PSYCHE AND THE CARE OF LIFE: KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES OF COMMUNITY HEALTH AMONG INDIGENOUS AND AFRO-DESCENDANT PEOPLES IN ABYA YALA
This symposium proposes a transdisciplinary and intercultural space for dialogue on the ways in which the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples of Abya Yala understand, sustain, and re-create life, health, and the psyche from their own epistemologies, memories, community practices, and horizons of care and buen vivir.
In the face of the hegemonic biomedical model established for understanding and addressing the care of life and health, this symposium seeks to subvert this approach by making visible and strengthening perspectives that conceive of health as a psychosocial, communal, territorial, and culturally situated process. From a counter-hegemonic framework, psyche and health are understood as dimensions inseparable from history, territory, nature, the communal fabric, ancestrality, and everyday practices of care—dimensions that are traversed by experiences of colonialism, racism, and dispossession.
We invite the presentation of research, experiences of community work, theoretical-methodological reflections, as well as processes of dialogue of knowledges related to community health, community mental health, traditional medicine, and epistemologies of the collective care of life and territory in and with indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples.
The symposium seeks to foster exchange among researchers, community members, traditional authorities, social organizations, and professionals from different fields who work with and for indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, so as to recognize that these peoples are producers of knowledge and fundamental actors in the construction of alternatives for collective well-being and the care of life.
In a context of profound structural inequalities, racism, epistemicide, and civilizational crisis, this space invites reflection on the contributions of the knowledge and practices of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples toward deconstructing the psyche, health, and the care of life from intercultural, communal, and decolonial perspectives, thereby helping to strengthen epistemic justice, the plurality of knowledges, and the defense of life in Abya Yala.
