Perig Pitrou

Life as a process of making in the Mixe Highlands (Oaxaca, Mexico): towards a ‘general pragmatics’ of life

In contrast to Western philosophy, which has considered the distinction between life and the living to be fundamental, anthropology seems not to have given much thought to the difference between the two. However, the existence of an entity called ‘The One Who Makes Live’ among the Mixe, an Amerindian group living in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, proves that ethno-theories of non-Western peoples often make the distinction between the characteristics and vital processes of living beings (growth, degeneration, reproduction, etc.), on the one hand, and the more or less personified causes that produce them, on the other. Given these circumstances, this article pursues a two-fold objective. First, based on the results of ethnographic inquiry, it tries to describe the categories of nonhuman agents with which the Mixe understand this production or making of the living. Second, it suggests that, in parallel with numerous approaches developed by anthropologists past and present, the anthropology of life would benefit from an approach based on a ‘general pragmatics’ in order to better understand the diversity of conceptions of life.

Life Form and Form of Life within an Agentive Configuration: A Birth Ritual among the Mixe of Oaxaca, Mexico

Drawing on two years of fieldwork I carried out among the Mixe of Oaxaca (Mexico), I have suggested that the multiplicity of phenomena linked to life can be studied by using a pragmatics-based approach to map the agentive configurations within which vital processes appear and to delineate the participation of human and nonhuman agents in these processes. As an example of what this approach can do, this paper uses some of my ethnographic data to make some new arguments for interpreting life as a process of making in the context of a birth ritual. I will show how, within a regime of coactivity, humans and nonhuman agents participate together in changing the status of a child so that he/she can become an active person within his/her society. More generally, my aim is to explain how, beyond simple wordplay, the notions of “life forms” and “forms of life” can be conceptually articulated in anthropology.

Miniatures in Mesoamerica and the Andes: Theories of Life, Values, and Relatedness

The fact that we find miniatures in many societies, past and present, attests to their broad attractiveness to human beings. Scholars from a wide array of disciplines, such as history of art, ethnology, philosophy, and archaeology, strive to tease out the complex mechanisms behind their production and use (Mack 2007). The abundant literature related to this topic demonstrates ongoing efforts to unfold these artifacts’ status and functions, whose identification is complicated by the fact that they are embedded in multiple systems of relationships. Before we review the main streams of research into miniature, it is important to note that the concept of miniatures itself appears to be reductive because it stresses their small size, but this does not account for the relativity of scale. Dimensionality implies a relationship that is established between someone who is looking or manipulating and the object being viewed and handled. When seeing a miniature, adults may experience the realization that they have grown up. Conversely, when handled by a child, some miniatures may seem normally scaled to them. As Susan Stewart puts it: “There are no miniatures in nature; the miniature is a cultural product, the product of an eye performing certain operations, manipulating, and attending in certain ways to, the physical world” (1993:55). For this reason, even if we conventionally, and conveniently, talk about miniature and miniaturization—including in this special issue of Journal of Anthropological Research—we should not forget that we are actually dealing with issues raised by variations in scale. Claude lévi-Strauss (1962) aptly pointed this out in his description of the intellectual satisfaction rising from the contemplation of a miniature. Such a relational dimension not only frames the perception of an object, it also entails its fabrication. less famously, lévi-Strauss asserted that in addition to the aesthetic pleasure of perceiving an object as a whole, the impression of grasping how it is fabricated is delightful—as if the reduction in

Co-activity in Mesoamerica and in the Andes

Drawing on two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork among the Mixe in the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, I propose that certain ritual miniaturizations are used as a technique for inaugurating a regime of co-activity between human and nonhuman agents. In this analytic model, miniature elements not only refer to macroscopic activity but also involve categories of actions that humans perform at their own level. Even as they are relevant to interpretations of ritual deposits (sometimes called mesas), food offerings made to establish a relation of exchange with nonhuman agents, I also suggest that the goal of some ritual deposits is to use miniature elements and the perceptive effects they have to create a collaborative framework so that human and nonhuman agents will commit to carrying out a shared task. I present some examples of co-activity in Mesoamerica and in the Andes to suggest that this kind of regime of action constitutes, from both pragmatic and phenomenological points of view, a relational system that these peasant societies have in common.

Individu, famille, communauté. Niveaux d’organisation et émergence de la vie chez les Mixe de Oaxaca (Mexique)

Unlike the concept of origin, which treats the moment of appearance as a unique event, the notion of emergence – even more so when it is plural – suggests the idea of a multiplicity of moments during which appear new configurations, according to a logic combining ‘chance and necessity.’ This is why the natural sciences, which study life as an emergent process, develop explanatory models that go beyond the strictly causal approaches to address the dynamic dimension of the phenomenon. For the social sciences, especially the anthropology of life, this problem becomes even more difficult because the analysis should, in addition, take into account the variations, through space and time, in the conceptions of life and vital processes that humans elaborate. Drawing from an ethnographic investigation conducted among the Mixe of Oaxaca, Mexico, this article explores how these Amerindians think the emergence of new individuals in their community. The joint study of life cycle rituals – such as birth and wedding – and political rituals, involving poultry sacrifices made to an entity called ‘He, Who Makes Being Alive’, attests the constant aim to articulate the emergence of a new human life form with the development of competences in conformity with the form of life in which he/she will be inserted as a new center of activity. One of the challenges for the anthropology of life is to understand how the emergence of life – regarding both its physiological/physical dimension and its relational/behavioral dimension – involves several levels of organization (individual, family, community) that connect the biological existence of a human being with his process of becoming member of his community, especially when he fulfills political functions.