Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología

Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol | eISSN 2011-4273 | ISSN 1900-5407

Letting Oneself Be Affected by the Mother: An Approach to Kogi Affect Based on Ethnography and Ecological Psychology

No. 48 (2022-07-01)
  • Silvia Tibaduiza Sierra
    Universidad del Norte, Colombia
  • Virgilio Gil Lozano
    Universidad del Magdalena, Colombia
  • María del Carmen Amarís Macías
    Universidad del Norte, Colombia
https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda48.2022.04

Abstract

This article presents some of the results of an investigation that, following the framework of ecological psychology, explores the relationship between the indigenous Kogi people and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia. Based on ethnographic research, it investigates the particular relationship with the Sierra in bodily and affective terms, under the notion of affordances, problematized by the ethnographic information collected in two communities in relation to this link. To this end, we used the ethnographic method guided by the affective component proposed by Favret-Saada. The study was based on fieldwork with participants belonging to two Kogi communities in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, from 2016 to 2020. The article highlights the relevance of the concept of affordances to think about the relationships that the Kogi have with the Mother, which includes its strong affective component. By recognizing that these relationships exceed the understandings proposed in ecological psychology, it opens the possibility of altering the concepts with which we reach the field. In this sense, the Mother, a living entity connected to the indigenous people, complicates the notion of environment in ecological psychology. The article thus offers a reflection on the possibility of allowing oneself to be affected analytically and corporeally, as a way of broadening the research horizons of ecological psychology, while presenting an alternative to culturalist approaches to the study of the relationship that indigenous peoples maintain with their territories.

Keywords: Affordances, ethnography, Kogi, Mother, ecological psychology, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

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