Abstract

CRUZADA, Santiago M.. We are also indigenous: the vulnerability of naturalism in western contexts of interspecies coexistence. Etnográfica [online]. 2017, vol.21, n.1, pp.49-71. ISSN 0873-6561.

Many environmental studies in the anthropolo­gical discipline assume that naturalism is a characteristic ontology of western society through which a border is drawn between nature and society or that separates human beings from animals. This theoretical model is based on the conception of a shared nature, unified and unrelated to the human will, on which different cultural forms of understanding it are applied. In contrast, monistic paradigms of ecological relations have been set up in other parts of the world, serving the naturalism as a basis for constructing alternative explanations of how non-western societies relate to the environment. However, such a cosmological assignment entails a socio-environmental reflection in the West, reinforcing the western/non-western disjunction while enclosing the analysis of the creative generation of non-dichotomous worlds in western societies. This article problematizes these assumptions through an example from the fieldwork in the southwest of Extremadura (Spain), establishing a theoretical starting point for the debate under the idea of an “anthropology of coexistence” that ethnographically encompasses and comprehends the relationships among different beings that inhabit the environment beyond a stereotyped contextual circumscription.

Keywords : epistemology; environment; naturalism; ontology; ethnography; interspecies coexistence.

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