How dogs dream: Amazonian natures and the politics of transspecies engagement

• Published in: American ethnologist Vol. 34; no. 1; pp. 3 - 24
• Main Author: KOHN, EDUARDO
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-02-2007; American Anthropological Association; American Ethnological Society; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Amazon; Amazonia; Animal behaviour; Animal cognition; Animality and Humanity; Animals; anthropology of life; Canines; Cognitive problems, arts and sciences, folk traditions, folklore; Concept of being; Dogs; Domestic animals; Dreams; Ethnography; Ethnology; human-animal relations; Humans; Jaguars; multinaturalism; Nature; nonhuman selves; perspectivism; Predators; Semiotic anthropology; Semiotics; Soul; Symbolic anthropology. Traditional thought, symbolism; South America; Amazonia; Amazon River; Amerindian; Nature; nonhuman selves; human-animal relations; Human-animal relation; anthropology of life; perspectivism; Enigma; Anthropology; Ethnology; Interpretation; multlnaturalism; Dream; Amazonia; Dog; semiotics
• ISSN: 0094-0496; 1548-1425
• DOI: 10.1525/ae.2007.34.1.3

Under the rubric of an "anthropology of life," I call for expanding the reach of ethnography beyond the boundaries of the human. Drawing on research among the Upper Amazonian Runa and focusing, for heuristic purposes, on a particular ethnological conundrum concerning how to interpret the dreams dogs have, I examine the relationships, both intimate and fraught, that the Runa have with other lifeforms. Analytical frameworks that fashion their tools from what is unique to humans (language, culture, society, and history) or, alternatively, what humans are commonly supposed to share with animals are inadequate to this task. By contrast, I turn to an embodied and emergentist understanding of semiosis-one that treats sign processes as inherent to life and not just restricted to humans-as well as to an appreciation for Amazonian preoccupations with inhabiting the points of view of nonhuman selves, to move anthropology beyond "the human," both as analytic and as bounded object of study.