"Now he walks and walks, as if he didn't have a home where he could eat": food, healing, and hunger in Quechua narratives of madness

In the Quechua-speaking peasant communities of southern Peru, mental disorder is understood less as individualized pathology and more as a disturbance in family and social relationships. For many Andeans, food and feeding are ontologically fundamental to such relationships. This paper uses data from interviews and participant observation in a rural province of Cuzco to explore the significance of food and hunger in local discussions of madness. Carers’ narratives, explanatory models, and theories of healing all draw heavily from idioms of food sharing and consumption in making sense of affliction, and these concepts structure understandings of madness that differ significantly from those assumed by formal mental health services. Greater awareness of the salience of these themes could strengthen the input of psychiatric and psychological care with this population and enhance knowledge of the alternative treatments that they use. Moreover, this case provides lessons for the global mental health movement on the importance of openness to the ways in which indigenous cultures may construct health, madness, and sociality. Such local meanings should be considered by mental health workers delivering services in order to provide care that can adjust to the alternative ontologies of sufferers and carers

The EU as Provider of Frames and Scripts: Evidence on Law and Courts from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) differ a great deal in both their legal and judicial dimensions. Accounting for RTAs means, in good part, to explain those differences. A rationalist approach focused on interests, calculations, and utility-maximizing outcomes can offer limited insight into those differences. RTA officials do not operate in a vacuum. First, at the intra-regional level, they work in environments with established, and often similar, national legal and judicial traditions. Those traditions, rather than the EU, provide the frames through which officials interpret and solve the regulatory challenges associated with integration: officials develop legal frameworks and judicial mechanisms that mirror, in their overall character, what is already in place in the member states. But, second, officials are aware of RTAs elsewhere in the world – above all, the EU. The EU provides ready-made detailed instructions, or scripts, for the formulation of specific laws and judicial processes in other RTAs. If consistent with the national traditions in a given RTA, officials often adopt or mimic those scripts. Thus, overall, choices about legal and judicial design have little to do with what is ‘best’ for trade liberalization and the fulfillment of national interests. They have a lot more to do with continuity, legitimacy, and expediency

Methods really do matter A response to Marisol de la Cadena

Comment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Restructuring and rescaling water governance in mining contexts: the co-production of waterscapes in Peru

The governance of water resources is prominent in both water policy agendas and academic scholarship. Political ecologists have made important advances in reconceptualising the relationship between water and society. Yet, while they have stressed both the scalar dimensions, and the politicised nature, of water governance, analyses of its scalar politics are relatively nascent. In this paper, we consider how the increased demand for water resources by the growing mining industry in Peru reconfigures and rescales water governance. In Peru, the mining industry’s thirst for water draws in, and reshapes, social relations, technologies, institutions and discourses that operate over varying spatial and temporal scales. We develop the concept of waterscape to examine these multiple ways in water is co-produced through mining, and become embedded in changing modes and structures of water governance, often beyond the watershed scale. We argue that an examination of waterscapes avoids the limitations of thinking about water in purely material terms, structuring analysis of water issues according to traditional spatial scales and institutional hierarchies, and taking these scales and structures for granted

Health : sculptured by the hands of culture : exploring the Ecuadorian worldview of health : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy of Development Studies at Massey University, New Zealand

Worldview is at the core of our being, providing the filter that gives form to our beliefs, values and behaviour. Each culture and country has its unique perspective in such vital areas such as health and wellbeing. In the global context, where 'health for all' is more a dream than reality, the challenge is to grasp the conceptual understanding of health in each context, to dialogue with the culture, and look for creative ways of meeting health needs. This thesis is part of my journey to achieve an understanding of this, in the context of Ecuador. The essence of this study is an exploration of the Ecuadorian context. How is health conceptualised within the culture? Is there a worldview of health? Are there areas of commonality of beliefs and practices in health? What are some of the historical events and processes that have formed this way of understanding? What has the ways of seeing health in Ecuador's current context? This thesis presents the experiences and knowledge collected during five months of focussed research and two years of lived experiences in Ecuador. It is very much a journey of discovery for the researcher and participants. The research methodology gives voice to the stories of four participatory groups and five in-depth interviews, which allowed the participants to share their knowledge and experience of health. Through the process of reviewing literature on the beliefs and practices throughout various non-western systems of healing, a number of elements were found common to all. These include: the interrelated nature of the physical and spiritual realms; the concept of self and community; origins of unwellness and health seeking practices; food and food practices; syncretism and the concept of body image. The stories of the participants reveal some of their beliefs and practices of health. Despite the wealth of cultural origins, climatic and contextual variety presented in Ecuador, nine themes emerge from the participants' stories, as common to their beliefs and practices of health: nature's healers, traditional sicknesses, the path of tradition, common sicknesses and causes of death, the therapeutic route, you are well if you look happy, of divine descent but humanly frail, no health without money, the path of tradition, and an acute awareness of the state of health. Together these portray a fascinating insight into part of the Ecuadorian worldview of health

Formal and informal systems in support of farmer management of agro-biodiversity: some policy challenges to consolidate lessons learned

The last decade has seen the emergence of a number of innovative community level initiatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America for agrobiodiversity development and conservation. Traditional knowledge systems form and integral part of many of these programs. However, there is still a considerable lack of awareness of the importance of traditional agrobiodiversity knowledge systems and of the successes of these new initiatives within formal science institutions. This paper will address a few issues that will need special attention if the successes of the new programs are to be consolidated and their developments shared in a broader perspective. The paper argues that further research is needed inter alia on: (a) approaches to encourage enable inter-cultural recognition and acceptance; (b) specific adjustments needed of national agricultural policy and national agricultural research systems to become supportive of local plant genetic resource management, and (c) different options for protection of traditional knowledge and of collective systems for conservation and development of biodiversity in a wider, non-IPR sense.Property rights, Biological diversity conservation,

Bearing witness: Testimonies, translations, and ontologies in the andes

Comment on de la Cadena, Marisol. 2015. Earth beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press