How Forests Think. Eduardo Kohn
Couture, John Galaty, Nick King, Katherine Lemons, Margaret Lock, Ron Niezen, Eugene Raikhel, Tobias Rees, Alberto Sánchez, Colin Scott, George Wenzel, and Allan Young. Thank you also to my wonderful undergraduates, especially those who took the courses “Anthropology and the Animal” and “Anthropology beyond the Human.” I am also grateful to the graduate students who read and critically engaged parts of my book manuscript: Amy Barnes, Mónica Cuéllar, Darcie De Angelo, Arwen Fleming, Margaux Kristjansson, Sophie Llewelyn, Brodie Noga, Shirin Radjavi, and Daniel Ruiz Serna. Finally, I am indebted to Sheehan Moore for the help he provided as my able research assistant.
Many people in Montreal and elsewhere have, over the years, supported and inspired my work. First and foremost I wish to thank Donna Haraway. Her refusal to allow me to grow complacent in my thinking is for me the mark of a true friend. I also wish to thank Pepe Almeida, Angel Alvarado, Felicity Aulino, Gretchen Bakke, Vanessa Barreiro, João Biehl, Michael Brown, Karen Bruhns, Matei Candea, Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Michael Cepek, Chris Chen, John Clark, Biella Coleman, André Costopoulos, Mike Cowan, Veena Das, Nais Dave, Marisol de la Cadena, MaryJo DelVecchio Good, Bob Desjarlais, Nick Dew, Alicia Díaz, Arcadio Díaz Quiñones, Didier Fassin, Carlos Fausto, Steve Feld, Allen Feldman, Blenda Femenias, Enrique Fernández, Jennifer Fishman, Agustín Fuentes, Duana Fullwiley, Chris Garces, Fernando García, the late Clifford Geertz, Ilana Gershon, Eric Glassgold, Maurizio Gnerre, Ian Gold, Byron Good, Mark Goodale, Peter Gose, Michel Grignon, Geoconda Guerra, Rob Hamrick, Clara Han, Susan Harding, Stefan Helmreich, Michael Herzfeld, Kregg Hetherington, Frank Hutchins, Sandra Hyde, Tim Ingold, Frédéric Keck, Chris Kelty, Eben Kirksey, Tom Lamarre, Hannah Landecker, Bruno Latour, Jean Lave, Ted Macdonald, Setrag Manoukian, Carmen Martínez, Ken Mills, Josh Moses, Blanca Muratorio, Paul Nadasdy, Kristin Norget, Janis Nuckolls, Mike Oldani, Ben Orlove, Anand Pandian, Héctor Parión, Morten Pederson, Mario Perín, Michael Puett, Diego Quiroga, Hugh Raffles, Lucinda Ramberg, Charlie Reeves, Lisa Rofel, Mark Rogers, Marshall Sahlins, Fernando Santos-Granero, Patrice Schuch, Natasha Schull, Jim Scott, Glenn Shepard, Kimbra Smith, Barb Smuts, Marilyn Strathern, Tod Swanson, Anne-Christine Taylor, Lucien Taylor, Mike Uzendoski, Ismael Vaccaro, Yomar Verdezoto, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Norm Whitten, Eileen Willingham, Yves Winter, and Gladys Yamberla.
Many tropical biologists taught me over the years about their field and allowed me to bounce ideas off of them. David Benzing and Steve Hubbell were early mentors. Thanks also to Selene Baez, Robyn Burnham, Paul Fine, and Nigel Pitman. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to immerse myself in this area of study through the tropical ecology field course run by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) in Costa Rica. Quito has a vibrant and warm community of biologists, and I thank the late Fernando Ortíz Crespo, Giovanni Onore and Lucho Coloma at the Universidad Católica, as well as Walter Palacios, Homero Vargas, and especially David Neill at the Herbario Nacional del Ecuador for so generously taking me in. This project involves a sizable ethnobiological component, and I am grateful to all the specialists who helped me identify my specimens. I would especially like to thank David Neill once again for his careful revision of my botanical collections. I am also indebted to Efraín Freire for his work with these collections. For their botanical determinations, I wish to acknowledge the following individuals (followed by the herbaria they were affiliated with when they made the identifications): M. Asanza (QCNE), S. Baez (QCA), J. Clark (US), C. Dodson (MO), E. Freire (QCNE), J.P. Hedin (MO), W. Nee (NY), D. Neill (MO), W. Palacios (QCNE), and T.D. Pennington (K). I wish to thank G. Onore, as well as M. Ayala, E. Baus, C. Carpio, all at the time at QCAZ; and D. Roubick (STRI) for determining my invertebrate collections. I wish to thank L. Coloma as well as J. Guayasamín and S. Ron, at the time at QCAZ, for determining my herpetofauna collections. I am grateful to P. Jarrín (QCAZ) for determining my mammal collections. Finally, I wish to thank Ramiro Barriga of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional for determining my fish collections.
This project would not have been possible without the generous support of many institutions. I am grateful for a Fulbright Grant for Graduate Study and Research Abroad, a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Research Abroad Grant, a University of Wisconsin–Madison Latin American and Iberian Studies Field Research Grant, a Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Pre-Doctoral Grant, and a grant from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC).
I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to present the book’s entire argument through visiting professorships at Oberlin College (for which I thank Jack Glazier) and at L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) by the generous invitation of Philippe Descola. I have also presented portions of the argument at Carleton University, the University of Chicago, the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales sede Ecuador (FLACSO), Johns Hopkins University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Toronto, and Yale University. An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared in American Ethnologist.
Numerous people have engaged with the book as a whole. I cannot thank Olga González, Josh Reno, Candace Slater, Anna Tsing, and Mary Weismantel enough for their stimulating, thoughtful, and constructive reviews. I am grateful to David Brent, Priya Nelson, and Jason Weidemann for their sustained interest in this project. I wish to give special thanks to Pete Skafish and Alexei Yurchak, who took time from their busy lives to carefully read large portions of the book (and to discuss them with me at length via Skype), and I am especially indebted to Lisa Stevenson for critically reading and meticulously editing the entire manuscript. Finally, I wish to thank Reed Malcolm, my editor at the University of California Press, for being jazzed by what must surely have seemed like a risky project. I also wish to thank Stacy Eisenstark; my patient copy editor, Sheila Berg; and my project manager, Kate Hoffman.
I owe so much to my family members for all they have given me. I could not have had a more generous uncle than Alejandro Di Capua. I wish to thank him and his family for always welcoming me into their Quito home. My uncle Marco Di Capua, who shares my love for Latin American history and science, was, along with his family, always interested in hearing about my work, and for this I am most grateful. I also wish to express my gratitude to Riccardo Di Capua and all my Ecuadorian Kohn cousins. I especially wish to thank the late Vera Kohn for reminding me how to think in wholes.
I am fortunate to have had the unfailing love and support of my parents, Anna Rosa and Joe, and my sisters, Emma and Alicia. My mother was the first to teach me to notice things in the woods; my father, how to think for myself; and my sisters, how to think about others.
I am indebted to my mother-in-law, Frances Stevenson, who spent several of her summer vacations on lakes in Quebec, Ontario, and the Adirondacks watching the kids while I wrote. I am also grateful to my father-in-law, Romeyn Stevenson, and his wife, Christine, for understanding that this other kind of “work” I always seemed to bring to the farm would keep me away from many more pressing chores.
Finally, thank you, Benjamin and Milo, for putting up with all this “’versity” stuff, as you put it. You teach me every day how to see my university work as your kind of play. Gracias. And thank you, Lisa, for everything; for inspiring me, for helping me both to grow and to recognize my limits, and for being such a wonderful companion in this life of ours.
Introduction: Runa Puma
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte . . .
[Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was
that savage forest, dense and difficult . . .]
—Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Canto I [trans. Mandelbaum]
Settling down to sleep under our hunting camp’s thatch lean-to in the foothills of Sumaco Volcano, Juanicu warned me, “Sleep faceup! If a jaguar comes he’ll see you can look back at him and he won’t bother you. If you sleep facedown he’ll think you’re aicha [prey; lit., “meat” in Quichua] and he’ll attack.” If, Juanicu was saying, a jaguar sees you as a being capable of looking back—a self like himself, a you—he’ll leave you alone. But if he should come to see you as prey—an it—you may well become dead