A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
New Practices of Cultural Truth Making: Evidence Work in Negotiations with State Authorities
Authors: Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Marja-Liisa Honkasalo
Publisher: WILEY
Publication year: 2020
Journal: Anthropology of Consciousness
Journal name in source: ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Journal acronym: ANTHROPOL CONSCIOUS
Volume: 31
Issue: 1
First page : 63
Last page: 90
Number of pages: 28
ISSN: 1053-4202
eISSN: 1556-3537
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/anoc.12118(external)
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/315019/FIN_AoC2019.Virtanen_Honkasalo.pdf?sequence=1(external)
Abstract
This article looks at negotiations with state authorities and the evidentiary criteria they create in culturally contrasting contexts when phenomena deal with elements that for the dominant society are conceptualized as "supernatural." We draw from the level of experiences of other-than-human beings, especially spirits and "ungraspable" presences, as social practices in and of themselves as well as acts of mobilizing those which are meaningful for knowledge production in Indigenous Amazonia and North European contexts. Our two cases show how in state territorial protection debates and health services, visibility, quantification, measurability, Euro-American dominant, mainly binary, and bounded concepts are employed to create the grounds of validity. Yet, for actual individual or collective experiences, new types of evidence work can emerge in collaborations. Thus, this article sheds light on the needs for contextual and communicative actions to overcome contrasting onto-epistemologies in the context of the state.
This article looks at negotiations with state authorities and the evidentiary criteria they create in culturally contrasting contexts when phenomena deal with elements that for the dominant society are conceptualized as "supernatural." We draw from the level of experiences of other-than-human beings, especially spirits and "ungraspable" presences, as social practices in and of themselves as well as acts of mobilizing those which are meaningful for knowledge production in Indigenous Amazonia and North European contexts. Our two cases show how in state territorial protection debates and health services, visibility, quantification, measurability, Euro-American dominant, mainly binary, and bounded concepts are employed to create the grounds of validity. Yet, for actual individual or collective experiences, new types of evidence work can emerge in collaborations. Thus, this article sheds light on the needs for contextual and communicative actions to overcome contrasting onto-epistemologies in the context of the state.
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