Marcelo Gonzalez Galvez

Preliminary abstract: This workshop aims to bring together ethnographers working in indigenous South America to discuss grounded notions of one of anthropology’s main research foci and interpretative tools: relations. With a wide regional focus and bringing together cases from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru, participants will approach relations by asking first, what they are within indigenous lives, and second, what they entail in indigenous worlds. In doing so, the workshop seeks to challenge current ethnographic perspectives that, while recognizing the relevance of relations, often seem to take them for granted. By including in our analysis daily life and domestic settings, processes of collective identity construction and group formation, multi-species interactions, and contemporary inter-ethnic encounters involving diverse economic interests, we expect to develop a lively discussion that includes differences and continuities emerging from different native reflections. Through this work, we aim to shed light not only on the research of fellow South Americanists, but also on insights from scholars in a variety of disciplines who work on relations in diverse geographical areas.