Abstract
Abstract This article studies human-plant relations as technical phenomena in the context of the pluriethnic communities of the border between Brazil and Guyana. It proposes that we consider a technogenesis of the social at the intersection of technical processes and vital flows of manioc stems - the overground part of the plant that produces manioc (Manihot esculenta). Its starting point is a Wapichana agriculturalist’s collection of stem segments. The onomastics of this set provides an idea of the diversity of these plants in the region. However, the article argues that, rather than being referents in a closed classificatory system, names are histories, indexes of ways of knowing and processes of individuation of people and varieties. By emphasising processes of stem manipulation, the article discusses some of the methodological challenges of the ethnography of technique and reflects on contemporary social transformations in dialogue with Indigenous analyses.
Highlights
Different theoretical tendencies in anthropology are rethinking the main assumptions and conceptual categories in use in the discipline
This article is concerned with ways of relating that are constitutive of the “social” through the intersection of technical processes and vital flows in human-plant relations in the agricultural practices of pluriethnical Indigenous communities that inhabit the Serra da Lua region, on the border between Brazil and Guyana1
In what follows I develop these approximations through the critique of systemic approaches in the field of the anthropology of technique (Mura 2011)
Summary
Different theoretical tendencies in anthropology are rethinking the main assumptions and conceptual categories in use in the discipline. This article is concerned with ways of relating that are constitutive of the “social” through the intersection of technical processes and vital flows in human-plant relations in the agricultural practices of pluriethnical Indigenous communities that inhabit the Serra da Lua region, on the border between Brazil and Guyana1 It explores the theoretical and methodological possibilities of ‘technique’ as an analytical category in order to apprehend the “social” from an ontogenetic perspective. Through the daily engagements of specific people in specific landscapes, relational networks are always seen to be segmented in local experiences and particular localizations In this sense, a technical approach can be a fruitful way for ethnographically understanding how these networks are woven in their movement and flows, privileging technical processes as an ordered group of actions developed by a specific human group out of their knowledge of living beings, such as, for example, plants and their vital processes. In what follows I develop these approximations through the critique of systemic approaches in the field of the anthropology of technique (Mura 2011)
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