Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a team of primatologists working in Brazilian Atlantic Forest,this paper focuses on how the image and agency of the primates is dialogically constructed (woolly-spider monkeys known as ‘muriquis') and also analyzes their appropriation by primatological discourse.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a team of primatologists working in a small area of Brazilian Atlantic Forest, this paper engages with some of the classical issues in the anthropology of science, especially the ethnological interest in the relations between humans and non-humans and the cosmological dynamics that shape this collective. The paper focuses on how the image and agency of the primates is dialogically constructed (woolly-spider monkeys known as 'muriquis' or 'mono-carvoeiros') and also analyzes their appropriation by primatological discourse-culture. As well as tracing the relations forming this collective of humans and non-humans, the text maps the variations composed of images, behaviors and transpecific performances. This approach is just possible by taking seriously intersubjective narratives of experiences between humans and non-human beings (specially primates) widely - and ethnographically - recorded by primatologists around the world.