Technique, power, transformation: views from Brazilian anthropology

Abstract

The article presents contemporary approaches to the anthropology of technique, its theoretical-methodological specificities and the form in which it is expressed in Brazil today, exemplified through the set of ethnographies making up this dossier. Exploring different types of transformations, these articles raise questions concerning the relationship between technique and power, involving environments and territories, plants and animals, objects and skills. In seeking to overcome the limitations of the nature/culture dichotomy and its derivatives, technique-based approaches have turned to ethnographically grounded solutions that move beyond discourse and avoid the collapse into other ethnocentrisms, expressed in a total symmetrisation or in the mere projection of human properties to non-humans.