Mountain-bodies, experiential wisdom: the Kallawaya cosmovisión and climate change adaptation

Abstract

In an era of climate catastrophe, it is critical to engage with adaptation. However, it is equally necessary to examine the ways in which climate change adaptation is deployed in development practice. This paper will first outline the constellation of international and national climate realities, and their itinerant policies, that inform Bolivia’s climate politics. After setting the stage for climate change in the region, this paper will examine the Kallawaya cosmovisión. Then, using political ontologies as a conceptual springboard, this paper will look at the various frictions and resonances that exist between these ecological world views.

Keywords:

• Development
• policy
• political ontologies
• political ecology
• cosmovisión

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the guest editors Thomas Smith, Amber Murrey, and Hayley Leck for organising this special issue; to the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments; and to Jody Emel for bringing this to my attention.

Notes

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2. Murrey, “Invisible Power,” 65.

3. Harris, “Political Ecology of Pachamama”.

4. de la Cadena, Earth Beings, 12.

5. Blaser, “Political Ontology”.

6. Tsing, Friction; and Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity”.

7. World Bank, “A Wicked Problem”.

8. Swyngedouw, “Apocalypse Forever?”; and Taylor, Political Ecology, 67.

9. Rice, Burke, and Heynen, “Knowing Climate Change”.

10. United Nations, Millennium Development Goals.

11. United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals.

12. United Nations, “Climate Action Business”.

13. United Nations, “Climate Action”; World Bank, World Development Report; and Wilby et al., “Climate Risk Information”.

14. Perez and Yohe, “Continuing the Adaptation Process,” 234.

15. UNDP, Climate Change Adaptation.

16. World Bank, Gender Equality.

17. Ireland, “Climate Change Adaptation”.

18. Escobar, Encountering Development; and Smith, Uneven Development.

19. Taylor, Political Ecology, 67.

20. Howitt and Suchet-Pearson, “Rethinking the Building Blocks”; and Cameron, Mearns, and McGrath, “Translating Climate Change”.

21. Aguirre and Cooper, “Evo Morales”.

22. Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, Madre Tierra.

23. Boyd, “Noel Kempff Project”; Hoffmann and Weggermann, “Climate Change Induced”.

24. Hicks and Fabricant, “Bolivian Climate Justice”.

25. Hoffmann, Personal Communication.

26. Nordgren, Cambios Climáticos.

27. Walsh, “Development as Buen Vivir,” 18.

28. Makaran, “Entre el Buen Vivir”.

29. Villaba, “Buen Vivir vs Development”.

30. Fabricant, “Good Living for Whom?”

31. Hoffmann, Personal Communication.

32. Watts, “Now and Then,” 38.

33. Callahan, “Signs of the Time”; and Bastien, Mountain of the Condor.

34. Dove, “Indigenous People”.

35. de la Cadena, “Indigenous Cosmopolitics”.

36. Fabricant, “Good Living for Whom?”

37. Harris, “Political Ecology of Pachamama”.

38. Callahan, “Signs of the Time”.

39. McCutcheon, “Kitchen Table Reflexivity”.

40. Sundberg, “Ethics, Entanglement and Political Ecology”.

41. Morgensen, Spaces Between Us.

42. See also Scholte, “Towards a Reflexive and Critical Anthropology”; and Gruber, La etnografía.

43. Silverblatt, “The Evolution of Witchcraft”.

44. Silverblatt, “The Evolution of Witchcraft”.

45. Taussig, The Devil and Commodity, 231.

46. UNESCO, “Andean Cosmovision”.

47. Krippner, “The Future of Ethnomedicine”.

48. Quispe, Personal Communication.

49. Callahan, “Signs of the Time”.

50. Oxa, “Vigencia de la Cultural Andina,” 239.

51. Quijano, “Ecosimías,” 219.

52. Albó, “The Aymara Religious Experience”.

53. Bastien, “Qollahuaya-Andean Body Concepts,” 608.

54. Kripper and Glenney, “The Kallawaya Healers,” 217.

55. Chelala, “Health in the Andes”.

56. Ibid.

57. Bastien, “Qollahuaya-Andean Body Concepts,” 597.

58. Bastien, Healers of the Andes, 68.

59. Bastien, “Qollahuaya-Andean Body Concepts,” 87; and Bastien, Healers of the Andes, 46.

60. Bastien, “Qollahuaya-Andean Body Concepts,” 87.

61. Hachmeyer, “Attracting and Banning Ankari”; and Llanos, “Migracíon campo-ciudad,” 78.

62. Hoffmann and Requena, Bolivia en un mundo.

63. Blaser, “Political Ontology”.

64. See Cameron et al., “Translating Climate Change”; Howitt and Suchet-Pearson, “Rethinking the Building Blocks”.

65. Ellis, “Meaningful Consideration?”; and Kruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen?

66. Morton, Hyperobjects.

67. Morton, Hyperobjects, 22.

68. Peet, Modern Geographical Thought, 11.

69. Blaser, “Political Ontology”.

70. Stengers, “The Cosmopolitical Proposal”.

71. Stengers, “Wondering About Materialism”.

72. Blaser, “Ontology and Indigeneity,” 51.

73. Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity”; and Barad, Meeting the Universe.

74. Tsing, Friction.

75. Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity”.

76. Hachmeyer, “Attracting and Banning Ankari”.

77. Callison, How Climate Change Comes.

78. Albó, “The Aymara Religious Experience”.

79. Buck, “On the Possibilities of a Charming”.

80. Haraway, “Staying with the Trouble,” 39.