Moving alike: movement and human-nonhuman relationships among the Runa (Ecuadorian Amazon)

In this paper I suggest that an analysis of movement can offer a fresh perspective through which to look at human–nonhuman relationships in Amazonia and beyond. Focusing on some examples from my ethnographic work among the Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon, I explore how movement constitutes an important means through which similarity with nonhumans is constituted in everyday practice. Movement, as a common quality that human and nonhumans share, enables the Runa to consider themselves as ‘alike’ nonhuman others. In particular, I will show how self-movement, understood as the awareness of one’s own movement, is a central way in which Runa women align themselves to a spirit entity known as a the Grandmother of Clay

Living through forms: similarity, knowledge and gender among the Pastaza Runa (Ecuadorian Amazon)

In this thesis I explore the knowledge practices of the Pastaza Runa, an indigenous group of the Ecuadorian Amazon. A central claim in my work is that processes of knowledge acquisition among the Runa involve an acknowledgement that human bodies, as well as non-human ones, share a network of ‘likeness’. This is not to be located specifically in the possession of a soul nor in the ‘shared’ substance of the body. For the Runa, humans share with non-humans specific ‘patterns’ of action, which I call ‘forms’. Things can affect humans (and vice versa) because they share a certain formal resemblance. Such resemblance is not found in discrete entities, but rather in the movements between entities. As such, forms cannot be reduced to the physicality of a singular body: they are subject-less and inherently dynamic. The concept of forms developed in this thesis seeks to think about the relationship between human and objects in ways which go beyond ideas of ensoulment or subjectification. Such focus is central to my analysis of the relationship between humans and objects, and, in particular, between women and their ceramic pots. I explore the connection between women and pots by following closely the sequences of elaboration of ceramic vessels. Pottery making is intimately linked to women’s capacity for engendering novelty. I suggest that, for the Runa, the differentiation between women and men is not ‘made’ but rather given a priori. The ‘givenness’ of this difference has major implications for what one - as a Runa woman or man - can know or do. Thus, I explore how women, by virtue of their capacity for giving birth, are thought to be ‘inherently’ inclined towards ‘exteriority’. By virtue of such ‘outward’ propensity, women need to engage in processes of making knowledge visible to the eyes of others. This ‘exteriorizing’ process has important consequences for the ways men and women are respectively thought to become ‘acculturated’. Ultimately this work also aims to examine how processes of ‘change’ - a key concept in Amazonian cosmologies - are inevitably gender inflected

“Poor brain development” in the global South? Challenging the science of early childhood interventions

Global Early Childhood Development (ECD)—an applied field with the aim to improve the “brain structure and function” of future generations in the global South—has moved to the center of international development. Global ECD rests heavily on evidence claims about widespread cognitive, social, and emotional deficits in the global South and the benefits of changing parenting practices in order to optimize early childhood development. We challenge these claims on the grounds that the leading ECD literature excludes research from anthropology, cultural psychology, and related fields that could provide crucial insights about childrearing and children's development in the targeted communities. We encourage anthropologists and other scholars with ethnographic expertise on childhood to critically engage with global ECD. To facilitate such an endeavor, this article sketches the history, scientific claims, and interventions of global ECD, points out the critical potential of ethnographic research, and suggests strategies to make ethnography more relevant

“Beyond being analysts of doom”: scientists on the frontlines of climate action

What happens when scientists become activists? In this paper, we discuss the principles, commitments and experiences of Scientist Rebellion (SR), a movement of scientists, academics, and researchers committed to activism, advocacy and non-violent civil disobedience against the (in)actions of governments, corporations and other institutions, including academic ones. In sharing experiences from the frontlines of direct actions with SR along with the perspectives from individual scientists, coming from a variety of geographical locations, and a range of academic levels and disciplines, we reflect on the need to transgress the boundaries of a system of knowledge production and education that is effectively reproducing the very structures that have led us into climate and ecological crises. This article provides a reflective and critical engagement with Scientist Rebellion, drawing on a range of interviews with activists, as well as material from and about Scientist Rebellion. We conclude with a reflection on the relation between scientists and their institutions, as well as a mobilizing plea to the scientific community to take action.Peer Reviewe

Difference Revised: Gender and Transformation among the Amazonian Runa

In this paper, I will explore how knowledge practices among the Runa of the Ecuadorian Amazon are informed by the specificity of local gender constructions. I will argue that while men learn to be ‘proper’ persons primarily through the ingestion of substances which penetrate inside their bodies and change them from the interior, women learn to become ‘proper’ Runa through imitating and reproducing specific movements. This difference in learning regimes, I argue, is based upon a priori conceptualisation of men and women as distinct kinds of beings. I argue that the Runa conceptualise as gender difference the way in which exteriority and interiority are played out in male and female persons. Unlike other Amazonian cases, women are understood by the Runa as ‘naturally’ predisposed to exteriority. This has important repercussions in the way cultural change is thought to affect women and men, especially in contrast to other Amazonian people

Introduction: Conversations on Empathy. Interdisciplinary perspectives on imagination and radical othering

We are living in challenging times. In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, one can feel pessimistic and hopeless, and rightly so, as such events seem to become increasingly normalised. In the public and political arena many have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. Perhaps nowhere have these calls for empathy been more visible than in Barack Obama’s warning that the US is undergoing an “empathy-deficit” which needs to be urgently solved. In Obama’s address to the 2006 graduating class at Northwestern University he beseeched to his young audience: “There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit — the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us — the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room” (Obama as cited in Northwestern Online News 2006). As elsewhere in the public domain, empathy is evoked here as the solution to a society fraught with divisions and inequality. As noted by feminist scholar Carolyn Pedwell, such calls often revolve around the “refrain of how to cultivate empathy” (2016, p. 3, Pedwell this volume) rather than on the more basic and contentious questions of what exactly empathy is and what it can and cannot do. What is left out from such public debates are discussions about what empathy´s cognitive, experiential, and political facets are. How, if at all, can a better understanding of empathy help us face the social, economic and political challenges that lie ahead? Is greater empathy what we really need at this point in time of planetary crisis

Ending epistemic exclusion:toward a truly global science and practice of early childhood development

The science and practice of Early Childhood Development (ECD) rely heavily on research from the Euro-American middle class—a minority of the world's population—and research in or from the majority world is severely under-represented. This problem has been acknowledged in ECD,1 an applied field aiming to assess and improve child development globally, and in the related fields of global health2 and developmental sciences.3 Thus, now is the time to search for effective pathways towards global representation. To date, most calls for change within ECD and related fields have focused on various aspects of knowledge production4 and publication.1, 5</sup