Creating a Cosmopolitics of Climate Change, 2021-2025

The deposit consists of approximately 70 hours of conversations conducted with a Callawaya man, Feliciano Patty, of the village of Ninokorin, municipality of Charazani, Apolobamba, Bolivia. The recordings were undertaken on the understanding we were co-authoring a book about 'climate change', and change more generally as the term locally implies, in the area, especially in the period spanned by his lifetime.

Radically, the method used is conversation. This allows the interlocuters an equal role in deciding the content of the sessions. The project Creating a Cosmopolitics of Climate Change emphasises that indigenous definitions and understandings of what climate change constitutes are to come to the fore, and this would be impossible with interviews defined by the researcher's perceptions of what climate change constitutes in the first place. The questions posed are thus loose, and allow space for 'equivocation' of understandings of the terms used, following Feliciano's lead in discussing what he considers of the most importance. The parameters of 'climate change' as defined in our co-authored book are drawn from this.

Prominent themes include the decline of collective shared labour called ayni, governed by local norms of reciprocity and mutual aid, a key element of change, as well as the changing nature of time itself, and of space-time or pacha: Feliciano advocates a strategy of 'walking with the pacha' in a context of climate change. An agricultural calendar fixed by festive dates is changing with the climate. Changing territorializations, including state sponsored land reform and how this contrasts with collective and flexible access to territorial resources distributed over space and a vital resource under climate change, are also important, as are the changing habits of young people, migrating to the cities and into cash economies. Changing strategies allowing farmers to continue to produce under climate change are also explored.