Co-responding with a Parrot in Amazonia: Cosmopolitical Engagements and Ethnography

eng

Authors

• Taynã Tagliati University of Bonn

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30676/jfas.147088

Abstract

More-than-human beings consistently challenge ethnographic practices. However, ethnographic training has not consistently adopted such actors as irrefutable subjects of field research. In this article, I describe how the relationship between a parrot, a Kayapó shaman, and myself as a researcher impacted my ethnographic practice and research data. I aim to establish a framework to make more-than-humans' accountability evident in ethnography. I argue for creative ways of engaging with more-than-humans, suggesting "parrolitics"  as a specific kind of cosmopolitics done with and by parrots. I demonstrate how being available and empathetic to more-than-humans was crucial to developing attentive patience as a skill, allowing me to engage with a parrot interlocutor, directly influencing my relationship with the animal’s companion, a human shaman. Combining multispecies ethnography and autoethnography, I contribute to both theories by using embodied affection to establish a solid connection between them. Finally, this study demonstrates that moving beyond established approaches that reduce animals to symbolic resources can offer new and refreshing perspectives for ethnographic work.

Keywords: multispecies ethnography, autoethnography, more-than-human, Kayapó, attentive patience, affection, parrolitics