Browsing by Author "Burman, Anders"

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    As though we had no spirit. Ritual, politics and existence in the Aymara quest for decolonization
    (2009-01-30T12:07:24Z) Burman, Anders
    ‘Colonialism’ and ‘decolonization’ have been dealt with by postcolonial studies and, more recently, by scholars identified with the ‘de-colonial turn’. At the same time, in the ethnopolitically charged context of contemporary Bolivian society, colonialism and decolonization have become issues of political, existential and even cosmological import. This thesis identifies a need to root the ‘de-colonial turn’ in specific lifeworlds and explores the dimensions of meaning that inform and lend existential and cosmological import to indigenous notions of colonialism and decolonization. The particular subjects with which this thesis engages may be pinned down to four points: Firstly, the thesis is a close-up study of the notions of colonialism and decolonization held by ethnopolitically engaged ritual specialists and their young apprentices in contemporary Aymara society. It also examines the cosmological framework within which such notions are formed, understood and awarded meaning. Secondly, it is a study of ‘decolonizing practices’ and of the relation between ‘ritual practice’ and ‘cosmological knowledge’ as well as of the existential implications of ritual and its transformative experiences for the young apprentices. Thirdly, this thesis compares the notions of colonialism, decolonization and the decolonizing practices of the ritual specialists and apprentices with official state discourse on colonialism and decolonization and the ‘decolonizing politics’ launched by the Evo Morales administration. Fourthly, the thesis explores how Aymara cosmological notions of ‘illness’ and ‘cure’, ‘self’ and ‘other’ are located within fields of national political power, ethnopolitical ideologies and indigenous mobilizations. It inquires into how ethnopolitical notions of the world are informed by such cosmological notions while simultaneously being incorporated into the cosmological world of the Aymara ritual specialists.
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    Swedish Human Ecology, Political Ecology, and the Struggle for Interdisciplinarity: Bridging the Socio-Natural Divide in Research and Education
    (2025) Cederlöf, Gustav; Burman, Anders; Hornborg, Alf
    Interdisciplinary research and education on human-environment relations has a natural place in many Anglo-American geography and anthropology departments. In Sweden, however, critical scholarship across the socio-natural divide has largely been outsourced to the interdisciplinary field of human ecology. Since the 1970s, Swedish human ecologists have sought to integrate perspectives from the social and natural sciences, giving rise to challenging questions associated with interdisciplinary research. In this article, three ‘generations’ of Swedish human ecologists reflect on the development of Swedish human ecology as an interdisciplinary research field, intimately related to geography and anthropology, through its institutionalization at the universities of Lund and Gothenburg. Focusing on a radical tradition of Swedish human ecology, the field is situated in relation to political ecology to broaden the Anglo-American origin stories that pattern this cognate interdisciplinary field.