This involves recapturing the shamanic and diplomatic valences of the anthropological vocation - donning other kinds of clothing and equipping ourselves with other kinds of tools, not all of which are of the human sort. Living in the so-called ‘time of humans’ requires us to rethink what we mean by the human, and to rethink for the future (this epoch is far from over) a kind of ethics appropriate to a time in which separating humans from nonhumans is no longer practically or metaphysically conceivable. In recognition of the ways in which culture is now a force of nature, some geologists have proposed the term Anthropocene for the geological epoch in which we live. In this sense, another synonym for anthropologist might be what Bruno Latour calls a ‘diplomat’, more accurately, a cosmic diplomat for the aim of moving among worlds is to find ways to avoid a cosmic - by which I mean an ecological - cataclysm.
![living earth near me living earth near me](https://cdn.palmbeachillustrated.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/78/2020/04/50-Years-Earth-Day-2020-Image_blue-e1587408063108.png)
We do so in order to recognize the ways we take part in that larger flow of life that is today under grave threat. Moving among worlds is not merely a scholarly endeavor. In this sense a synonym for anthropologist is yachak, or ‘knower’, which is the Quichua word the humans I work with use for shaman. Giving life to these other kinds of concepts involves understanding thoughts from one world in terms of those from another with a view to grasping the emergent concepts that might unite these thoughts as one. Our attempts to grapple with what we learn there, as well as how we learn it, can allow us to capacitate other kinds of concepts, perhaps even, as Manari Ushigua, my Sapara colleague suggests, other kinds of gods. Learning to listen to these other kinds of others has forced me to divest myself of some of the human trappings that equip me and to thus travel beyond the schemas through which I normally think.ĭespite the fact that its theories are fashioned almost entirely from our human equipment, anthropology, thanks to its immersive method, is a vocation that can uniquely open us to the worlds these other kinds of beings inhabit. Working as I do in and around Indigenous communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon threatened by the destruction of ecologies - of relational worlds - these more-than-human beings include plants, animals, and even, and perhaps especially, spirits. Perhaps today our vocation’s name might feel a bit outdated given that our task to immerse ourselves can take us to fields where not all of the beings we encounter are of the anthropic sort.
#Living earth near me skin#
Garbed in the flesh and skin I’ve come equipped with, protected by my words and the stories I weave together with them, I take these tools that make me human into the world we call ‘the field’.
![living earth near me living earth near me](https://frugalreality.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/17-Best-Places-to-Get-Free-or-Cheap-Haircuts-Near-Me-1.png)
My job is to immerse myself ethnographically, to chart relations, and to find new ways to listen. © Eduardo Kohn, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Introduction