Is the “Environment” at Stake? : The “Not Only” Perspective of Political Ontology

モンダイ　ハ　カンキョウ　デ　アル　ノカ　ソレ　ダケ　デ　ハ　ナイ　ポリティカル　オントロジー　ノ　アプローチ

Kanzaki, Hayato

オオサカ ダイガク ダイガクイン ニンゲン カガク ケンキュウカ シャカイガク ニンゲンガク ジンルイガク ケンキュウシツ

Sociology, Anthropology and Philosophy, Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University

存在論的転回

先住民

環境

政治

Political ontology

Ontological turn

Indigenous people

Environment

Politics

Research Notes

This article provides an overview of the framework of political ontology (PO) as elaborated by Mario Blaser, Marisol de la Cadena, and Arturo Escobar. Recently, Japanese anthropologists have translated key works of the socalled “ontological turn” and thereby formed general understandings of this theoretical movement; however, such research has not included PO. This article reviews the works of the above-named authors and presents an overview of their main analytical points for the purpose of sharing ideas of PO in this language. Inspired by the concepts of the actor-network theory and multinaturalism, both of which re-consider the natureculture dichotomy, PO tends to focus on cases in which extractivist or environmentalist practices confl ict with those of indigenous people. Whereas political economy and political ecology assume that what is at stake in such situations is the “environment,” PO perceives these clashes to embody a confl ict between different “worlds.” In that regard, what we call the “environment” is not only an object of modern knowledge but also emerges as “persons” through indigenous concepts and practices. PO fi rst analyzes historical contexts to consider how nation-states, the market economy, scientists, indigenous leaders, community members, and other entities interact with nonhumans. Second, it investigates the types of concepts that indigenous people refer to and perform. For example, what scientists call “an animal” can also be the spirit with whom people maintain reciprocity relations. The third point of PO is the hegemony of western ontology, which reduces complex systems of indigenous knowledge to quaint elements of “belief” or “culture” that are not treated seriously in modern politics. The PO framework also examines what de la Cadena calls “our conversations” between the ethnographer and local interlocuters, which entail an encounter between two different worlds. Borrowing the notion of “equivocation” from Viveiros de Castro, PO shows how misunderstandings about what is at stake render such communications multivocal and opens up political heterogeneity based on the “uncommon world.”