Pablo Wright
I am interested in anthropology of religion, myth, rituals, shamanism, magic, and dreams. My university studies in anthropology include: Licenciatura degree (University of Buenos Aires) and M.A. and Ph.D. (Temple University). I was Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions (Harvard), and Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen). I am Professor at the Anthropology Department of the University of Buenos Aires. In addition, I chair the Ethnology Section of the Institute of Anthropology, and am the director of the Anthropology of Religion Team at the Institute. My theoretical background stresses the anthropological study of symbols in different social, cultural and historical contexts, nurtured by phenomenology, hermeneutics, existential anthropology, and postcolonial approaches. I am interested in the different ways of ethnographic writing that best depict the ontological displacement ethnographic experience produces in our being-in-the-world. In addition, I've started an applied research line of antropología vial, which in English can be translated as "road anthropology", applying a cultural and symbolic approach to road behavior.
Address: Santa Rosa 391, (1640), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Address: Santa Rosa 391, (1640), Buenos Aires, Argentina
less
InterestsView All (25)
Uploads
Papers by Pablo Wright
This short text analyzes the symbolic dimensions of intangible heritage from an anthropological perspective. It examines the different kinds of materialities associated with culture, rituals, myths, stories, dreams and beliefs. I draw on the ideas of Peter Homans and Paul Ricœur to assess the paradoxical nature of intangible heritage and its processes of symbolic production.
En este trabajo realizo una crítica antropológica sobre algunos elementos perturbadores que atraviesan las discusiones contemporáneas de la geopolítica de conocimiento donde “el Sur” actúa como eje cardinal de una crítica política y cultural al “Norte” representado por el etnocentrismo euro-norteamericano. Dentro de este panorama, la misma idea del Sur parece depender de un posicionamiento cardinal, hemisférico y conceptual que se apoya en esas cartografías eurocéntricas del poder. Dicho esto, entonces, puede pensarse en algo “más allá del Sur”? Será pertinente un desarmado de brújulas, mapas, cartografías, que suponen ya esa espacialidad originaria? Podríamos colocarnos más allá de la imaginación cultural que construye el Sur como región utópica, suerte de anti-espacio reservorio de vías alternativas a nuestros dramas existenciales? Se ilustra aquí la posibilidad de explorar lugares del mundo que parecen “caerse del mapa” del Sur geográfico y epistemológico, donde pueden reconocerse procesos conceptuales y clasificatorios de la modernidad que, de hecho, en lo concreto encarnan múltiples modernidades. La exploración de campo refiere a (a) poblaciones indígenas de la Argentina, con énfasis en los Qom/Tobas del Chaco argentino y su concepción shamánica del poder y la vida; (b) a fronteras histórico-míticas de Nueva Zelanda donde la aparición de supuestos animales extintos corporiza sueños y percepciones de un pasado que la colonización inglesa estaba disolviendo; y finalmente, (c) a la historia de la ruta 1 de Níger que abrió los sellos del horizonte mítico-histórico local, cuya dinámica de movilidad vial más fluida, provocó el aumento de dramas ambientales y confusión en los mundos espirituales. Los tres casos muestran las complejas urgencias de la condición humana en devenires históricos particulares, uno de los elementos arquetípicos de la inmensa obra de J.M. Coetzee que aquí nos convoca, los que ameritan una reflexión crítica sobre los mapas político-conceptuales desde los cuales cartografiamos el mundo y las culturas como artefactos históricos efímeros pero significativos.
English
In this paper, I offer an anthropological critique of some troubling elements that cross contemporary discussions of the geopolitics of knowledge, in which "the South" functions as the cardinal axis of a political and cultural critique of " the "North" represented by Euro-American ethnocentrism. Within this panorama, the idea of the South itself seems to depend on a cardinal, hemispheric and conceptual positioning supported by these Eurocentric cartographies of power. So can you imagine something that is "beyond the South"? Does it make sense to defuse the compasses, maps and cartographies that already represent this primordial spatiality? Could we position ourselves beyond the cultural imagination that constructs the South as a utopian region, a kind of anti-spatial reservoir for alternative paths to our existential dramas? Here, the possibility of exploring places in the world that seem to "fall "off the map" of the geographical and epistemological South is illustrated, where conceptual and classificatory processes of modernity can be recognized, which in fact concretely embody several modernities. The fieldwork relates (a) to the indigenous peoples of Argentina, focusing on the Qom/Toba of the Chaco region and their shamanic conception of power and life; (b) to the historico-mythical frontiers of New Zealand, where the emergence of supposedly extinct animals embodies dreams and imaginings of a past that was dissolved by British colonization; and finally (c) to the story of Niger's Route 1, which opened the seals of the mytho-historical horizon whose dynamics of road mobility caused environmental drama and confusion in the spiritual worlds. The three cases reveal the complex urgencies of the human condition in specific historical contexts, one of the archetypal elements of J.M. Coetzee’s immense body of work that call us here, deserving critical reflection on political-conceptual maps of the world and cultures as ephemeral but meaningful historical artifacts.
a comparative analysis of two ethnographic cases of contemporary South
American shamanisms. In these cases, their cosmological and ritual frameworks display ontological thresholds acceded through specific technologies of the self that contest current assumptions about both the Christian and the scientific hegemonic worldviews. In the first case, I review an indigenous ethnic shamanism rooted in Qom/Toba tradition in Argentina’s Chaco region. In the second one, I analyze Santo Daime, a Brazilian ayahuasca religion that displays shamanic traits. To contextualize these cases, I introduce historical data of the constitution of Argentine and Brazilian socio-religious fields, within which these forms of shamanism would emerge. I provide ethnographic data about the history and main religious features of these shamanisms and my analysis stresses the technologies of the self unfolded to achieve a direct connection with the numinous.
This short essay reflects on the consequences of quarantine from the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic that affected the world in 2020 and 2022. I analyze the impact of this obligatory enclosure from an anthropological approach, especially considering the existential dimensions of corporality and how digital technological mediations led to the emergence of original proxemics and telematic intersubjectivity modes. The analysis makes a preliminary assessment of the impact of the pandemic and the quarantine, as well as the prospective implementation of these technologies on the
contemporary human ontological constitution.
Español
Este breve ensayo reflexiona sobre las consecuencias de la cuarentena a partir de la pandemia del SARS-COVID-19 que afectó el mundo entre 2020 y 2022. Analizo el impacto de este encerramiento obligatorio desde un enfoque antropológico, especialmente teniendo en cuanto las dimensiones existenciales de la corporalidad y cómo las mediaciones tecnológicas digitales llevaron a la emergencia de modos de proxémica e intersubjetividad telemática originales. El análisis evalúa de modo preliminar el impacto de la pandemia y la cuarentena y la prospectiva de la instalación de estas tecnologías sobre la constitución ontológica humana
contemporánea.
This paper presents a reflection on the ontological and epistemological assumptions of Anthropology and its stage of encountering the field: ethnography. For this purpose, and under a combined format of commented bibliography, essay and article, I present ideas posed by philosophers, social scientists and intellectuals who critique the modes of production of anthropological knowledge and the ontology of ethnography from the perspective of existentialism, radical pragmatism, phenomenology, and political economy. From my own field´ experiences among the Qom population of Formosa, and the epistemological ruptures produced by the visit of a Qom friend to Buenos Aires, I propose a common thread that recovers an existential critique of the anthropological discipline. The idea is to question the rigid positivism of classical Anthropology by proposing critical and reflective paths towards the realization of the praxis for a new, contemporary anthropological contract in our discipline.
Spanish
Este trabajo presenta una reflexión sobre los supuestos ontológicos y epistemológicos de la Antropología y de su momento de enfrentamiento al campo: la etnografía. Para ello, presento-bajo un formato combinado de bibliografía comentada, ensayo y artículo-ideas de pensadores vinculados a la Filosofía, las Ciencias Sociales y las Humanidades que, desde el existencialismo, el empirismo radical, la fenomenología y la economía política proponen críticas sobre los modos de producción de conocimiento antropológico y sobre la ontología de la etnografía. A partir de mis propias experiencias de campo con el Pueblo Qom de Formosa, y de las rupturas epistemológicas producidas por la visita de un amigo qom a Buenos Aires, planteo un hilo conductor que rescata una crítica existencial de la disciplina antropológica. La idea es poner en cuestión el positivismo rígido de la Antropología referida como clásica, para proponer modos críticos y reflexivos hacia la concreción de la praxis de un nuevo contrato antropológico contemporáneo en nuestra disciplina.
This work proposes the field of road anthropology that aims at analyzing the socio-cultural construction of road behavior, beginning with the Buenos Aires ethnographic case. From a symbolic and historical perspective, and mainly through auto-ethnography and participant observation, it is explored the meanings of road behavior and its tensions vis-à-vis legal norms, identifying key maneuvers in the street play, and their associated social values. Guided by the notions of habitus, ethos and performance, the ethnographic research intends to reach the native meanings of road events, its practical rules, social metaphors, its relationship with the practice of road citizenship, and the semiotic rebelliousness that defines it. Lastly, it is proposed the usefulness of road anthropology for advising public policies to reduce Argentina’s dangerously high rate of road accidents.
Spanish
Este trabajo introduce el campo de antropología vial cuyos objetivos son analizar la construcción sociocultural del comportamiento vial en general, comenzando con el caso etnográfico de Buenos Aires. Desde una perspectiva simbólica e histórica, el trabajo, a través principalmente de auto-etnografía y observación participante, explora los sentidos de la conducta vial y sus tensiones con la normativa legal, identificando maniobras clave y los valores sociales que se observan en el "juego de la calle". La investigación etnográfica guiada por las nociones de habitus, ethos y performance, apunta a acceder a los sentidos nativos del hecho vial, reconstruir su normativa práctica, las metáforas sociales compartidas colectivamente, su relación con el ejercicio de la ciudadanía vial y la rebeldía semiótica que la define. Se propone finalmente la utilidad de la antropología vial para el asesoramiento de políticas públicas para la eventual reducción de la alta siniestralidad vial argentina.