Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T22:57:27.484Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Indigenous Knowledge and the Coloniality of Reality: Climate Change Otherwise in the Bolivian Andes

from Part III - Global Change and Indigenous Responses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

Marie Roué
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris
Douglas Nakashima
Affiliation:
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), France
Igor Krupnik
Affiliation:
Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

Several studies have shown that indigenous peoples are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and attention has been drawn to indigenous knowledge as an important component of climate change adaptation strategies. This paper argues, however, that in order to take indigenous knowledge seriously, indigenous realities and understandings of climate change need to be taken seriously. This is because knowledge is not produced in an ontological void. Rather, knowledge is produced in relation to notions concerning the nature of reality and being. Moreover, in order not to make a mere instrumentalist use of Indigenous knowledge, this paper argues that the practical outcomes of Indigenous knowledge ought to be acknowledged, along with the ontological lifeworlds within which such knowledge is generated.

This paper is based on many years of ethnographic fieldwork with and among Aymara people in the Bolivian Andes and poses questions about how the partial connections between different ways of producing knowledge, of experiencing and explaining climate change, and of experiencing and generating realities are transformed into spaces of conflict, domination and resistance.

Type
Chapter
Information
Resilience through Knowledge Co-Production
Indigenous Knowledge, Science, and Global Environmental Change
, pp. 261 - 274
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Araujo Cossío, H. 2012. Manejando el Riesgo Climático de Los Andes: El Caso de Las Comunidades Aymara Quechuas de Chillavi-Ayopaya. La Paz: PIEB.Google Scholar
Brush, S. 1982. The natural and the human environment of the Central Andes. Mountain Research and Development, 2(1): 1938 https://doi.org/10.2307/3672931CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burman, A. 2016. Damnés realities and ontological disobedience: Notes on the coloniality of reality in higher education in the Bolivian Andes and beyond. In Grosfoguel, R., Velasquez, E. R. and Hernandez, R. D. (eds.) Decolonizing the Westernized University: Interventions in Philosophy of Education from Within and Without. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Books, pp. 7194.Google Scholar
Burman, A. 2017. The political ontology of climate change: Moral meteorology, climate justice, and the coloniality of reality in the Bolivian Andes. Journal of Political Ecology, 24: 921938. https://doi.org/10.2458/v24i1.20974Google Scholar
Canessa, A. 2012. Intimate Indigeneities: Race, Sex, and History in the Small Spaces of Andean Life. Durham and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Crutzen, P. J. and Stoermer, E. F. 2000. The “Anthropocene”. IGBP Newsletter, 41: 1718.Google Scholar
de la Cadena, M. 2014. The politics of modern politics meets ethnographies of excess through ontological openings. Theorizing the Contemporary. Cultural Anthropology website January 13, 2014. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-politics-of-modern-politics-meets-ethnographies-of-excess-through-ontological-openingsGoogle Scholar
de la Cadena, M. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Endfield, G. 2011. Reculturing and particularizing climate discourses: Weather, identity, and the work of Gordon Manley. Osiris, 26(1): 142162. https://doi.org/10.1086/661269CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flores Apaza, P. 2005. El Hombre que Volvió a Nacer: Vida, Saberes y Reflexiones de un Amawt’a de Tiwanaku. La Paz: AOS, PADEM, COSUDE.Google Scholar
Gooch, P., Burman, A. and Almered Olsson, G. 2019. Natural resource conflicts in the Capitalocene. In Almered Olsson, G. and Gooch, P. (eds.) Natural Resource Conflicts and Sustainable Development. London: Earthscan, pp. 1123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosfoguel, R. 2013. The structure of knowledge in Westernized universities epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture, 10(1): 7390.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, D. and Requena, C. 2012. Bolivia en un Mundo 4 Grados Más Caliente: Escenarios Sociopolíticos Ante el Cambio Climático Para Los Años 2030 y 2060 en el Altiplano Norte. La Paz: PIEB & Instituto Boliviano de la Montaña.Google Scholar
Hornborg, A. 2015. The political economy of technofetishism: Agency, Amazonian ontologies, and global magic. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(1): 4769. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.1.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. 2007. Earth, sky, wind and weather. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Special Issue, S19–S38. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00401.xGoogle Scholar
IPCC. 2010. Review of the IPCC Processes and Procedures, report by the InterAcademy Council (IPCC-XXXII/Doc. 7), 32nd Session, Busan, Seoul, 11–14 October 2010.Google Scholar
Kronik, J. and Verner, D. 2010. Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington, DC: The World Bank.Google Scholar
Malm, A. and Hornborg, A. 2014. The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative. The Anthropocene Review, 1(1): 6269. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019613516291CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murra, J. 1985. “El Archipielago Vertical” revisited. In Masuda, S., Shimada, I. and Morris, C. (eds.) Andean Ecology and Civilization. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, pp. 313.Google Scholar
Nakashima, D. J., Galloway McLean, K., Thulstrup, H. D., Ramos Castillo, A. and Rubis, J. T. 2012. Weathering Uncertainty: Traditional Knowledge for Climate Change Assessment and Adaptation. Paris and Durban: UNESCO & UNU.Google Scholar
Parry, M. L., Canziani, O. F., Palutikof, J. P., van der Linden, P. J. and Hanson, C. E. (eds.) 2007. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rappaport, R. A. 1984. Pigs for the Ancestors. 2nd edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Santos, B. de Sousa, Arriscado Nunes, J. and Meneses, M. P. 2007. Opening up the canon of knowledge and recognition of difference. In Santos, B. de Sousa (ed.) Another Knowledge Is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies. London: Verso, pp. xixxii.Google Scholar
Strathern, M. 2004. Partial Connections. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira.Google Scholar
Tapia Ponce, N. 2012. Indicadores del Tiempo y la Predicción Climática: Estrategias Agroecológicas Campesinas Para la Adaptación al Cambio Climático en la Puna Cochabambina. La Paz: PIEB.Google Scholar
Yampara, S. 2001. El Ayllu y la Territorialidad en los Andes: Una Aproximación a Chambi Grande. El Alto: UPEA, CADA, INTI-Andino.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×