Anne Christine Taylor: ‘Amistades amazónicas’

(ES)

Anthropologist and ethnologist Anne-Christine Taylor will discuss the concept of friendship and, specifically, friendship in indigenous societies in the Amazon. She will be joined by fellow anthropologist Mari Luz Esteban.

The ethnography of indigenous societies in the Amazon offers us the opportunity to explore the paradox of friendship. In general, we describe friendship as a close relationship chosen between two individuals, distinct from family ties, more or less lasting, and usually involving people of the same sex and similar age. However, the willingness to form a special relationship with another person, based on elective affinities, seems to be universal and is also observed in many communities of gregarious animals, both wild and domestic. However, the relationship of friendship takes such variable and sometimes unexpected forms in humans that it is difficult to give a definition that is valid for all cultures. How can we explain the extreme variability in the forms of expression of a seemingly universal relationship?

Anne-Christine Taylor (1946) is an anthropologist and ethnologist. Her research work has focused primarily on the cultural and worldview of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon. Through extensive fieldwork, she has analyzed the notion of the individual in indigenous societies, shamanism, funeral rites, and the view of history, among other topics. She received her doctorate in the late 1970s under the guidance of Claude Lévi-Strauss and is currently director emeritus of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).