Guest Talk Ana Mariella Bacigalupo

Prof. Dr. Ana Mariella Bacigalupo (SUNY Buffalo and NIAS-KNAW):

The Subversive Politics of Sentient Landscapes: Collective Ethics and Environmental Justice in Northern Peru

Poor mestizos in northern Peru respond to climate change and environmental devastation by engaging indigenous sentient landscapes - with the capacity to sense, feel and act as moral leaders of environmental movements and co-creators of an inter-ethnic world. The challenge social models normalized by neoliberal capitalism and settler colonialism, which are based on the distinction between the human and non-human, culture and nature, and which promote human exceptionalism and environ-mental devastation. Scholars have considered radically different forms of non-human persons and their multiple ways of being in the world. This ethnography explores how local mestizos engage sentient landscapes ritually and politically to challenge governments and industries as leaders in movements for environmental justice and collective ethics. By working beyond the theoretical limitations of both ontological approaches (different was of being) and political ecology, and within the realm of a local, place-based environmental and spiritual politics, my research shows how the historical dichotomies of Western thought and their effect can be disrupted and displaced. I analyze how Peruvian mestizos’ engagement with sentient landscapes can provide a model for radical moral-environmental-political action. By defining “community” and “well-being” as humans in relationship-to-places as persons, poor mestizos resignify “nature” itself as an anchor for social justice.

When?     Monday, May 16, 18:00
Where?    Institut für Ethnologie, Oettingenstraße 67, 80538 München
                Room L155

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Für die Veranstaltungsreihe hat  Prof. Dr. Frank Heidemann in diesem Semester ein vielseitiges  Programm (140 KB) mit interessanten Themen und ReferentInnen zusammengestellt. Mehr Informationen über ehemalige Vorträge am Institut für Ethnologie finden Sie im Veranstaltungsarchiv.