Surralles The Land WIthin

The book is a collection of essays on the indigenous perception of the environment from the indigenous point of view. It explore both general epistemological principles and the particular contents of an "Amerindian perspective". They make an interesting point in that in the face of state and corporative interests in indigenous lands and given the advances in the titling of their lands there is still a lot to consider on how do the indigenous conceive of the territory and how they organize social life within it in order to establish "true intercultural dialogue" grant power to their life in the territory. The book is also intended to present an indigenous perspective in the face of environmental movement that has too quickly attributed a series of notions and practice to the indigenous perception of the environment. The author explains that it is for the indigenous to engage in the philosophical notion of legality during and claims as the underlying notions differ so much form their principles of territory and environment in which social relation are extended to all beings in the environment. It is form this starting point that they present the group of ethnographies that present with this visions. It is not just about acculturation, he argues but about how indigenous groups have both reproduced their culture and use it to understand the challenges they are faced to. The author has a very either or perspective, either Western or indigenous: "The purely indigenous political discourse, which wisely insists in differentiating a Western vision of an object - nature (in which its appropriation, domination and exploitation are justifies) form an indigenous vision (in which nature and man share existential relationships of reciprocity and mutual respect) must now shape the specific vision that doubtless gave shape to this poltical discourse." (11) In other words to start talking about politics we need to understand indigenous philosophy that underlies any politics and this vision is very different from the western one. This is an interesting claim, and it is a position to take that generates a specific type of knowledge that can be very enriching, there are different ideas, i consider, being produced among indigenous and also the subaltern in general. However the question is if there is any possibility form examining this knowledge outside colonialism, outsite the processes of subordination that trasverse thier position through. I am skeptical in that this type of anthropology can never be an indigenous philosophy to deal with "the notion of territory among the indigenous of nn" is already a conceptual decision of framing reality under the notion of theory and assigning a different meaning or redefining it altogether.
The book is organized in a theoretical part in which Descola presents a reexamination of the notion of animism, as for him one fundamental aspect for the indigenous relation with the environment is that they consider the elements that compose it "persons" (it intentionality, emotions, self consciousness), and forming different communities of persons. In this the distinction nature / culture will not sustain. His conclusion is that both in an amazonean society and in the canadian subartic what we think of as "nature" is an inexistent category intergrated in a complex "network of social interaction in which man is no more than one actor amongst many others. On his part Viveiros da Castro proposes that this soceties have a "perspectism" as a guiding logic for thought. With this he means that humans and non humans only occupy relative positions with a very complex network of interrelations, human are then predators in many cases but they are the prey for depredatory animals. In normal circumstances humans define as humans and animals as animals but in other the animal become human, and vise versa. The only one that can transit all this "subject positions" [my wording of course] is the shaman that can assume any form and position himself in all different type of the sides of teh relations. For Viveiros da castro this means that knowledge is generated through total subjectification, through a complete becoming somethin else and not through the separation, objectification and examinantion. The rest of the articles present specific case studies in which aspects of this ideas are presented. One interesting ones s the one that presents territory as the space of social relations, thus the territory extends as much as kin and personal realtions reach Oscar Calavia Saez.