Department of social anthropology seminar with Astrid B. Stensrud

The Department of Social Anthropology has the pleasure to invite you to a seminar with Astrid B. Stensrud from the Department Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She will present the following paper:


"Perspectives on animism, personhood and violence in the Andes"


Abstract

The diverse analytical approaches to animism in contemporary anthropology, inspired by Amazonian ethnography and Science and technology studies, offer new perspectives to anthropologists working in the Andes. Based on ethnography from the Southern Peruvian highlands, this paper discusses forms of inter-personal violence in the Andes in light of these new perspectives on animism. Relating and engaging with others entails power and violence, whether we relate to humans or to nonhuman beings, like mountains. In this paper, I ask how we may understand these relations, as well as the practices they entail. Is there a connection between the violence of “nature” and violence among humans, i.e. interpersonal violence in houses and neighbourhoods? Furthermore, what happens when this way of thinking and relating to nonhuman beings is also being enacted on a political level? I argue that some forms of what we would consider “violence”, may be seen as performative actions that could be understood as part of a particular way of living in the world, where a multiplicity of beings – both humans and nonhumans – interact and constitute their relations through practice.

Bionote

Astrid B. Stensrud is a post.doc researcher at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Oslo. Her doctoral thesis analyzed animistic practices among micro-entrepreneurs in the informal economy of urban Peru. She is currently working in the project “From Ice to Stone”, doing research on climate change and water practices in the Peruvian Andes. Her research areas include neoliberalism, informal economy, animism, morality, gender, ethnography of the state, nature-culture, climate change and the politics of water.

 
All interested are welcome!

Best regards
BSAS Comittee