The aim of this symposium is to reconsider the Isthmo-Colombian region (Hoopes and Fonseca 2003) based on the concepts of macro-region and sphere of interaction, shifting away from the classic notion of “culture area” toward analytical frameworks that privilege relationality, circulation and the historicity of social processes.<\/p>\n
Aimed at ethnologists and anthropologists working both in this macro-region and in neighboring regions\u2014Amazonia, the Andes, Mesoamerica and the Guianas\u2014the symposium seeks to contribute to a renewed debate on the historical and contemporary configuration of the region, sustained for more than a decade. The common starting point is to understand the Isthmo-Colombian space not as a homogeneous and delimited unit, but as a web of connections, “family resemblances” and relational continuities that form a dynamic continuum traversed by deep historical trajectories, persistent exchanges and processes of transformation.<\/p>\n
Despite its marked internal diversity and more than five centuries of colonialism, recent research has highlighted the existence of shared principles across different Isthmo-Colombian contexts: regional sociocosmologies (Halbmayer 2020), relational forms between humans and other beings (Mart\u00ednez Mauri and Halbmayer 2020), cultural configurations linked to the Chibchan sphere (Ni\u00f1o Vargas and Beckerman 2024), as well as conceptions of cataclysms, regeneration and the continuity of life (Halbmayer and Mart\u00ednez Mauri 2025). Among these elements, certain ontological and cosmopolitical convergences stand out regarding personhood, territory, agency, authority and the relationships between different collectives of beings.<\/p>\n
Building on these perspectives, we invite ethnographic, historical and anthropological contributions that explore the dynamics of circulation, exchange and articulation among different regions of indigenous America. We are especially interested in papers examining long-term continuities and transformations, processes of transregional connection, as well as the ways in which different ontological conceptions participate in the constitution of macro-regions and spheres of interaction that transcend the conventional boundaries of culture areas.<\/p>\n
References:
\nHalbmayer, E. and Mart\u00ednez Mauri, M. 2025. “Cataclysms and planetary transformations in Isthmo-Colombian indigenous societies.” Revista Espa\u00f1ola de Antropolog\u00eda Americana, 55(2): 177-318.
\nHalbmayer, Ernst, ed. 2020. Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. London, New York: Routledge.
\nMart\u00ednez Mauri, M\u00f2nica and Ernst Halbmayer. 2020. “Offerings, exchanges and other modes of relation in contemporary indigenous socio-cosmologies of the Isthmo-Colombian area.” Tabula Rasa, 36: 19-44.
\nNi\u00f1o Vargas, Juan Camilo and Stephen Beckerman, eds. 2024. Chibchan Universes. New Approaches to the Unity and Human Diversity of the Isthmo-Colombian Area. Bogot\u00e1: Ediciones Uniandes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","simposio_area":[44],"class_list":["post-10306","simposio","type-simposio","status-publish","hentry","simposio_area-antropologia-y-antropologia-social"],"yoast_head":"\n