Conference announcement
The conference "Comparing Siberia and Amazons: Indigenous Ontologies and the Non-Human World" will be held on the 19th of June, 2 PM at Room A001, Building 4, on the Iscte Conhecimento e Inovação' premises. The lecture will be given by researcher Selcen Küçüküstel, a social anthropologist working on ecological anthropology, and affiliated to CRIA-Iscte.
Join us for an insightful conference exploring the indigenous ontologies and interactions with the non-human world in both Siberia and the Amazon. This event promises to offer a unique comparative perspective on how different indigenous communities understand and relate to their environments.
Abstract
In the middle of environmental crisis that our planet is experiencing and conflicts related to it, political ecology discuss the need for pluriverse as a possibility instead of dualism of human and animals in Western world, taking indigenous ideas about their geography that involves nonhumans and master spirits more seriously. Siberia and Amazon regions often host the base for theoretical discussions about animism and nonhuman persons in anthropological literature. Having worked in Siberia for many years with indigenous Dukha reindeer herders on human-animal relations and about the concepts of domestication and wildness, I am starting a new research project in Colombian Amazons, this time focusing on the gender dimension of these relations and the importance of traditional ecological knowledge that women possess in indigenous societies. The project will be asking if women have a different relation with non-human world beyond their care giving roles? And if so, how does this knowledge effect their position in their household and the society they live in. Finally, what could it be common between indigenous people of Siberia and the Amazons?
BIONOTE
Selcen Küçüküstel is a social anthropologist working on ecological anthropology. She finished her PhD at Humboldt University Berlin with a study on the nomadic Dukha reindeer herders of northern Mongolia, focusing on human-animal relationships. Her first book titled Embracing Landscape: Living with Reindeer, Hunting among Spirits was published in 2021 by Berghahn books. Selcen currently works as a Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher at Iscte, studying the relations between women and nonhuman world, importance of traditional ecological knowledge that women possess in indigenous societies and how this knowledge affects their status in the society they live in Siberia and the Amazon. Apart from her academic career, Selcen has been working as a freelance photojournalist and documentary filmmaker for various media outlets. She likes to combine her academic career with story telling.
