The Subversive Politics of Sentient Landscapes: Collective Ethics, and Environmental Justice in Northern Peru
Research Question
Why do Peruvian poor mestizos engage sentient landscapes as leaders of movements for environmental justice and collective ethics? How do sentient landscapes challenge the state and neoliberalism?
Project Description
Poor mestizos in Northern Peru respond to climate change and environmental devastation by engaging Indigenous sentient landscapes—which have the capacity to sense, feel and act—as moral leaders of environmental-spiritual-political movements and co-creators of an interethnic world. Sentient landscapes challenge distinctions between human/non-human, culture/nature normalized by neoliberal capitalism and colonialism that promote human exceptionalism and result in environmental devastation. By defining “community” and “well-being” as humans in relationship-to-places as-persons, poor mestizos resignify “nature” itself as an anchor for social justice.
Selected Publications
Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Chile and Patagonia
https://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/bacigalupo-thunder-shaman
Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power and Healing Among Chilean Mapuche
http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/bacsha
La Voz del Kultrun en la Modernidad: Tradición y Cambio en la Terapéutica de Siete Machi Mapuche
http://www.abebooks.com/voz-Kultrun-modernidad-Tradici%C3%B3n-cambio-terap%C3%A9utica/11245151045/bd