The counter-State and the cosmopolitical proposal: partial connections between ethnology and science studies

• Grant number: 14/16926-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: January 12, 2015
• End date: August 11, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Renato Sztutman
• Grantee: Renato Sztutman
• Host Investigator: Patrice Maniglier
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (Paris 10), France

Abstract

The aim of this project - grounded on a bibliographical and comparative survey - is to investigate a "partial connection" between the cosmopolitical problems (and proposals) raised among Amerindian and modern perspectives. More precisely, it tends to suggest a connection between contemporary Americanist anthropology and Science and Technology Studies, represented here especially by Stengers and Latour. This research intends to question the notion of "politics" in a moment when the old modern boundaries of nature and culture, subject and object, human and nonhuman have been put under suspicion by both the ethnography of non-modern populations and the contemporary claims concerning the very interweaving of science, environment and politics. In which sense such "partial connection" - at once an effort of comparison and the evaluation of an encounter between different worlds - might be fruitful to lead the ethnographcal investigation into the realm of political philosophy? (AU)