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Paper short abstract:

I explore emotions (Latin movere, to move) as moments of intense bodily dynamism rather than fixed states. Focusing on Matses children in Peruvian Amazonia, I consider how childhood is based on a body-in-motion that continually opens up new modes of sensory perception, knowing and emotion.

Paper long abstract:

I explore emotions (from the Latin movere, to move) as moments of intense bodily dynamism rather than fixed states of being. Focusing on Matses children in Peruvian Amazonia, I consider how children's lives are based on a body-in-motion that continually opens up new modes of sensory perception, knowing and emotional entanglement with the environment.

Using cameras, I aim to grasp children's kineceptive knowing, which I define as a dynamic form of perception in which multiple perspectives are continuously being generated through action and movement. My inquiry into children's knowing encompasses their own 'view from the ground' and emotional experiences of the river environment. The cameras used from the embodied height and perspective of children allow us to see and understand the world in multiple ways that are predicated on the body-in-motion.

By taking seriously children's sensorial, dynamic and aesthetic engagement with the world, the paper moves away from mainstream theories in Amazonian anthropology, particularly those that focus on Amerindian thought and ontologies whereby the structures of the mind are privileged over bodily ways of knowing and lived experiences couched in movement.