Current ecological disasters, together with economic,social, and political crisis at both global and local levels, are forcing us toseriously consider how strongly related we humans are, each other, as well aswith animals, plants, but also rocks, meteorological events, and other forces.In the past decades, new anthropological theories have delved into thishuman-non-human relationality, highlighting the different epistemologies andontologies through which people inhabit the world, producing different“more-than-human” worlds. In mountain areas and beyond, the life experiences ofpeople have often been nourished by their relationships with “other” dwellingbeings through the grammars of cohabitation, conviviality, and predation. Thesedifferences in perspectives and practices of inhabiting the world, or fictionsamong the diverse worlds, have led to political and social conflicts, forexample, those opposing local people to private companies and governments onthe management of “natural resources”.

Today, in the midst of the Anthropocene and the ecologicalcrisis, especially indigenous and local peoples, including those living inmountain regions, are being looked at anew, revaluing their productivepractices and respect for the “natural” worlds (condensed into extensivepastoralism, for example). However, these perspectives do not always recognizewith the same emphasis the “affective”, “ritual” or “religious” dimensions thatframe peoples’ relationships with other beings, such as plants and animals, butalso rocks or divinities.

Looking at mountain areas, especially in the Andean regionsof Bolivia and Argentina (in the cases of Arnold, Pazzarelli and Salvucci), andextending our focus to lowlands (Brazilian Amazonia in the case of Bonilla) andcoastal regions (such as the Island of Luanda in Angola, in the case of Toldo),this workshop intends to initiate a conversation that takes theseepistemological/ontological frictions seriously and discusses them from acomparative perspective. Through the presentation and discussion of ethnographicresearch papers, the workshop aims to address different modulations of themore-than-human worlds, through perspectives interested in rituals, mutualrearing, coexistence, and frictions in mountain areas and beyond.

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