No, these two different temporal relations do not create confusion or a limiting binary. ![]() Yes, Cañari child-cow relations are marked by Andean cosmo-onto-epistemologies. Yes, Cañari child-cow relations are marked by “dominant settler reckonings of time” ( Rifkin, 2017: vii). Instead of thinking of Cañari children’s relations with cows as in between two marked temporalities, we argue that the fact the children, families and cows we collaborated with move back and forth between capitalist and Indigenous temporal lifeworlds does not mean they are living in “rigidity” or “hybridity.” Alternatively, we conceptualize Cañari children’s relations with cows and their participation in daily milk production as knitted within ch’ixi temporalities. The notion of renacientes evokes an existence that derives from an Indigenous onto-epistemology, yet it is an existence considered by the community as not Indigenous enough, not white enough, not modern enough and not traditional enough.Ĭusicanqui’s work allows us to extend Ecuadorian childhood scholarship that depicts children as negotiating multiple temporal frameworks ( Grace, 2020 Swanson, 2010). We draw on the ch’ixi concept-metaphor because it resonates with how the families we collaborated with referred to themselves: as renacientes 1 (someone who reinvents a life). The idea, Cusicanqui (2010) forcefully argues, is that a ch’ixi world both “antagonizes and complements” dual attributes (p. Thinking with ch’ixi epistemology demands “inhabiting contradictions without succumbing to a schizophrenic collectivity” ( 2018: 31). Ch’ixi refers to the Andean reality in which “multiple cultural differences coexist in parallel and do not fuse” ( 2010: 7), as they do in terms such as the “double-bind” mestizaje (having both Cañari and Spanish inheritances). ![]() Ch’ixi, Cusicanqui (2010) explains, is a “powerful image to think the coexistence of heterogeneous elements that do not aspire to be fused and that do not produce a fuller and more encompassing new term” (p. Rather than characterizing children’s relations with cows/milk production as ambivalent, we work with Cusicanqui’s ch’ixi epistemology/cosmology/ethos/subjectivity, avoiding Western binarism. These relations have become one of the primary means of subsistence for families in the Ecuadorian Andes. We draw on Cusicanqui’s (2010, 2018) scholarship on Andean sociology and our ethnographic research with Cañari families to argue that Cañari children’s relations with cows and milk production are fueled by both “exploitative capitalist” ( Rowland, 2019: 2) and Andean relationalities that cannot be thought as opposites. This article considers the intersection of multiple and, at times, seemingly conflicting temporalities in Andean childhood-cow relations.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |