Research Interests
Santos-Granero in Tierra Adentro, Colombia
Anthropology; Amazonian history and culture; Amazonian regional economies.
My research interests, like those of many Latin American anthropologists doing anthropology “at home”, have oscillated between the classical topics of social and cultural anthropology –kinship and morality, power and authority, shamanism and ritual to mention just a few- and the more contemporary and applied issues of rural anthropology -land tenure and use, regional markets, civil rights, and political struggles. My research on Amerindian philosophies of power, shamanism and mythical discourse, on the one hand, and on colonization, regional economies and the building of local civil societies, on the other, reflects this duality. A duality that derives as much from personal preferences as from an attempt to conciliate the demands of academic anthropology with the very urgent needs of the Amazonian indigenous peoples, who are amongst the most marginal and ignored social groups in Latin America. Common to these two research fields is a permanent interest on historical processes and transformations, for although I do not believe that knowledge of the past will prevent us from repeating past errors, I do believe that only by knowing the past can we fully understand the present.
Current Research
Other Research
- Research on Amazonian Regional Economies
- Research on Language, Culture and History
- Research on The Occult Life of Things
- Research on Native Amazonian Friendships