Ethnoepistemology

Se hace un análisis epistemológico de los conocimientos y saberes locales; se aborda la perspectiva etnoecológica y sus relaciones ínter y trnasdisciplinarias; se discute la estrategia metodológica de la etnoecología; se reflexiona sobre la importancia política de los conocimientos y saberes locales y muchos otros temas.

English: This book addresses, from an anthropological and historical perspective, nurtured by  postcolonial perspectives, the main principles and features of the Western Argentine Qom (or Toba) ontology. This chronicle integrates as a subtle and aesthetically oriented whole, both narrative and conceptual genres of writing, which show how Qom being-in-the-world was constituted historically. In so doing, it stresses the main events that shaped their collective memory, the role of the State in the construction of the “Indian”, and the centrality of dreaming as a key experience-place in which social reality is interwoven in its deepest meaningfulness. Simultaneously, it is a critical assessment of the current practice of ethnographic fieldwork, not only in the Chaco region but also elsewhere, wherein its proper becoming shows a collection of ideas, plans, failures and contradictions in applying  pure scientific and Western categories of knowledge and reality. Qom religious horizons are explored which are integrated by shamanism, Catholicism and Pentecostalism, plus creole traditions of curanderismo. Also, through the help of pictures of powerful beings of the Qom pantheon made by Angel PitaGat, a dear Qom friend from the Tacaaglé indigenous colony, in Eastern Formosa province, some of the main principles of Qom world view and cosmology are iconically presented and discussed.


Spanish: Este libro es una aproximación, desde la antropología y la historia, a las principales características y elementos de la ontología de los qom o tobas del oriente de la provincia de Formosa. A través de un estilo de crónica, en donde la narración y el análisis conceptual profundo se integran con sutileza y sentido estético, se entra en el mundo toba explorando como se constituyó históricamente su ser-en-el-mundo, qué eventos impactaron en su memoria, cuál fue el papel del estado en la construcción del “indio”, y qué importancia tiene el sueño como experiencia-lugar clave, en donde la realidad social se teje en su significación más compleja. Simultáneamente, se reflexiona sobre la práctica del trabajo de campo etnográfico, en donde su mismo devenir ilustra las consistencias y contradicciones que una investigación concreta va planteando.
A través de una estructura formal novedosa, la obra integra material visual del mundo qom, experiencias shamánicas y de las iglesias autóctonas o Evangelio, junto con documentos históricos de distintos tipos, los cuales abren espacios para la dialéctica de la pregunta y la respuesta, que se orienta a sentar las posibilidades de una filosofía intercultural. Esta implica crear puentes para entender, en definitiva, cómo la historia, en sus detalles y contingencias, se pliega en las existencias de los qom.

Nimhans What is the relationship between colonialism and psychiatry (ëthe science of mindí) in India?î This is a huge question and here we do not have the space to untangle the entire conceptual complexity of the question let alone the history of this relationship. Our task will merely to explore some general points and to report on some preliminary findings from a project initiated circa mid-1990s in which the authors have been involved. One of the issues we are interested in investigating is the extent to which colonization, as a political enterprise of conquest and economic exploitation, had deeper ramifications for the indigenous traditions of science, technology and culture of care for the sick and diseased. Whether, that is, colonization brought with it its own tradition of medicine and science, which it imposed on the colonized regions. Or whether, colonization interrupted the traditional knowledge-systems, which led to their radical decline, disturbing the balance of medico-scientific development within the extant traditional framework? And perhaps a third possibility: whether there was happy blending, intermarriage and hybrid fecundation of the two traditions at encounterñi.e. between tradition and modernityñthat made for a regenerative nexus between science and colonization. 1 What are ethical or moral ramifications of such a ëprogressíñor be it regressóin civilization terms? We are interested in exploring these questions in relation to the arrival and growth of the discourse of psychiatry in India, with a particularly focus on the South, especially the principality of Mysore (narrowing down to the metropolis of Bangalore) during the British commercial and administrative presence in India. A caveat should be registered at the very start in respect of the tendencyó already transgressed in the opening paragraphóof thinking of psychiatry as though it were a discipline very much like or alongside physical and life-sciences, or even medicine, which diagnoses and treats physical illness. The point is that, as writers like Michel Foucault have been at pains to argue, psychiatry is a discourse of much recent origin in seventeen century Europe. It conjures itself out of the emergent alienation of the ësubjectí, disjunctured from Late Middle Ages notion of the redemptive ësoulí or psyche, and the repressed confines of the asylum culture with its punitive measures for the supposed delinquents that was rampant through this period even as it was

Pages 207-252 in “The Scaffolding of Our Thoughts”: Essays on Assyriology and the History of Science in Honor of Francesca Rochberg. Ancient Magic and Divination 13. Edited by C. Jay Crisostomo, Eduardo A. Escobar, Terri Tanaka, and Niek Veldhuis. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

The Asabano of Papua New Guinea share numerous accounts of supernatural experiences that occurr in dream, trance, and alert awareness. I present some of these collected in 1994–1995, less than two decades after the Asabano adopted Baptist Christianity. The case helps us to understand how supernatural beliefs come to be accepted and change. Pre-conversion supernatural encounters influenced the content of Christian ones, and retained pre-contact supernatural beings and genres have also taken on some Christian characteristics. Similarly, memories of supernatural experiences in one state of consciousness shaped and encouraged similar experiences in other states. In the daily cycle, memories of recent events in waking life--day residues like missionary sermons--shaped dream content when dreamers encountered supernatural beings mentioned in the sermons. I coin the term "night residues" to refer to false memories of autonomically imagined dream experiences as though they were real. Night residues support religious beliefs by entering schemas--mental templates that direct attention and interpretation of subsequent sensory data and internal imagery--and thereby insert imaginary elements into models of reality.

Reference
Lohmann, Roger Ivar. 2003. Supernatural Encounters of the Asabano in Two Traditions and Three States of Consciousness. In Dream Travelers: Sleep Experiences and Culture in the Western Pacific. Roger Ivar Lohmann, ed. Pp. 188–210. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.