Caissa Revilla-Minaya

This book project aims to advance anthropological theory and research on human-environment relations by critically engaging with ontological approaches. Such scholarship often foregrounds difference to the extent that members of distinct societies are seen as inhabiting fundamentally different, incommensurable worlds. Some have criticized these theoretical positions for overemphasizing radical alterity and failing to address ethnographic heterogeneity or processes of ontological change. However, little practical work has explored the mechanisms that might explain these phenomena. In addition, key theoretical and methodological questions remain unresolved – such as how to determine whether people’s utterances are intended as literal truths. This manuscript addresses these concerns through ethnographic research in the Indigenous Matsigenka community of Tayakome, located in the Peruvian Amazon. Rather than attributing a singular ontology to a group, it reconceptualizes ontologies as the diverse, practiced, and dynamic conceptions that coexist within a society. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, it argues that Matsigenka ontologies related to non-human beings are deeply shaped by concerns for health and wellbeing. Understanding these varied ontologies can enable anthropologists to pursue more nuanced, empirically grounded, reflexive, and participatory research.