ABOUT THE BOOK

Indigenous people from Amazonia and Gran Chaco are not living apart from national or international market, but they take part in it according to their own patterns, which sometimes appear quite surprising.

Plants and trees are their main source of income. It does not mean nevertheless that they are managed as simple commodities or as mere objects of knowledge. Rather, they are often viewed as partakers of large relational networks, bringing together human people as well as animal and vegetal beings : in many cases, plants and animals are even considered as true Persons.

That was the reason why we decided to organize a symposium with a clear emphasis on this relational dimension. We present here eight selected papers from this panel. The topics are diverse, but all of them enlighten how such an approach opens new ways for the analysis, concerning everyday management of plants and ethnobotanical knowledge, as well as commoditisation, which is anything but a question of strictly economic rationality.

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Los pueblos indígenas de Amazonía y del Gran Chaco no quedan fuera de la economía nacional e internacional, pero su integración en el mercado se da según pautas propias, a veces muy sorprendentes.

Plantas y árboles constituyen la principal fuente de rendas, pero eso no implica que sean tratados como simples objetos de comercio o de conocimiento. Mu-chas veces son considerados mas bien como formando parte de redes de relaciones interpersonales que unen por igual seres humanos, animales y vegetales.

Las ocho contribuciones presentadas aquí muestran como esa prioridad otorgada a los criterios relacionales cambia todo, tanto en el manejo cotidiano de las plantas y de los conocimientos etnobotánicos como en su comercialización: tiene muy poco que ver con una racionalidad estrictamente económica.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Marc Lenaerts holds a PhD in Social Sciences (Anthropology) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium (ULB, 2004). He published a revised version of his PhD in L'Harmattan, Paris, other books as co-editor, and his articles appeared in several academic journals such as L'Homme, Anthropos, the Journal of Ethnobotany and the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine. He is currently teaching in various Belgian institutions : Royal Academy for Fine Arts of Brussels, Université Libre de Bruxelles and Université de Liège.

Ana María Spadafora holds a PhD in Philosophy and Letters (Anthropology area) from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She published numerous scientific articles in national and international academic journals about indigenous people from Gran Chaco, indigenous rights and traditional knowledge. She is currently researcher in the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) de Argentina and lecturer in the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (UBA) y de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO-Sede Argentina).