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Introduction
Alejandro Martín López currently works at the Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, National Scientific and Technical Research Council. Alejandro does research in Ethnoastronomy, Anthropology of Religion, Historical Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology. One of their most recent publication is 'The Chaco Skies: A Socio-cultural History of Power Relations'.
Additional affiliations
September 2009 - present
Education
January 2007 - June 2009
March 2001 - November 2007
Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
Field of study
- Anthropology
January 1999 - December 2000
Instituto Superior de Formación Docente N° 21
Field of study
- Post-title in Education
Publications
Publications (53)
In the past, Western academic astronomy has conceived in a very specific way its interests. However, in recent decades there has been a promising openness to the rest of the society, in the context of areas such as education, heritage and outreach. Despite this, there has not been an adequate scientific approach to do it, which would imply taking i...
Some people talk about "astronomy" (the academic Western
one) and "cultural astronomies" (the astronomies of "particular"
cultures). This is a profound misunderstanding of the legacy of
three decades of cultural astronomy studies. In this presentation
we aim to discuss this confusion and to point out the contributions
of cultural astronomy studies...
This paper seeks to discuss the way in which discourses and practices on tangible and intangible heritage, national and provincial matrices of otherness and tourism, affect the dynamics of sociocultural change in the Southwest of the Argentine Chaco. To do so, we propose to analyze the case of Campo del Cielo, an extensive area of meteoric dispersi...
Western academic astronomy, based on a worldview that assumes the separation between nature/culture/super-nature, understands the events of the celestial space as ‘astronomical phenomena’. This leads Western science to think in terms of phenomena, laws and ‘physical interactions’. When we approach the conceptions of the sky of other cultures throug...
In line with worldwide debates on phenomena such as Flat Earth Movement, in the
field of natural sciences in Argentina -especially astronomy and physics- a great
concern arose for what is described by many academics of these disciplines as a
"growth of pseudosciences ". This occurred in a specific economic and political
context, which included a de...
SEACTeach was initiated in 2021 in order to make good learning material about cultural astronomy more easily accessible. Several SEAC members and colleagues from sister associations such as ISAAC or SIAC are in the process of creating a series of teaching videos which will be available free of charge. This paper summarises the state of the project...
The interdisciplinary field of cultural astronomy, with its diverse academic trajectories, has often been characterized by unsystematic, ambiguous, and even common-sense applications of the categories of symbol, sign, and index. In this article, our primary objective is twofold: firstly, to provide an overview of the academic traditions surrounding...
El trabajo presenta un análisis de los primeros 40 años de la presencia menonita en Argentina, centrándose en la Mennonite Church y explorando las relaciones entre dinámicas religiosas y políticas locales y globales. Mediante el análisis antropológico de un extenso corpus documental se exploran sus actitudes, intereses y preocupaciones, y su relaci...
Lead author Steven Gullberg reports with colleagues on a new joint initiative to acknowledge and respect Indigenous sensitivities where observatories have been built upon sacred grounds
Este libro apuesta a pluralizar el campo de estudios antropológicos sobre las dimensiones socioculturales de los cristianismos latinoamericanos. De manera particular, los autores se interesan por repensar críticamente la propuesta teórica de una ‘antropología del cristianismo’ para comprender las configuraciones religiosas latinoamericanas, así com...
A partir de trabajo de campo propio y del uso de etnografías previas, nos proponemos abordar el análisis de una narrativa central –por su carácter “englobante”- para los moqoit del Chaco argentino, con importantes conexiones con sus concepciones del espacio celeste: “Los hermanitos perdidos”. Mostraremos la flexibilidad constitutiva de este tipo de...
The Milky Way is a feature of the night sky that has had cosmological significance in many cultures around the world at different times. Many works, especially in South America and Australia (e.g. Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978; Urton 1981a, 2016 [1987]; Hugh-Jones 1982; Giménez Benítez et al. 2002; López and Giménez Benítez 2008; Roberts 2015), have drawn...
This work is an attempt to introduce a comparison of the deep logics articulating cosmovisions
and cosmologies among indigenous groups in the Lowlands of South America. We are
particularly interested in describing the current state and recent past of these knowledge systems,
but also connecting them to the distant past. We seek to leave aside an an...
Este libro apuesta a pluralizar el campo de estudios antropológicos sobre las dimensiones socioculturales de los cristianismos latinoamericanos. De manera particular, los autores se interesan por repensar críticamente la propuesta teórica de una ‘antropología del cristianismo’ para comprender las configuraciones religiosas latinoamericanas, así com...
López, Alejandro M., 2021 "Cosmovisión y cosmología. Fundamentos histórico-metodológicos para un uso articulado". Cosmovisiones/Cosmovisões 3 (1): 65-115.
This article addresses two of the most frequently used concepts in cultural
astronomy: worldview and cosmology. Despite their importance, there are few
studies (Iwaniszewski 2009a; 2009b; 2010;...
Abstract:
In this paper we aim to address some Jesuit’s testimonies of the eighteenth-century about the conceptions of atmospheric phenomena from the guaycurú Argentinian Chaco Aboriginal hunter-gatherers. We do this by using a contemporary ethnography perspective as a conceptual model. Our work aims to show that atmospheric phenomena relevant for...
When Mennonite missionaries first arrived in Argentina in the early twentieth century the primary targets of their outreach were already Christian—that is, Catholics. Like most Protestant missionaries of the time, however, Mennonites regarded the religion they encountered as a “Catholic-pagan” syncretism, badly in need of the gospel. These prejudic...
Life under the starry sky is a collection of papers covering much of the most recent research in Latin American cultural astronomy. The contributors explore the astronomical knowledge and beliefs of Native American peoples, their importance for daily affairs, and reconstruct ancient calendrical and astronomical computations. This book is of particu...
Este dossier: "Experiencias humanas entre el cielo y la tierra", coordinado por Cristina Fargetti y quien escribe-Alejandro López-, ha sido posible gracias al impulso de Ana Cecilia Gerrard y el Comité Editorial de la Revista Avá, a quienes queremos agradecer profundamente. No habríamos podido siquiera imaginarlo sin el entusiasmo de Ana Gorosito K...
ABSTRACT
The present paper analyzes, from the example of the moqoit of
the Argentine Chaco, the methodological precautions that must
be taken at the time of using the concept of "astronomical
observation" when dealing with diverse socio-cultural contexts.
The common sense of academic astronomy often takes for
granted the framework of meaning that...
Astronomy in culture, as an interdisciplinary field, addresses the ways in which the diversity of human groups construct, now and in the past, knowledge and practices related to the sky. Because of this, astronomy in culture should be in close relationship with theoretical-methodological debates in social sciences. That is why this book is relevant...
Cultures around the world find meaning in the shapes of stars and features in the Milky Way. The striking appearance of our galaxy in the night sky serves as a reference to traditional knowledge, encoding science and culture to a memory space, becoming part of their overarching cosmologies. This paper examines traditional views of the Milky Way fro...
Many cultures have been fascinated with the Milky Way. The striking appearance of our galaxy in the night sky captivated them and imagined images became part of their cosmologies. This is examined with an emphasis on cultures of the Southern Hemisphere that embraced dark constellations-those made up of the dark dust lanes in the Milky Way rather th...
The contemporary world is strongly shaped by the complex links between the local and the global in the present phase of capitalism. This scenario is essential for understanding cultural dynamics, including those that are of main interest for cultural astronomy. Nevertheless, the special epistemic status that is usually assigned to academic astronom...
El presente trabajo analiza las negociaciones que se dan en espacios de práctica de Aikido ubicados en el Gran Buenos Aires en torno al saludo a la foto de Ō-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, fundador de este arte marcial japonés. Dado el carácter fuertemente no verbal de la práctica del Aikido nos enfocamos en la forma en que se construyen las experiencias...
The Jesuit order had an intense missionary activity in America during the colonial period. In particular, from the sixteenth century until their expulsion in 1767 they carried out an extensive and well-known work among the Guarani groups, in what became known as the Jesuit Province of Paraguay (now part of Argenti-na, Paraguay and Brazil). The larg...
El presente trabajo analiza las negociaciones que se dan en espacios de práctica de Aikido ubicados en el Gran Buenos Aires en torno al saludo a la foto de Ō-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, fundador de este arte marcial japonés. Dado el carácter fuertemente no verbal de la práctica del Aikido nos enfocamos en la forma en que se construyen las experiencias...
El cielo y sus fenómenos han constituido un área de gran interés para muchas culturas en todo el planeta a través del tiempo. En la cultura occidental, desde la revolución copernicana, la astronomía se ha convertido en un modelo para toda la ciencia. Debido a la expansión colonial de la sociedad de occidente su astronomía académica se enseña hoy en...
Cultural astronomy perspectives on “development” - Volume 14 Symposium - Alejandro Martín López
ABSTRACT:
This article looks into notions of the sky among the Guaycurú aboriginal groups in the Argentine Chaco within the context of the socio-religious changes they have undergone since the eighteenth century. By using ethno-astronomy and anthropology of religion perspectives, and based on our own ethnographic and documentary work, we have anal...
p>No resumen
Revista Ciencia y Tecnología No.19, diciembre 2016, p.11-20</p
RESUMEN
El siguiente trabajo aborda, a partir de trabajo de campo etnográfico y sobre
fuentes documentales, la forma en que el concepto de seña (netanec) es
central para entender los modos en que los moqoit (mocovíes en castellano)
del Chaco argentino practican una verdadera cosmo-política. Esta define su
modo de habitar un mundo que a su entender...
Los trabajos reunidos en este volumen, corresponden a las clases que dieron los autores durante la Primera Escuela Interamericana de Astronomía Cultural. La misma tuvo lugar en Noviembre de 2012 en la Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas de la Universidad Nacional de la Plata (Argentina).
Resumen : El objetivo de este trabajo es explorar el rol de las mujeres misioneras menonitas en Argentina desde su arribo al país en 1917 hasta la década de 1960. Los menonitas forman parte de los cristianos anabaptistas surgidos en el siglo XVI, en el marco de los movimientos de reforma radical. Producto de persecuciones migraron a Europa oriental...
In this presentation we address issues relating to the astronomical heritage of contemporary aboriginal groups and other minorities. We deal specially with intangible astronomical heritage and its particularities. Also, we study (from ethnographic experience with Aboriginal groups, Creoles and Europeans in the Argentine Chaco) the conflicts referri...
In this chapter, we discuss the methodological aspects of cultural astronomy in the context of the interactions between indigenous groups and colonial powers. We seek to show the importance of relationships and flows in order to understand the production of sky’s representations and practices in these contexts.
Beyond this particular goal, our work...
In this chapter, on the basis that ethnoastronomy deals with social facts, we discuss key concepts that should be problematized in ethnoastronomical studies. We deal with the denaturalization of categories such as ethnicity, identity, territory, culture, body, cosmovision, and cosmology, using contemporary ideas about these issues in the social sci...
Using the example of our own work about astronomies in the Argentinian Chaco, we show the fruitfulness of a regional approach to ethnoastronomical studies. Our interest is to highlight the relevance of thinking the astronomical systems from a dynamic and historical point of view. These systems of representations and practices about the sky are the...
Esta es la introducción al libro "DIFERENTES POVOS, DIFERENTES CÉUS E SABERES NAS AMÉRICAS: CONTRIBUIÇÕES DA ASTRONOMIA CULTURAL PARA A HISTÓRIA DA CIÊNCIA" editado en 2015 por Luiz Borges en Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Se trata de las actas de las Primeras Joranadas Interamericanas de Astronomía Cultural, celebradas en Quito, Ecuador, en 2013.
Resumen: El presente trabajo analiza un nuevo modelo de misión evangélica que se ha hecho presente en el Chaco argentino en los últimos quince años: la misión transcultural. A través del estudio de textos para la formación de misioneros y de las prácticas de una organización argentina: el Centro de Capacitación Misione-ra Transcultural (CCMT), disc...
El presente trabajo es una exploracion etnografica sobre el rol del silencio y el sonido en la practica del aikido y de las formas en que ambos se construyen en un proceso dialectico con los usos del cuerpo y el espacio. El aikido forma parte de un conjunto de artes de combate surgidas en el Japon de la era Meiji, que buscaron transformar las antig...
Resumen El presente trabajo tiene por objetivo abordar la mirada sobre el catolicismo que construyeron los primeros menonitas establecidos en Argentina, entre su llegada al país en 1917 y el comienzo del Concilio Vaticano II en 1962. Para ello, utilizaremos los escritos personales de diversos miembros de la Iglesia Menonita, incluyendo sus análisis...
This paper is an ethnographic exploration about the role of silence and sound in the practice of aikido. We discuss the ways in which both are built on a dialectical process with the use of the body and space. Aikido is part of a set of combat arts that emerged in Japan during the Meiji's era. These Meiji's martial arts tried to transform the ancie...
Christian missions in America not only have pursued the conversion of `the other´, but also have tempted the conversion of the church itself, in a sort of utopian return of Christianity to its roots.
Several evangelical denominations arrived to the Argentine Chaco in the first half of the XX century. Their interaction with the indians of the region...
We present some methodological reflections based upon twelve years' experience working in South American ethnoastronomy. The aim is to propose a basis for a possible development plan for ethnoastronomy in this region. Taking as axiomatic that ethnoastronomy is a social science, we discuss issues such as the process of development of an academic dis...
In this paper we discuss the contemporary production of cosmological discourse, especially that concerning celestial space, among the aboriginal Toba and Mocoví communities of the Argentinian Chaco. Cosmology remains essential for Tobas and Mocovís at the present time. However, we shall demonstrate the importance of the emergence of new producers o...
From the establishment of Jesuit missions in the Argentine province of Chaco in the 18th century to nowadays the systems of measurement and counting of the Mocovi (who live on the territory of the Argentine Republic) have been influenced by the West. Ruptures and continuities in the interaction between two conceptions of measurement and quantificat...