The Amerikas Colloquium

Markos Panayiotou (LMU Munich) & Jhesmin Peña (FLACSO Ecuador):

Anthropological Perspectives on Healing

In this session, we aim to open up a space for bringing past anthropological insights on healing into conversation with our current ethnographic research. Healing practices have occupied a central role in anthropology since the beginning of the discipline. However, the anthropological focus on (medical) systems (cf. Rivers 1915; Leslie 1978; Kohn 2013) has contributed to the reproduction of apolitical, romanticized depictions of non-Western communities and their relationship to the non-human environment. In doing so these perspectives tended to freeze Indigenous communities in an idealized past, ignoring the socioeconomic and sociopolitical changes they have undergone.
By offering recent ethnographic examples from Abya Yala, we aim to illuminate the social transformations of these practices in the context of increased urbanization, environmental changes and catastrophes. Reflecting on anthropology’s past, we will also discuss the new roles and responsibilities of anthropologists within the framework of the “decolonial turn.” (Bejarano Alonso et al. 2019)

When?      June 3, 18:15

Where?    Oettingenstr. 67, Room 155
                 AND via zoom,
                 apply for link at Valeska.Diaz@lmu.de or register by using the following link

Hybrid Session in English and Spanish

Download Abstract ES (149 KB)

Download Programme Americas Colloquium (211 KB)