Marisol de la Cadena’s research while affiliated with University of California, Davis and other places

An original essay collection that explores the generative dimensions of fragility, which can help reveal new life-affirming politics and ethics. At a time when it may be easy to fall into a defeatist melancholia, if not outright pessimism, fragility offers an opportunity for a different kind of world-making. In Fragilities, Fernando Domínguez Rubio, Jérôme Denis, and David Pontille argue that we need to pay attention to the moments when the bodies, things, and worlds we inhabit begin to crack and reveal their fragility; it is in these instabilities that we can gain precious access to alternative ways of being. The essays in this collection explore how the work of care, maintenance, and repair compose with, rather than struggle against, fragilities. Fragility forces us to reckon with the precariousness and contingency of life and to use this reckoning as a starting point to build and nurture life-affirming politics and ethics. The book explores fragility in four categories—bodies, environments, labor, and politics—and proposes to consider in each situation what/who is rendered visible, what/who is made absent, what is considered normal, and what is deemed strong and stable versus what is deemed fragile. The volume includes a strong line-up of leading and emerging scholars from a wide array of disciplines, including anthropology, social studies of science, disabilities studies, and sociology.

Experimenting with Ethnography collects twenty-one essays that open new paths for doing ethnographic analysis. The contributors—who come from a variety of intellectual and methodological traditions—enliven analysis by refusing to take it as an abstract, disembodied exercise. Rather, they frame it as a concrete mode of action and a creative practice. Encompassing topics ranging from language and the body to technology and modes of collaboration, the essays invite readers to focus on the imaginative work that needs to be performed prior to completing an argument. Whether exchanging objects, showing how to use drawn images as a way to analyze data, or working with smartphones, sound recordings, and social media as analytic devices, the contributors explore the deliberate processes for pursuing experimental thinking through ethnography. Practical and broad in theoretical scope, Experimenting with Ethnography is an indispensable companion for all ethnographers. Contributors. Patricia Alvarez Astacio, Andrea Ballestero, Ivan da Costa Marques, Steffen Dalsgaard, Endre Dányi, Marisol de la Cadena, Marianne de Laet, Carolina Domínguez Guzmán, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Clément Dréano, Joseph Dumit, Melanie Ford Lemus, Elaine Gan, Oliver Human, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Graham M. Jones, Trine Mygind Korsby, Justine Laurent, James Maguire, George E. Marcus, Annemarie Mol, Sarah Pink, Els Roding, Markus Rudolfi, Ulrike Scholtes, Anthony Stavrianakis, Lucy Suchman, Katie Ulrich, Helen Verran, Else Vogel, Antonia Walford, Karen Waltorp, Laura Watts, Brit Ross Winthereik

El miércoles 25 de noviembre de 2020, en la tarde, se juntaron a conversar, virtualmente, Hillary Hiner y Marisol de la Cadena. Hillary hizo contacto con ella por email, pudiéndole contar así sobre el dossier especial adonde iba a aparecer esta entrevista. Ya conocía, en algo, a Marisol, por sus múltiples publicaciones, tanto en inglés, como en castellano; Marisol es una antropóloga muy conocida y premiada. En particular, su última publicación, Earth Beings, le gustó mucho, por sus conexiones con teorías feministas post-humanistas y su novedosa metodología. La entrevista fluyó de una manera espontánea, basada principalmente en el intercambio, y enfocada, en particular, en esa última publicación.

Na América Latina, a política praticada pelos povos indígenas tem sido classificada como “política étnica”. Seu ativismo é interpretado como uma questão de fazer prevalecer direitos culturais. Mas e se “cultura” for uma noção insuficiente, e até mesmo inadequada, para pensar o desafio que a política indígena representa? Inspirado nos eventos políticos recentes no Peru — e, em menor medida, no Equador e na Bolívia — em que o movimento indígena-popular tem evocado entidades sencientes (montanhas, água e terra — aquilo que chamamos de “natureza”) para o interior da esfera da política pública, o argumento deste ensaio possui três dimensões. Primeiro, a indigeneidade, como uma formação histórica, excede a noção usual de política, isto é, uma arena povoada de seres humanos racionais disputando o poder de representar outros humanos frente ao Estado. Segundo, a atual emergência política da indigeneidade — nos movimentos de oposição antimineração no Peru e no Equador, mas também em eventos comemorativos na Bolívia — desafia a separação entre natureza e cultura que sustenta a noção predominante de política e seu contrato social correspondente. Terceiro, para além da “política étnica”, os movimentos indígenas atuais propõem uma prática política diferente, plural não porque promovida por corpos marcados por gênero, raça, etnicidade ou sexualidade (como o multiculturalismo entenderia), mas porque evocam não humanos como atores na arena política.

Durham: Duke University Press, 2018, 232 páginas. L a situación de emergencia que ha generado la covid-19 en 2020 es de esos momentos históricos que generan reflexión sobre el devenir de nuestras diversas formas de existir. En los últimos me-ses, hemos vivido cambios drásticos en las maneras de relacionarnos con quienes nos rodean, debido a la acción de un no humano, el virus sars-cov-2. Sin lugar a dudas, esta ha sido una coyuntura en la que, como humanidades-atendiendo a la diversidad de formas de ser humano, estamos experimentando desafíos para nuestras existencias. En este contexto, A World of Many Worlds es un excelente texto, editado por Marisol de la Cadena y Mario Blaser, para dilucidar y discutir los devenires de las formas de vida en el planeta. En vez de la idea moderna de un solo mundo y muchas culturas, este libro apuesta por la comprensión de un mundo que alberga diversos mundos heterogéneos, por la visibilización de seres humanos y no humanos en su construcción, y por encontrar propuestas a los cambios ecológicos ocasionados por la acción humana en los últimos siglos.

In Latin America indigenous politics has been branded as “ethnic politics.” Its activism is interpreted as a quest to make cultural rights prevail. Yet, what if “culture” is insufficient, even an inadequate notion, to think the challenge that indigenous politics represents? Drawing inspiration from recent political events in Peru-and to a lesser extent in Ecuador and Bolivia-where the indigenous-popular movement has conjured sentient entities (mountains, water, and soil-what we call “nature”) into the public political arena, the argument in this essay is threefold. First, indigeneity, as a historical formation, exceeds the notion of politics as usual, that is, an arena populated by rational human beings disputing the power to represent others vis‐à‐vis the state. Second, indigeneity's current political emergence-in oppositional antimining movements in Peru and Ecuador, but also in celebratory events in Bolivia-challenges the separation of nature and culture that underpins the prevalent notion of politics and its according social contract. Third, beyond “ethnic politics” current indigenous movements, propose a different political practice, plural not because of its enactment by bodies marked by gender, race, ethnicity or sexuality (as multiculturalism would have it), but because they conjure nonhumans as actors in the political arena.

This article is about cows in Colombia, the practices that make them different. Although our main concern is not the difference among breeds, we pay crucial attention to the word breed which, in its exclusive animal-use, does not exist in Spanish. Its translation becomes raza, a word that is also used to classify humans and therefore easily translates into English as ‘race’. Maintaining these differences in analytical sight, we follow the practices that make res and ejemplar – two types of bovines. Untranslatable to English, res refers to an ordinary cow or bull; the second one indicates an exemplary bovine, even a prized one. The practices that make these animals are different. We explain how making res does not meet the requirements of breed, while making ejemplar does; consequently, while the latter has breed, a res has a slippery raza, one that, difficult to pin down, transgresses the firmness of breeds. Thus, raza can be different from breed, and surprisingly, it is also different from ‘race’ in English: the slippery quality of raza also surfaces when talking about people, at least in Colombia and Peru, the countries of origin of the authors of this article. If classified, their raza may shift from ‘white’ to ‘mestizo’ (not white) depending on the eyes of the beholder – like res!

Present-day academic work is mostly done in English. What happens, or so the contributions to this monograph ask, when we open a few windows, let in some air, and invite elements drawn from other linguistic traditions into our texts? Doing so does not simply mean welcoming other words. Along with this it also changes the conditions, the terms, that stipulate what is, and what is not, good – proper, interesting, international, academic – writing. To exemplify the way in which the traffic between languages is rarely smooth, here we briefly present some of the conundrums that have arisen as we, the authors, have picked up the phrase that figures as our title – on other terms – and tried to translate it – rewrite it – into the other languages that we introduce in the articles in this monograph.