Animal Transference and Transformation Among Wounaan

Runk, Julie Velásquez; Ismare, Chindío Peña; Conquista, Toño Peña

doi:10.1111/jlca.12389

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 32 publications

(42 reference statements)

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“…This scholarship has also faced criticism, with many highlighting the dangers of approaching ontology apolitically and ahistorically (Bessire and Bond, 2014;Hunt, 2014;Ramos, 2012;Sundberg, 2014;Vela´squez Runk et al, 2019). While some have pushed back against the "ontological" framing, considering it simply another term for cultural relativism (Graeber, 2015;Heywood, 2012), others recognize its value but question any clear division between epistemology and ontology (Burman, 2017;Sullivan, 2017), arguing that concepts like onto-epistemology (Barad, 2007) and Place-Thought (Watts, 2013) better capture the entangled, recursive relationship between ways of knowing and ways of being.…”

Section: Ontology and Environmental Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental governance: Broadening ontological spaces for a more livable world

Depuy

Weger

Foster

et al. 2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This paper contributes to global debates on environmental governance by drawing on recent ontological scholarship to ask: What would it mean to ontologically engage the concept of environmental governance? By examining the ontological underpinnings of three environmental governance domains (land, water, biodiversity), we find that dominant contemporary environmental governance concepts and policy instruments are grounded in a modernist ontology which actively shapes the world, making certain aspects and relationships visible while invisibilizing others. We then survey ethnographic and other literature to highlight how such categories and their relations have been conceived otherwise and the implications of breaking out of a modernist ontology for environmental governance. Lastly, we argue that answering our opening question requires confronting the coloniality woven into the environmental governance project and consider how to instead embrace ontological pluralism in practice. In particular, we examine what taking seriously the right to self-determination enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) could mean for acknowledging Indigenous ontologies as systems of governance in their own right; what challenges and opportunities exist for recognizing and translating ontologies across socio-legal regimes; and how embracing the dynamism and hybridity of ontologies might complicate or advance struggles for material and cognitive justice.

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Section: Ontology and Environmental Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental governance: Broadening ontological spaces for a more livable world

Depuy

Weger

Foster

et al. 2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…However, as previously pointed out by Saxena et al (2018), the relational values approach has yet to draw in earnest from anthropological literature that moves beyond multiple ways of knowing the world (epistemology), to take seriously the existence of different ontologies (i.e., "different ways of understanding how reality is constructed, " Sullivan 2017:224). The anthropology literature on ontologies is highly varied and a full review is beyond our present scope (see for instance Descola 2013, Holbraad and Pedersen 2017, Velásquez Runk et al 2019. However, especially relevant to the discussion of the need for pluralistic valuation is the work of critical scholars that has focused on multiple ontologies to highlight how certain understandings of the world can become privileged over others (Blaser 2013, Escobar 2017.…”

Section: Cultural Ecosystem Services (Ces) and Relational Valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

"People should also look after the people": relational values of wildlife and collectively titled land in Ilkisongo Maasai group ranches in Southern Kenya

Unks¹,

Goldman²,

Mialhe³

et al. 2021

E&S

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Categorically distinct instrumental values and non-instrumental "cultural" values of "nature" are central to ecosystem services assessments and many wildlife conservation interventions alike. However, this approach to understanding the value of nature is at odds with social scientific understandings that see value as produced through social-ecological relations and processes. With a case study of Ilkisongo Maasai land users living in group ranches surrounding Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya, we apply a relational values approach to highlight the processes of valuation that shape how different people within Maasai society come to have different shared values of wildlife and collectively titled land. First, we detail how wildlife conservation efforts in Amboseli have affected social relations through uneven conservation decision-making processes and unequal distribution of benefits from conservation. Second, we detail how conservation practices have directly influenced changing relationships between people and wildlife. Neglect of elders' common stances on how relations "ought" to be maintained (both human-human and human-nonhuman relations), and many Maasai residents' views of the "ownership" of wildlife by a minority have both fueled resentment. We show that an ironic, unintended outcome is that conservation projects, which are intended to increase the "value" of wildlife for local people as a way to foster "coexistence" of people and wildlife on collectively titled lands, are instead contributing to an increased desire by some Maasai for wildlife to be spatially separated from people and livestock. Simultaneously, current conservation projects do not build upon practices that in Maasai views, enabled historical sharing of land with wildlife. Inequality and lack of participation have been highlighted as key limitations of many community-based conservation and human-wildlife conflict mitigation initiatives. We instead focus on how wildlife conservation interventions have contributed to changing human-human and human-nonhuman relations and have in turn impacted long-term Maasai perceptions of wildlife. We argue that an expanded consideration of relational values that emphasizes the inseparability of culture and nature, but also includes a central consideration of power dynamics, might overcome some limitations of previous valuation approaches.

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“…Dorindo Membora Peña, September 2021. "We consider the tradition of p'oo n2m W to be almost extinct in Panama" (Velásquez Runk et al 2019a).…”

Section: Temporalities Of the Past In This Storyworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wounaan Storying as Intervention: Storywork in the Crafting of a Multimodal Illustrated Story Book on People and Birds

et al. 2021

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A growing body of scholarship addresses what Indigenous peoples have always known: stories are critically important to who we are and how to be in the world. For Wounaan, an Indigenous people of Panama and Colombia, ancestors’ stories are no longer frequently told. As part of the Wounaan Podpa Nʌm Pömaam (National Wounaan Congress) and Foundation for the Development of Wounaan People’s project on bird guiding, birds and culture, and forest restoration in Panama, we leveraged the publication requirement as political intervention and anticolonial practice in storying worlds. This article is the story of our storying, the telling and crafting of an illustrated story book that honors Wounaan convivial lifeworlds, Wounaan chain döhigaau nemchaain hoo wënʌʌrrajim/Los niños wounaan, en sus aventuras vieron muchas aves/The Adventures of Wounaan Children and Many Birds. Here, we have used video conference minutes and recordings, voice and text messages, emails, recollections, and a conference co-presentation to show stories as Indigenous method and reality, as epistemological and ontological. We use a narrative form to weave together our collaborative process and polish the many storying decisions on relationality, time, egalitarianism, movement, rivers, embodiment, and verbal poetics through an everyday adventure of siblings and birds. Available as a multimodal illustrated story book in digital audio and print, we conclude by advocating for new media to further storying Indigenous lifeworlds.

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Animal Transference and Transformation Among Wounaan

Cited by 7 publications

References 32 publications

Environmental governance: Broadening ontological spaces for a more livable world

Environmental governance: Broadening ontological spaces for a more livable world

"People should also look after the people": relational values of wildlife and collectively titled land in Ilkisongo Maasai group ranches in Southern Kenya

Wounaan Storying as Intervention: Storywork in the Crafting of a Multimodal Illustrated Story Book on People and Birds

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