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Cosmocentrism, the ethics of indigenous civilizations, and the right to resist global extractivist-capitalism: The contemporary experience of the Asháninka (Peru/Brazil)

Prof Stefano Varese and Dr. Carolina Comandulli
Non-anthropocentric conceptions and ways of life of the Ashaninka people from the Peruvian and the Brazilian Amazon, centre on the idea that soil, water, air, plants, animals, humans and the universe form a whole continuum where life, death and time flow; life is everything and everywhere; and life is deeply spiritual and sacred. The speakers propose the concept of “cosmocentrism” to explain it and venture the idea that it is the destruction of this principle in Capitalism and the Wstern world that has permitted the progressive destruction of our own planet. They also show how the Ashaninka have creatively adapted to the contemporary world making global connections and alliances to protect their ways of life, the Amazon forest and the planet itself.
Stefano Varese is an Italian-Peruvian anthropologist and activist, emeritus professor at UC-Davis, California, USA and founder of the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas. He has published, among other books, Las minorías étnicas y la comunidad nacional (Ethnic minorities and the national community; 1974), Proyectos étnicos y proyectos nacionales (Ethnic projects and national projects; 1983); Indígenas y educación en México (Indigenous people and education in Mexico; 1983); Pueblos indios, soberanía y globalismo (Indigenous peoples, Sovereignty and globalism; 1996); La ruta mixteca (The Mixtec route; in collaboration with Sylvia Escárcega, 2004); Witness to Sovereignty (2006); Bonfil y la civilización del común (Bonfil and the civilization of the commons; 2013); The Art of Memory (2020); El arte del recuerdo (2021); and El bosque civilizado (The civilized forest, 2023). He is also co-author of the book Selva vida (Forest life; 2013) with Frédérique Apffel-Marglin and Roger Rumrrill and of the collective book titled Contemporary voices from Anima Mundi (2020) also in collaboration with Apffel-Marglin; book on knowledge and spirituality in many communities around the world. In 2017 he was honoured with the Haydée Santamaría medal, a prestigious award bestowed by La Casa de las Américas, Cuba. Carolina (Schneider) Comandulli is a Brazilian anthropologist and activist who has been involved since the early 2000s with indigenous peoples in the Amazon and Atlantic rainforests, at a research, professional and personal levels. She has held key positions in government and in policy building to engage with civil society and local indigenous organisations. She holds a BSc in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), an MSc in Anthropology and Ecology of Development and a PhD in Anthropology from the University College London (UCL). She currently works in the Extreme Citizen Science Research Group, at the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability of the Anthropology Department at UCL.

Learning points

  • What does the concept of “Cosmocentrism” mean for the speakers? How does this concept help us understand some of the basic differences between Indigenous ontologies – such as conceptions and modes of life of the Ashaninka of Apiwtxa in Brazil – and Western capitalist conceptions and extractivist practices around Nature, planet Earth, the Cosmos, and human and non-human life? What are some of those differences?
  • According to the speakers, what does “human exceptionalism” mean and why it is antagonistic to “cosmocentrism” and Indigenous ontologies
  • The Ashaninka of Apiwtxa in Brazil provide an important and relevant alternative with their ways of feeling/thinking and acting to the civilisation and ecological crisis we face today. What are the ways that this Amazonian people have built to provide such an alternative? What can we – from the West – learn from them?

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