All alike anyway: an Amazonian ethics of incommensurability

Walker, Harry ORCID: 0000-0001-9879-4045 (2022) All alike anyway: an Amazonian ethics of incommensurability. In: Pelkmans, Mathijs and Walker, Harry, (eds.) How People Compare. Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 85 - 104. ISBN 9781032229973

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Abstract

Urarina people of Amazonian Peru rarely make explicit comparisons of a kind that would focus attention on differences between entities being compared, especially when this could imply, or facilitate, a value judgement. As such, the kinds of comparisons in which anthropologists routinely indulge – of groups and cultural practices, or forms of life – seem to be all but absent, as do interpersonal comparisons of the kind well-described by social comparison theory in psychology. This chapter examines the various forms of thinking and social practice to which an ethics of non-comparison gives rise, arguing that it is closely related to a general reluctance to assume or assert knowledge of the capacities of others: a kind of evaluative abstinence that ultimately amounts to an important way of showing respect. By recognising the singularity of persons and things – not only their incommensurability, but also interdependency – Urarina people avoid establishing relations of dominance and the imposition of hierarchy.

Item Type:	Book Section
Official URL:	https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003283669
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author
Divisions:	Anthropology
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology
Date Deposited:	27 Mar 2024 17:21
Last Modified:	27 Mar 2024 17:30
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/122514

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