The agency of non-human entity in the recent anthropology of the Indigenous Lowland South America

Over the past two decades, the concept of agency has become a key term in anthropological studies of Indigenous peoples in Lowland South America, intersecting with renewed interest in animism, Viveiros de Castro's 'Amerindian perspectivism,' and the broader ontological turn. This paper examines how different notions of agency are applied to shamanism, the ontological status of artifacts, and other non-human beings, while also exploring consonances and dissonances between socio-cultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics. The encounter between agency and Lowland South American ethnography has led to the deconstruction of the concept itself.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In the last twenty years, agency has entered the field of anthropological studies of Lowland South America Indigenous Peoples as a term and a topic of concern. Ethnographical and theoretical treatment of this notion has intertwined here with the revisiting of the concept of animism, Viveiros de Castro’s statements about “amerindian perspectivism” and a broader “ontological turn” in research orientation. In the paper I discuss this trend, focusing on how different notions of agency are used to talk about topics as shamanism and ontological status of artifacts as well as, more generally, of other non-human categories of beings. I pay attention too to dissonances and consonances in this field of study between approaches closer to socio-cultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics. Finally, I show how this meeting of the notion of agency with ethnography of Lowland South America has precipitated its deconstruction.