Abstract
Abstract Taking Boaventura de Sousa Santos' argument that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice as its starting point, this article suggests that there is no global climate justice without global cognitive justice (implying both ontological justice and epistemological justice). If we take "the ontological turn" in anthropology and other disciplines and its focus on indigenous ontologies seriously, however, we seem to end up in a situation that is difficult to maneuver in relation to conventional understandings of climate justice. When discussing climate change in relation to multiple ontologies, there are two risks: 1) reproducing what I call "the coloniality of reality", arguing that indigenous ontologies are actually nothing but a cultural (mis-) representation of the world; 2) reproducing a conservative relativism that leads to nothing but the maintenance of status quo and that bears a resemblance to climate change denial. A thorough ethnographic understanding of what I would call "the moral meteorology" of the Andes and a broadened understanding of climate change, however, make it possible to navigate between the Scylla of coloniality and the Charybdis of relativism and to articulate a radical critique of fossil-fueled capitalism from a relational ontology, demanding climate justice while denouncing coloniality, and discussing the political ontology of climate change without ignoring its political ecology - and vice versa. Key words: Coloniality; climate justice; cognitive justice; political ontology; political ecology; Aymara
Highlights
Palabras claves: Colonialidad; justicia climática; justicia cognitiva; ontología política; ecología política; Aymara. It has been convincingly argued by Portuguese thinker Boaventura de Sousa Santos that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice (Santos, Arriscado Nunes and Meneses 2007: ixx)
I propose a number of additional questions to be considered in research on indigenous people and climate change: within which ontologically informed lifeworlds and in which relational fields – communities of being – are knowledges about reality produced and by whom? By which mechanisms are the partial connections between different ways of generating and experiencing realities transformed into spaces of conflict, domination and resistance?2 These are questions dealing with "what there is", with what kind of actors there are and what kind of human and other-than-human beings compose the relational fields within which knowledge production and political struggle take place, within which climate change is experienced, understood, and addressed, and from within which cries for cognitive and climate justice are raised
On August 1 2015, while Aymara people climbed the smaller mountains with offerings and the shamans started looking for signs on the horizon around the snow-capped mountains to forecast the weather of the year to come, the Bolivian climate movement met in the upper middle class neighborhood of Sopocachi to discuss climate justice and the upcoming COP 21 in Paris
Summary
It has been convincingly argued by Portuguese thinker Boaventura de Sousa Santos that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice (Santos, Arriscado Nunes and Meneses 2007: ixx). What we have is a middleclass that is active in discussing these issues Her fellow activist, an urban middle class woman in her thirties, added: People in the villages have no idea about climate change. They live in the deepest ignorance regarding these issues. In all four cases it is people of indigenous origin, whether they are rural small-scale farmers, mineworkers or urban residents in the largely indigenous city of El Alto (or even government officials), who are identified as being responsible for climate change on a national level or for being a problem in addressing climate change. When it gets dim I will use this list of names as a lifeline
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