between humans and non-humans. Secondly, the moment of narration and ritualized re-enactment provides insight in socialization, social reproduction, and sociopolitical legitimization. Thirdly, while myths, rituals, and habitual practices appear to implement pan-Amazonian universals, they redefine identities embodied and materialized in the processes of interpersonal relationships. Finally, the role of social others (including, but not restricted to, animals and non-humans) for becoming human will be reassessed. The latter in conjunction with how certain things (techno-economic means, and fire in particular) are obtained. While this research is grounded in Amazonian studies, ontological implications of "relationship-bodies" will have a broader impact on the conceptualization of what it means to be human and becoming human.

Paper short abstract:

The political argument over legitimate identity around Macedonia has created a new ‘becoming’ expressed in the solid concrete of the Skopje 2014 project. Skopje’s lived myriad of city-space is nowadays structured and objectified by the concrete of pillars and statues creating a new historical truth.

Paper long abstract:

Skopje 2014 is a highly advertised and contested re-modeling of the city of Skopje, capital of the Republic of Macedonia. Having been rebuilt once before after the devastating earthquake of 1963 in which 80% of the city was destroyed, Skopje today is being re-build as' timeless capital.' My paper will look at how an inanimate substance like concrete has the possibility to (in-)form individual becomings anachronistically, depicting an exclusive landscape that forms a moral and ethnic cartography. Life styles, genetics of the right ancestry, the resurrection of 'lost descendants' are expressed in concrete space. Hyper-Europeaness of ancient Macedonia legitimized by 'formed' bodies, 'concrete' space, birth-practices and life-styles in turn moralise Macedonia's answer to EU exclusion. Whereas the history of Socialist Macedonia told of Slavic tribes immigrating 600 A.D. into ancient Macedonia and mixing with its population, today the Republic of Macedonia is inhabited by 'true/concrete' and 'ancient'/modern Macedonians/European Autochtones, creating otherness within space and time, excluding Albanian and Roma population in Macedonia from its history, from the newly build spaces and European modernity. Skopje 2014 is constructed via space exclusion based on an ethnicity re-defined moral cartography. How is the new architecture speaking to people, changing their way of existing and their interaction with the environment that surrounds them? I am not looking at the nationalism as social agent of change, but at concrete buildings, statues and monuments who create the becoming of people in their own and unexpected ways.

Paper short abstract:

I highlight the experience of enculturation in a Northern Irish council estate where the distinction between legitimate and non-legitimate knowledge is sharply drawn along sectarian lines. I trace how a movement between daily life and the extraordinary became increasingly imbalanced over time.

Paper long abstract:

I didn't realize I was catholic until I was five, which I experienced, rather than spiritually, as a wholly bodily assault. I was skipping along behind an Orange parade, becoming immersed in a carnivalistic event that was reperformed daily in my estate in June. In a pause between the booms of the Lambeg my best friend and neighbour announced that she pitied my religious misfortune which would result in a deep pit in a scorching hell. From that point on Orange parades assumed a demonic presence, an event around which a whole social transformation occurred yearly.

Rathboyle Park is a small protestant working class council estate. I was brought up in one of four catholic families. Irrespective of religious or ethnic affiliation, all families claimed Northern Ireland as their ancestral home. Except mine. My father is from the Republic, a perceptively foreign country that gave him a highly politicized insider/outsider status, topped only by the otherness of my German mother. I highlight the experience of enculturation in a danger-filled environment where the distinction between legitimate and non-legitimate knowledge is sharply drawn along sectarian lines. Yet, this polarization was never complete. Ties of kin and fictive kin criss-crossed historical and political truths, burst forth at particular moments in everyday life to reveal an essential humanity. I trace how this movement between structure and event became increasingly imbalanced over time. I explore the linkages between this imbalance, Thatcherite policies, and the processes involved in becoming and unbecoming a person.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes ongoing processes of making "real" humans through the productive relations of women with "outsiders". Connecting desire and power in women's participation in the capitalist economy, the paper questions notions of women as passive socio-political agents in an Amazonian context.

Paper long abstract:

Based on research in Peru between 2009-2011, this paper examines the productive power of indigenous women beyond the "village" and their role in regenerating community life through their work as "cooks" outside the villagen and in different contexts. I will emphasise the relations between desire and power in women's participation in the capitalist economy and their role in regenerating community life. Indigenous women's productive capacities as 'cooks' have often been misrepresented as "exploitation" for which I will also question notions of women as passive socio-political agents in Amazonia.

Indigenous women sometimes work away from their communities leaving behind kids in the care of their relatives who "adopt" them and raise them as children. This paper will argue that women's (re)-productive work beyond the community has not only been overlooked, but has been misunderstood. Rather than viewing these relations as being based on "exploitation", this paper accounts for the agency of the women involved, with specific focus on how their own desires and the desires of others, mostly men, are made productive in terms of indigenous ontologies - pertaining to power and the centrality of extending kinship. Through their relations beyond the village and the "work" of making young children into "real" humans, these women are central to the process of the making of new generations of indigenous people.

Paper short abstract:

This paper engages non-dualist and posthumanist dispositions to ask what the relationship between an invasive species and the people who are trying to control it can tell us about human/animal relations, multispecies entanglements and becoming together.

Paper long abstract:

This article examines how the case of the invasive cane toad in the Kimberley region in western Australia can help give substance to the concepts of 'entanglements' and 'becoming with'. The recent arrival of toads in the Kimberley represents a sudden and significant alteration to the way certain people engage with the environment. This article asks in what ways this is happening. The toad case stands out in a few different ways: 1) Among volunteers and environmentalists animosity towards toads and a lack of recognition is paired with a respect and admiration for the toads and sometimes quite intimate relations. 2) A remarkably rapid alteration in the environment is intertwined with local bureaucracy, state and federal politics, indigenous issues and the scientific community. 3) Both the toads and the naturecultural environment into which they arrive are conspicuously unstable, changing and uncertain. The paper explores how these factors - which are unusually marked in the toad case - can shed light upon the notion of interspecies entanglements.

How people are changing patterns of interaction with the environment as toads arrive is seen in light of the texture, directed perception and complex causality of interspecies entanglements. Significantly, the toads are also 'multispecies cyborgs' no less than people are and they facilitate each other's becoming in conspicuous co-shaping. As a new species enters the multispecies collective that is the Kimberley what it is to become human is shifted, not by contrast but by connections.