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Paper short abstract:

Focusing on young Matses in Peruvian Amazonia, I explore how drawings and photographs produced by children can tell a story about Matses lifeworlds, short-term histories and future horizons

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on young Matses in Peruvian Amazonia, I explore how images produced by children can tell a story about Matses lifeworlds, short-term histories and future horizons.

I move from drawings and photographs taken by the children and illustrating aspects of life that young Matses are concerned with in their everydayness. By highlighting these aspects of concern, I elaborate ethno-graphic illustrations that suggest how such elements are entangled with a wider range of materials, tools, activities and types of environments in Matses world.

I argue that any object, action and element disclosed by the images does not make sense on its own terms, but only within a referential whole of other tools, places, materials and practices. I therefore suggest how these aspects, encountered in a present moment which is captured by the images, can tell a story about the world in which young Matses move. At the same time, these elements tell a story about past events in Matses history and future horizons that the children's concerns gesture towards.

Therefore, my ethno-graphics will move from the here-and-now of life to then expand the focus of attention and see how aspects perceived in the present can light up a referential whole within which these elements are entangled. Moving from the children's accounts and always referring to the experience we shared in the field, my aim is to bring out how young Matses directly perceive and experience the world but also to suggest how their experiences are always dynamic and caught in ongoing movement of life.