Countering Modernity – Communal and Cooperative Models from Indigenous Peoples
As part of the 2021 Annual Conference of the American Anthropological Association, this bilingual (English/Spanish) Roundtable will engage 6 panelists and our audience on the topic of Indigenous communal lifeways and related strategies for practicing, honoring, and protecting those relational priorities in the communicative maelstrom of modernity. By emphasizing communal processes, the discussion will take up:
- the tensions of global vs. local community-building;
- the potential violences of representative democracies, the trope of nationhood, and other collective representations which erase Indigenous Peoples;
- the human exceptionalist perspective on identity;
- ethnographic evidence of individualist oppression in modern media, law, and markets;
- Indigenous relational and cooperative models including Buen Vivir, Living with Rom, and other alternatives that resist modernity;
- and best practices for communication, advocacy, and research as and among Indigenous Peoples.
We will conclude the Roundtable by questioning what models Indigenous Peoples offer for combating the hyper-individualism, standardization, and anonymity of mass-scale society. Please see your AAA program for the link to the Roundtable.
Morphy white paper Bird David white paper
Dussart white paper Macdonald white-paper
Abadia white paper Smith-Morris white paper