Abstract

MIRANDA PEREZ, José María. Affecting One Another. Ethnographic Considerations on Collaborative Relations and Misunderstandings in an Indigenous Community in the Puna of Jujuy, Argentina. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2022, n.47, pp.47-70.  Epub May 17, 2022. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda47.2022.03.

Using Favret-Saada’s methodological reflections on affectation, in this article, I will provide an analytical description of collectivization practices in the aboriginal community of San Miguel de Colorados (Northwest Argentina) and their relationship with other forms of collective management. The records I am going to comment on are based on my ethnographic experience as a researcher and co-director of a community project to publish a book on the history of Colorados. This led me and the families of the community to organize the work and decisions in very different ways, giving rise to a series of complaints, claims, and disagreements that have impacted the development of the project in many different ways. Following Favret-Saada’s conceptualizations of the importance of involuntary and non-representational communication in social praxis -or what Stengers calls the pragmatic dimension-, I describe how Coloradans and I are mutually, but differentially, affected by the book project. The idea is to explain the relational positions that mobilize these affectations, to demonstrate that this involuntary communication is rooted in a pragmatic misunderstanding; a misunderstanding between a definition of collective action as the result of representative consensus and another in which community decisions are formed through the temporary -and often conflictive- alignment of families and their points of view. This analysis is intended to contribute to anthropological reflection in collaborative contexts by considering the implications of native theories and practices of collective organization.

Keywords : Affecting; Andean studies; community projects; indigenous and territorial conflicts; misunderstanding.

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