“It Seems Like a Lie”: The Everyday Politics of World-Making in Contemporary Peru

Abstract

This book explores how one measures and analyzes human alterity and difference in an interconnected and ever-globalizing world. This book critically assesses the impact of what has often been dubbed 'the ontological turn' within anthropology in order to provide some answers to these questions. In doing so, the book explores the turn's empirical and theoretical limits, accomplishments, and potential. The book distinguishes between three central strands of the ontological turn, namely worldviews, materialities, and politics. It presents empirically rich case studies, which help to elaborate on the potentiality and challenges which the ontological turn's perspectives and approaches may have to offer. 1. Recalibrating Alterity, Difference, Ontology: Anthropological Engagements with Human and Non-Human Worlds / Synnøve Bendixsen -- pt. I Vistas -- 2. The Relationality of Species in Chewong Animistic Ontology / Signe Howell -- 3. Alterity, Predation, and Questions of Representation: The Problem of the Kharisiri in the Andes / Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard -- 4. False Prophets? Ontological Conflicts and Religion-Making in an Indonesian Court / Kari Telle -- 5. Chronically Unstable Ontology: Ontological Dynamics, Radical Alterity, and the "Otherwise Within" / Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme -- pt. II Materialities -- 6. The Hold of Life in a Warao Village: An Assemblage Analysis of Householding Practices / Christian Sørhaug -- 7. Disrupting Book Smartness: Critical Ethnography and the "Ontological Turn" in Anthropology and Educational Studies / Lars Gjelstad -- 8. Beyond Cultural Relativism? Tim Ingold's "Ontology of Dwelling" Revisited / Are John Knudsen -- pt. III Politics -- 9. Ontological Turns Within the Visual Arts: Ontic Violence and the Politics of Anticipation / Martin Thomassen -- 10. Alter-Politics Reconsidered: From Different Worlds to Osmotic Worlding / Kathinka Frøystad -- 11. "It Seems Like a Lie": The Everyday Politics of World-Making in Contemporary Peru / Astrid B. Stensrud -- 12. Reading Holbraad: Truth and Doubt in the Context of Ontological Inquiry / Eldar Braten.