The Anthropocene narrative and Amerindian lifeworlds: anthropos, agency, and personhood

Abstract

AbstractBased on the observation that the Anthropocene narrative signifies a departure from the Cartesian nature/culture division dominant within modernist science, this article explores notions of personhood and agency among Amerindian peoples in the Amazon, the Andes, and Mesoamerica in comparison to the corresponding notions in modernist discourses. We discuss the differences in conceptualizations in relation to diverging understandings of climate change and the Anthropocene, focusing on perspectives on agentivity both within our respective ethnographical fields and in modernist social sciences. This leads us to stress the significance of new materialists’ disregard for intentionality in relation to agency and the consequences this neglect has for understanding animist perspectives. We examine the different views in relation to their effects on morality and to perceived forms of accountability. In accordance, the modernist ‘global we’, prominent in the Anthropocene debate stressing the role of humanity as a species, is contrasted with what we call a ‘universal we’, which includes both human and other‐than‐human persons, in conformance with Amerindian animist perspectives on the world. This approach to the issue does not only mean that we challenge the obvious iniquity in blaming all of humanity for climate change but also that we point to the coloniality of reality implicit in the Anthropocene narrative.