Strange Animals, and What to Do with Them

Abstract

In Chile, intercultural education, at least ideally, is concerned with the learning from indigenous people, and as such, anthropology is at the center stage. One of the aspects learning might learn from anthropology has to do with plurality, and more specifically, how to embrace plurality without reducing it at the same time. If sustainability has any stake in this, it would have to do with learning how to continually sustain plurality. Viveiros De Castro is a founding part of a relatively recent anthropological tradition called recursive anthropology, sometimes also referred to as the ontological turn. His ethnography consists of a proposal for Amerindian cosmology and his methodology proposes a way to sustain plurality. I propose to treat both aspects. First, we would like to describe his Amerindian cosmology, and we are specifically here interested in its different approach to nature. Secondly, we will describe his methodology in its relation to his ethnography, and here we will be specifically concerned with thinking his method as a pedagogical project involved with intercultural learning.