Humans, Non-Humans and Health in the Amazon Forest

S. 94

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Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Landscape and Human Health: Forests, Parks and Green Care. May 17 - 19, 2017, Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, Austria: (2017) , S. 94

The Amazon displays a level of social and environmental complexity that is not easily intelligible from a Western
perspective. For example, human and non-human entities in the Amazon engage in social relationships governed by altruism, reciprocity and diplomacy with a view to achieve some sort of ‘balance’ which, if obtained, results in ‘abundance’ for all – especially of health and well-being. If the balance is broken, health and wellbeing
disappears and punishment in the form of illnesses, accidents, food shortages, and all manner of misfortune
follows. In many Amazonian societies, balanced and unbalanced situations follow up one another in cyclical
fashion in rhythm with the boom and bust of extractive economies (e.g. rubber tapping, fur trade, illegal crops,
timber extraction).
Keywords | Colombian Amazon; Abundance; Forest and welfare; Cosmopolitics; New materialism, Ethnography, Posthumanism; Flat ontology