Mario Blaser | Memorial University of Newfoundland (original) (raw)

Books by Mario Blaser

Sea en los debates académicos o en las noticias, se nos recuerda constantemente que el mundo enfr... more Sea en los debates académicos o en las noticias, se nos recuerda constantemente que el mundo enfrenta retos trascendentales, efectos de un mundo común globalizado donde las infraestructuras de desplazamiento (de mercancías, ideas, gente) proliferan constantemente alimentadas por el extractivismo. Sin embargo, cuando se discute cómo enfrentar esos retos, parece que la única respuesta consiste en nuevas formas de extractivismo y más infraestructuras de desplazamiento. Este libro es, sobre todo, una invitación a explorar el terreno en el que puede prosperar una imaginación política que abrace lo incomún y cultive el emplazamiento. Plantea un reto: cómo, en un contexto donde para muchos las infraestructuras de desplazamiento son todo lo que hay, se pueden generar infraestructuras de emplazamiento robustas. Este reto no consiste en solidarizarse con una minoría amenazada por el avance de la frontera extractivista “allá”; más bien, se trata de imaginar una buena vida “aquí” que no se base en las infraestructuras de desplazamiento de las que muchos de nosotros dependemos (y que incluso amamos). El reto del libro es embarcarse en un viaje “para dejar de ser lo que somos”. Combinando las intuiciones extraídas de su experiencia etnográfica de décadas en las "fronteras del extractivismo" (en Sudamérica y el subártico canadiense) y discusiones que han reformulado la pregunta política fundamental como una cuestión cosmopolítica, el autor ofrece una ontología política en la que historias y visiones de una buena vida con orientaciones escalares divergentes ayudan a establecer las coordenadas del viaje y a visualizar algunos de los desafíos que una política orientada a lo incomún debe afrontar para prosperar.

AVAILABLE AT: http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=738DEE9979AE76FF1D5FFDC45C5B261D For more... more AVAILABLE AT:
http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=738DEE9979AE76FF1D5FFDC45C5B261D

For more than fifteen years, Mario Blaser has been involved with the Yshiro people of the Paraguayan Chaco as they have sought to maintain their world in the face of conservation and development programs promoted by the state and various nongovernmental organizations. In this ethnography of the encounter between modernizing visions of development, the place-based “life projects” of the Yshiro, and the agendas of scholars and activists, Blaser argues for an understanding of the political mobilization of the Yshiro and other indigenous peoples as part of a struggle to make the global age hospitable to a “pluriverse” containing multiple worlds or realities. As he explains, most knowledge about the Yshiro produced by non-indigenous “experts” has been based on modern Cartesian dualisms separating subject and object, mind and body, and nature and culture. Such thinking differs profoundly from the relational ontology enacted by the Yshiro and other indigenous peoples. Attentive to people’s unique experiences of place and self, the Yshiro reject universal knowledge claims, unlike Western modernity, which assumes the existence of a universal reality and refuses the existence of other ontologies or realities. In Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond, Blaser engages in storytelling as a knowledge practice grounded in a relational ontology and attuned to the ongoing struggle for a pluriversal globality.

Authored as a result of a remarkable collaboration between indigenous people's own leaders, other... more Authored as a result of a remarkable collaboration between indigenous people's own leaders, other social activists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this volume explores what is happening today to indigenous peoples as they are enmeshed, almost inevitably, in the remorseless expansion of the modern economy and development, at the behest of the pressures of the market-place and government. It is particularly timely, given the rise in criticism of free market capitalism generally, as well as of development. The volume seeks to capture the complex, power-laden, often contradictory features of indigenous agency and relationships. It shows how peoples do not just resist or react to the pressures of market and state, but also initiate and sustain "life projects" of their own which embody local history and incorporate plans to improve their social and economic ways of living.

he passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 focused attention on... more he passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 focused attention on the ways in which Indigenous peoples are adapting to the pressures of globalization and development. This volume extends the discussion by presenting case studies from around the world that explore how Indigenous peoples are engaging with and challenging globalization and Western views of autonomy. Taken together, these insightful studies reveal that concepts such as globalization and autonomy neither encapsulate nor explain Indigenous peoples’ experiences.

Published Papers and Chapters by Mario Blaser

Runa. Archivo para las Ciencias del Hombre, 43(3), número especial, 545-558., 2022

This dialogue with Mario Blaser traces his trajectory from Argentina to Canada, in which he revis... more This dialogue with Mario Blaser traces his trajectory from Argentina to Canada, in which he revisits one of his first articles that was published by the journal Runa. Archivo para las ciencias del hombre. Despite the culturalist perspective that dominated Argentine Anthropology at the beginning of the nineties, and

The environmental crises referenced by the term Anthropocene incite responses that reflect differ... more The environmental crises referenced by the term Anthropocene incite responses that reflect different understandings about the right way to live on Earth. This, one would expect, should generate a proliferation of disagreements and an expansion of politics. Yet, so-called post-political authors warn that, instead, the way in which the Anthropocene has been brought to the public eye implies an emptying out of politics and a disavowal of the inherently conflictive pursuit of different visions about the right way to live on Earth. To counter this, they propose that the problematic of the Anthropocene needs to be displaced onto the terrain of the ''properly political.'' In this paper I probe what the ''properly political'' might mean in the context of the Anthropocene.

More than one and less thanmany, has become a refrain to depict the notion of multiplicity. Borro... more More than one and less thanmany, has become a refrain to depict the notion of multiplicity. Borrowed from Mariyln Strathern, Annemarie Mol mobilized the refrain to succinctly capture the complex result of a series of operations that make a variety of practices hold together
as a singular thing. In this article, I seek to explore some
consequences of the proposition that multiplicity can be figured in, at least, two different ways: as diffraction, where the operations of singularization explored by Mol are more easily carried out, and as divergence, where singularization is not necessarily an option. The exploration is part of a larger project to rework the notion of cosmopolitics first proposed by Isabelle Stengers and later taken by
Bruno Latour. Elsewhere I have argued that their conception of cosmopolitics as a project oriented towards the composition of a common world is predominantly informed by the figuration of multiplicity as diffraction, and thus it very much resembles a process of singularization writ large. In this context, foregrounding multiplicity as divergence opens a path to probe the limits of this
conception of cosmopolitics, inquire into the different ways in which multiplicity holds together, and envision alternative forms of cosmopolitics. I organize my exploration around two entities caribou and atîku that, so to speak, occupy the same space at the same time
in terms of bodily presence, albeit dominant common sense would have it that atîku and caribou are two words for the same entity.

This article introduces the term uncommons as a conceptual response to questions that emerged in ... more This article introduces the term uncommons as a
conceptual response to questions that emerged in the context of conflicts around the scale and scope of diverse ‘‘commons’’ that are under threat by extractivism. It introduces the articles for this special issue, which were the result of an invitation to think with the concept of uncommons for a variety of situations.
It is concluded that these articles provide a strong
grounding to think of uncommons as constitutive of the commons, and that ‘‘uncommoning’’ might be crucial for giving shape to solid commons.

Dans cet article, le terme « incommun » est pre´sente´ comme une re´ponse conceptuelle a` des que... more Dans cet article, le terme « incommun » est pre´sente´
comme une re´ponse conceptuelle a` des questions souleve´es dans un contexte de conflits entourant l’e´chelle et l’e´tendue de plusieurs « communs » menace´s par l’extractivisme. Il pre´sente les articles de ce nume´ro spe´cial, soumis en re´ponse a` l’invitation a` re´fle´chir sur le concept des « incommuns » dans des situations varie´es. Il conclut que ces articles constituent un fort ancrage sugge´rant que les incommuns sont constitutifs des communs et que le « faire incommun » pourrait eˆtre crucial
dans la constitution de communs solides.

Anthropologica , 2018

e la version en ingles Is Another Cosmopolitics Possible? CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 31, Issue 4... more e la version en ingles Is Another Cosmopolitics Possible? CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 31, Issue 4, pp. 545–570

"The concept of cosmopolitics developed by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour keeps open the ques... more "The concept of cosmopolitics developed by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour keeps open the question of who and what might compose the common world. In this way, cosmopolitics offers a way to avoid the pitfalls of reasonable politics, a politics that, defining in advance that the differences at stake in a disagreement are between perspectives on a single reality, makes it possible to sideline some concerns by deeming them unrealistic and, therefore, unreasonable or irrelevant. Figuring the common world as its possible result, rather than as a starting point, cosmopolitics disrupts the quick recourse to ruling out concerns on the basis of their ostensible lack of reality. And yet, questions remain as to who and what can participate in the composition of the common world. Exploring these questions through ethnographical materials on a conflict around caribou in Labrador, I argue that a cosmopolitics oriented to the common world has important limitations and that another orientation might be possible as well. [ontological politics; cosmopolitics; alterity; science and tech- nology studies; political ontology; Innu; caribou]"

With Arturo Escobar. In Joni Adamson, William Gleason and David Pellow (Eds.) Keywords in the Stu... more With Arturo Escobar. In Joni Adamson, William Gleason and David Pellow (Eds.) Keywords in the Study of Environment and Culture. New York: New York University Press. PP. 164-167.

Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory (2015) 5(1): 437-475

Contribution to the Hau forum "Anthropology and STS: Generative interfaces, multiple locations." ... more Contribution to the Hau forum "Anthropology and STS: Generative interfaces, multiple locations." (Marisol de la Cadena, Marianne E. Lien, Mario Blaser, Casper Bruun Jensen, Tess Lea, Atsuro Morita, Heather Anne Swanson, Gro B. Ween, Paige West, Margaret J. Wiener).

America Critica, 2020

Esta es una version ligeramente deiferente del capitulo “Notes on the Political Ontology of Envi... more Esta es una version ligeramente deiferente del capitulo “Notes on the Political Ontology of Environmental Conflicts"

on 5 June 2009, a deadly confrontation took place in the Peruvian Amazon between police forces an... more on 5 June 2009, a deadly confrontation took place in the Peruvian Amazon between police forces and a group of protestors mostly composed of indigenous Awaj'un people who had taken control of a highway to protest President Alan Garcia's decrees facilitating the concession of their territories to oil, timber and hydroelectric corporations. Leni, a young Awaj'un leader, explained what motivated his participation in the protests:

Ontological conflicts (conflicts involving different assumptions about "what exists") are gaining... more Ontological conflicts (conflicts involving different assumptions about "what exists") are gaining unprecedented visibility because the hegemony of modern ontological assumptions is undergoing a crisis. Such crisis provides the context and rationale for political ontology, a "project" that, emerging from the convergence of indigenous studies, science and technology studies (STS), posthumanism, and political ecology, tackles ontological conflicts as a politicoconceptual (one word) problem. Why? First, because in order to even consider ontological conflicts as a possibility, one must question some of the most profoundly established assumptions in the social sciences, for instance, the assumptions that we are all modern and that the differences that exist are between cultural perspectives on one single reality "out there." This rules out the possibility of multiple ontologies and what is properly an ontological conflict (i.e., a conflict between different realities). Second, because ontological conflicts pose the challenge of how to account for them without reiterating (and reenacting) the ontological assumption of a reality "out there" being described. To tackle this politicoconceptual problem, I discuss the notion of an all-encompassing modernity and its effects, present the political ontology project, and offer a story of the present moment where the project makes sense.

Sea en los debates académicos o en las noticias, se nos recuerda constantemente que el mundo enfr... more Sea en los debates académicos o en las noticias, se nos recuerda constantemente que el mundo enfrenta retos trascendentales, efectos de un mundo común globalizado donde las infraestructuras de desplazamiento (de mercancías, ideas, gente) proliferan constantemente alimentadas por el extractivismo. Sin embargo, cuando se discute cómo enfrentar esos retos, parece que la única respuesta consiste en nuevas formas de extractivismo y más infraestructuras de desplazamiento. Este libro es, sobre todo, una invitación a explorar el terreno en el que puede prosperar una imaginación política que abrace lo incomún y cultive el emplazamiento. Plantea un reto: cómo, en un contexto donde para muchos las infraestructuras de desplazamiento son todo lo que hay, se pueden generar infraestructuras de emplazamiento robustas. Este reto no consiste en solidarizarse con una minoría amenazada por el avance de la frontera extractivista “allá”; más bien, se trata de imaginar una buena vida “aquí” que no se base en las infraestructuras de desplazamiento de las que muchos de nosotros dependemos (y que incluso amamos). El reto del libro es embarcarse en un viaje “para dejar de ser lo que somos”. Combinando las intuiciones extraídas de su experiencia etnográfica de décadas en las "fronteras del extractivismo" (en Sudamérica y el subártico canadiense) y discusiones que han reformulado la pregunta política fundamental como una cuestión cosmopolítica, el autor ofrece una ontología política en la que historias y visiones de una buena vida con orientaciones escalares divergentes ayudan a establecer las coordenadas del viaje y a visualizar algunos de los desafíos que una política orientada a lo incomún debe afrontar para prosperar.

AVAILABLE AT: http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=738DEE9979AE76FF1D5FFDC45C5B261D For more... more AVAILABLE AT:
http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=738DEE9979AE76FF1D5FFDC45C5B261D

For more than fifteen years, Mario Blaser has been involved with the Yshiro people of the Paraguayan Chaco as they have sought to maintain their world in the face of conservation and development programs promoted by the state and various nongovernmental organizations. In this ethnography of the encounter between modernizing visions of development, the place-based “life projects” of the Yshiro, and the agendas of scholars and activists, Blaser argues for an understanding of the political mobilization of the Yshiro and other indigenous peoples as part of a struggle to make the global age hospitable to a “pluriverse” containing multiple worlds or realities. As he explains, most knowledge about the Yshiro produced by non-indigenous “experts” has been based on modern Cartesian dualisms separating subject and object, mind and body, and nature and culture. Such thinking differs profoundly from the relational ontology enacted by the Yshiro and other indigenous peoples. Attentive to people’s unique experiences of place and self, the Yshiro reject universal knowledge claims, unlike Western modernity, which assumes the existence of a universal reality and refuses the existence of other ontologies or realities. In Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond, Blaser engages in storytelling as a knowledge practice grounded in a relational ontology and attuned to the ongoing struggle for a pluriversal globality.

Authored as a result of a remarkable collaboration between indigenous people's own leaders, other... more Authored as a result of a remarkable collaboration between indigenous people's own leaders, other social activists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this volume explores what is happening today to indigenous peoples as they are enmeshed, almost inevitably, in the remorseless expansion of the modern economy and development, at the behest of the pressures of the market-place and government. It is particularly timely, given the rise in criticism of free market capitalism generally, as well as of development. The volume seeks to capture the complex, power-laden, often contradictory features of indigenous agency and relationships. It shows how peoples do not just resist or react to the pressures of market and state, but also initiate and sustain "life projects" of their own which embody local history and incorporate plans to improve their social and economic ways of living.

he passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 focused attention on... more he passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 focused attention on the ways in which Indigenous peoples are adapting to the pressures of globalization and development. This volume extends the discussion by presenting case studies from around the world that explore how Indigenous peoples are engaging with and challenging globalization and Western views of autonomy. Taken together, these insightful studies reveal that concepts such as globalization and autonomy neither encapsulate nor explain Indigenous peoples’ experiences.

Runa. Archivo para las Ciencias del Hombre, 43(3), número especial, 545-558., 2022

This dialogue with Mario Blaser traces his trajectory from Argentina to Canada, in which he revis... more This dialogue with Mario Blaser traces his trajectory from Argentina to Canada, in which he revisits one of his first articles that was published by the journal Runa. Archivo para las ciencias del hombre. Despite the culturalist perspective that dominated Argentine Anthropology at the beginning of the nineties, and

The environmental crises referenced by the term Anthropocene incite responses that reflect differ... more The environmental crises referenced by the term Anthropocene incite responses that reflect different understandings about the right way to live on Earth. This, one would expect, should generate a proliferation of disagreements and an expansion of politics. Yet, so-called post-political authors warn that, instead, the way in which the Anthropocene has been brought to the public eye implies an emptying out of politics and a disavowal of the inherently conflictive pursuit of different visions about the right way to live on Earth. To counter this, they propose that the problematic of the Anthropocene needs to be displaced onto the terrain of the ''properly political.'' In this paper I probe what the ''properly political'' might mean in the context of the Anthropocene.

More than one and less thanmany, has become a refrain to depict the notion of multiplicity. Borro... more More than one and less thanmany, has become a refrain to depict the notion of multiplicity. Borrowed from Mariyln Strathern, Annemarie Mol mobilized the refrain to succinctly capture the complex result of a series of operations that make a variety of practices hold together
as a singular thing. In this article, I seek to explore some
consequences of the proposition that multiplicity can be figured in, at least, two different ways: as diffraction, where the operations of singularization explored by Mol are more easily carried out, and as divergence, where singularization is not necessarily an option. The exploration is part of a larger project to rework the notion of cosmopolitics first proposed by Isabelle Stengers and later taken by
Bruno Latour. Elsewhere I have argued that their conception of cosmopolitics as a project oriented towards the composition of a common world is predominantly informed by the figuration of multiplicity as diffraction, and thus it very much resembles a process of singularization writ large. In this context, foregrounding multiplicity as divergence opens a path to probe the limits of this
conception of cosmopolitics, inquire into the different ways in which multiplicity holds together, and envision alternative forms of cosmopolitics. I organize my exploration around two entities caribou and atîku that, so to speak, occupy the same space at the same time
in terms of bodily presence, albeit dominant common sense would have it that atîku and caribou are two words for the same entity.

This article introduces the term uncommons as a conceptual response to questions that emerged in ... more This article introduces the term uncommons as a
conceptual response to questions that emerged in the context of conflicts around the scale and scope of diverse ‘‘commons’’ that are under threat by extractivism. It introduces the articles for this special issue, which were the result of an invitation to think with the concept of uncommons for a variety of situations.
It is concluded that these articles provide a strong
grounding to think of uncommons as constitutive of the commons, and that ‘‘uncommoning’’ might be crucial for giving shape to solid commons.

Dans cet article, le terme « incommun » est pre´sente´ comme une re´ponse conceptuelle a` des que... more Dans cet article, le terme « incommun » est pre´sente´
comme une re´ponse conceptuelle a` des questions souleve´es dans un contexte de conflits entourant l’e´chelle et l’e´tendue de plusieurs « communs » menace´s par l’extractivisme. Il pre´sente les articles de ce nume´ro spe´cial, soumis en re´ponse a` l’invitation a` re´fle´chir sur le concept des « incommuns » dans des situations varie´es. Il conclut que ces articles constituent un fort ancrage sugge´rant que les incommuns sont constitutifs des communs et que le « faire incommun » pourrait eˆtre crucial
dans la constitution de communs solides.

Anthropologica , 2018

e la version en ingles Is Another Cosmopolitics Possible? CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 31, Issue 4... more e la version en ingles Is Another Cosmopolitics Possible? CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 31, Issue 4, pp. 545–570

"The concept of cosmopolitics developed by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour keeps open the ques... more "The concept of cosmopolitics developed by Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour keeps open the question of who and what might compose the common world. In this way, cosmopolitics offers a way to avoid the pitfalls of reasonable politics, a politics that, defining in advance that the differences at stake in a disagreement are between perspectives on a single reality, makes it possible to sideline some concerns by deeming them unrealistic and, therefore, unreasonable or irrelevant. Figuring the common world as its possible result, rather than as a starting point, cosmopolitics disrupts the quick recourse to ruling out concerns on the basis of their ostensible lack of reality. And yet, questions remain as to who and what can participate in the composition of the common world. Exploring these questions through ethnographical materials on a conflict around caribou in Labrador, I argue that a cosmopolitics oriented to the common world has important limitations and that another orientation might be possible as well. [ontological politics; cosmopolitics; alterity; science and tech- nology studies; political ontology; Innu; caribou]"

With Arturo Escobar. In Joni Adamson, William Gleason and David Pellow (Eds.) Keywords in the Stu... more With Arturo Escobar. In Joni Adamson, William Gleason and David Pellow (Eds.) Keywords in the Study of Environment and Culture. New York: New York University Press. PP. 164-167.

Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory (2015) 5(1): 437-475

Contribution to the Hau forum "Anthropology and STS: Generative interfaces, multiple locations." ... more Contribution to the Hau forum "Anthropology and STS: Generative interfaces, multiple locations." (Marisol de la Cadena, Marianne E. Lien, Mario Blaser, Casper Bruun Jensen, Tess Lea, Atsuro Morita, Heather Anne Swanson, Gro B. Ween, Paige West, Margaret J. Wiener).

America Critica, 2020

Esta es una version ligeramente deiferente del capitulo “Notes on the Political Ontology of Envi... more Esta es una version ligeramente deiferente del capitulo “Notes on the Political Ontology of Environmental Conflicts"

on 5 June 2009, a deadly confrontation took place in the Peruvian Amazon between police forces an... more on 5 June 2009, a deadly confrontation took place in the Peruvian Amazon between police forces and a group of protestors mostly composed of indigenous Awaj'un people who had taken control of a highway to protest President Alan Garcia's decrees facilitating the concession of their territories to oil, timber and hydroelectric corporations. Leni, a young Awaj'un leader, explained what motivated his participation in the protests:

Ontological conflicts (conflicts involving different assumptions about "what exists") are gaining... more Ontological conflicts (conflicts involving different assumptions about "what exists") are gaining unprecedented visibility because the hegemony of modern ontological assumptions is undergoing a crisis. Such crisis provides the context and rationale for political ontology, a "project" that, emerging from the convergence of indigenous studies, science and technology studies (STS), posthumanism, and political ecology, tackles ontological conflicts as a politicoconceptual (one word) problem. Why? First, because in order to even consider ontological conflicts as a possibility, one must question some of the most profoundly established assumptions in the social sciences, for instance, the assumptions that we are all modern and that the differences that exist are between cultural perspectives on one single reality "out there." This rules out the possibility of multiple ontologies and what is properly an ontological conflict (i.e., a conflict between different realities). Second, because ontological conflicts pose the challenge of how to account for them without reiterating (and reenacting) the ontological assumption of a reality "out there" being described. To tackle this politicoconceptual problem, I discuss the notion of an all-encompassing modernity and its effects, present the political ontology project, and offer a story of the present moment where the project makes sense.

The first challenge faced by a project that seeks to bring concerns with ontology and indigeneity... more The first challenge faced by a project that seeks to bring concerns with ontology and indigeneity into a conversation is to sort out the various (and possibly divergent) projects that are being mobilized when the former term is used, not the least because what do we mean by ontology impinges upon how we can conceive indigeneity. In this article I play a counterpoint between two 'ontological' projects: one in geography, that foregrounds a reality conceived as an alwaysemergent assemblage of human and non-humans and troubles the politics that such assemblages imply. The other in ethnographic theory, that foregrounds that we are not only dealing with a shifting ontology, a (re)animated world, but also with multiple ontologies, a multiplicity of worlds animated in different ways. Thus, if the heterogeneity of always emerging assemblages troubles the political, the very heterogeneity of these heterogeneous assemblages troubles it even more. What kinds of politics and what kinds of knowledges does this troubling demand? I advance the notion of political ontology as a possible venue to explore this question.

American Anthropologist, 2009

Various misunderstandings and conflicts associated with attempts to integrate Indigenous Knowledg... more Various misunderstandings and conflicts associated with attempts to integrate Indigenous Knowledges (IK) into development and conservation agendas have been analyzed from both political economy and political ecology frameworks. With their own particular inflections, and in addition to their focus on issues of power, both frameworks tend to see what occurs in these settings as involving different epistemologies, meaning that misunderstandings and conflicts occur between different and complexly interested perspectives on, or ways of knowing, the world. Analyzing the conflicts surrounding the creation of a hunting program that enrolled the participation of the Yshiro people of Paraguay, in this article I develop a different kind of analysis, one inspired by an emerging framework that I tentatively call "political ontology." I argue that, from this perspective, these kinds of conflicts emerge as being about the continuous enactment, stabilization, and protection of different and asymmetrically connected ontologies. [

En 1999, después de cuatro años de respetar estrictamente una prohibición sobre la caza comercial... more En 1999, después de cuatro años de respetar estrictamente una prohibición sobre la caza comercial, las comunidades Indígenas Yshiro del norte del Paraguay se enteraron que la actividad seria de nuevo permitida bajo la supervisión de la Dirección de Parques Nacionales. A través de su recientemente creada federación, la Unión de las Comunidades Indígenas de la Nación Yshir, los lideres Yshiro requirieron de la Dirección de Parques permisos para cazar carpincho (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), yacaré (caiman sp.), y anaconda (Eunectes notaeus). Al hacer este pedido fueron notificados que, aunque la institución estaba dispuesta a permitir la caza comercial, esta no podía emitir los permisos ya que carecía de los medios necesarios para enviar inspectores que supervisaran la actividad. Siguiendo el consejo dado por la Dirección de Parques, los líderes Yshiro buscaron el apoyo de Prodechaco, un proyecto de desarrollo sustentable financiado por la Unión Europea (UE) en Paraguay y que tenía como beneficiarios a los pueblos Indígenas. Los directivos de Prodechaco aceptaron proveer los medios para que se pudiera realizar la actividad con la condición que la cacería debería ser organizada en forma sustentable, y para que el concepto quedara claro uno de ellos lo explico así: "La población animal se tiene que mantener constante a través de los años. Vos cazas pero asegurándote que siempre van a haber suficientes animales para mañana."

Anthropological Quarterly, 2008

This article explores how the knowledge practices of some academic-intellectuals are shifting in ... more This article explores how the knowledge practices of some academic-intellectuals are shifting in such a way as to signal a radical departure from the "traditional" role that academic-intellectuals have had in Latin America. This re-direction is part of a much larger process, namely, the gradual rejection of the modern project by increasingly larger sectors of the Latin American population, and their ongoing efforts to bring about "worlds and knowledges otherwise." In effect, some of the social movements and patterns of mobilization that have become highly visible in Latin America at the turn of the 21st century are probing the modern project-including established knowledge practices of academic-intellectuals-according to expectations, logics and standards other than the ones that have dominated for the last two centuries or more. In particular, the article suggests how these avenues, once opened by social movements, local intellectuals and other sites of knowledge production regarding the intellectual-political project in Latin America, have productively contaminated the dominant regime The "Lettered City" and the Insurrection of Subjugated Knowledges in Latin America 60 of power/knowledge (the "lettered city") that has been in place since colonial times. A focus on three cases where this contamination is currently taking place points to possible directions in which a reconfiguration of the dominant regime of power/knowledge might proceed. These developments include the relative equalization of diverse knowledge practices through the proliferation of sites of encounter between them, but also a disposition to allow for the contamination of academic-intellectuals' knowledge practices by the insurrectional movements' non-modern knowledge practices.

In the way of development: indigenous peoples, life …, 2004

Single Reviews 547 purportedly nonfiction. Chapter 4 explores the political capital that men garn... more Single Reviews 547 purportedly nonfiction. Chapter 4 explores the political capital that men garner through demonstrating kin ties with cholas, women who wear polleras and are understood to mediate access to traditional homes, farms, markets, chicherías, and fiestas, all spaces of cultural intimacy (p. 25). By claiming ancestry to these iconic women, men whose lives do not look "Indian" strive to legitimate their "humble" and indigenous backgrounds (p. 86). It is rewarding here to see gender and kinship analyzed via interactions, logical connections, and synergies among parts of a system, in contrast to a too-frequent focus on characterizing one part (i.e., women, lineage).

Wamon, 2022

Resumo: As crises ambientais referenciadas pelo termo Antropoceno incitam respostas que refletem ... more Resumo: As crises ambientais referenciadas pelo termo Antropoceno incitam respostas que refletem diferentes entendimentos sobre a forma correta de se viver na Terra. Isso, seria de se esperar, deveria gerar uma proliferação de desentendimentos e uma expansão da política. No entanto, os chamados autores pós-políticos alertam que, em vez disso, a maneira como o Antropoceno foi trazido aos olhos do público implica um esvaziamento da política e uma negação da busca inerentemente conflituosa de diferentes visões sobre a maneira certa de se viver na Terra. Para fazer frente isso, eles propõem que a problemática do Antropoceno precisa ser deslocada para o terreno do "propriamente político". Neste artigo, exploro o que o "propriamente político" poderia significar no contexto do Antropoceno. Palavras-chave: ontologia; pós-política; Antropoceno; povos indígenas.

Berliner Blatter , 2023

This supplement contains Mario Blaser's response to the concepts of Political Ontology and Practi... more This supplement contains Mario Blaser's response to the concepts of Political Ontology and Practical Ontology as discussed by Casper Bruun Jensen in his paper »Practical Ontologies Redux«. The paper was published in Berliner Blätter (issue 84) in 2021, edited by Michaela Meurer and Kathrin Eitel. Additionally, this supplement includes a response by Jensen addressing Blaser's critique.

Memorias qom de la violencia y el poder desde la conquista del Chaco hasta nuestros días

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2015

Contribution to the Hau forum "Anthropology and STS: Generative interfaces, multiple loc... more Contribution to the Hau forum "Anthropology and STS: Generative interfaces, multiple locations." (Marisol de la Cadena, Marianne E. Lien, Mario Blaser, Casper Bruun Jensen, Tess Lea, Atsuro Morita, Heather Anne Swanson, Gro B. Ween, Paige West, Margaret J. Wiener).