In Eduardo Kohn’s “How Dogs Dream”, Kohn delves into the life of the Upper Amazonian Runa and attempts to analyze dogs’ dreams by understanding the relationship of the Runa with other lifeforms. Unlike previous frameworks of anthropology, Kohn focuses not only on “the human” and their interpretation of their culture, but Kohn studies the interactions between humans and the nonhuman selves of the Amazon.
The core mission of anthropology seeks to understand the differences of language, culture, society and history among a wide-range of groups of people. Anthropology utilizes those four characteristics of humans as analytics for study and observation. Eduardo Kohn challenges the norms of anthropology by trying to reach beyond the standard analytics …show more content…
Kohn’s approach benefits the study of anthropology and the process of obtaining ethnographies by placing importance on other living selves in addition to humans. Kohn expands the discipline by moving past the restricted and limited observation of human life. Kohn details the beneficial aspects of the anthropology of life, “The approach I advocate seeks to be attentive to the dander-fraught, provisional, and highly tenuous attempts at communication—in short, the politics—involved in the interactions among different kinds of selves that inhabit very different, and often unequal, positions” (Kohn 18). The majority of ethnographies focus on humans within an indigenous group but neglect their interactions with non-human lifeforms. By invoking Kohn’s approach, the study of anthropology is more encompassing of reality rather than interpretations alone. For example, the Runa guide and advise their dogs into adulthood by having the dogs ingest “tsita” in order for their dogs to become “more human” and as one with their master. This practice illustrates the colonial and modern beliefs of the Runa people and their relations to their dogs and how the human interacts with the
The core mission of anthropology seeks to understand the differences of language, culture, society and history among a wide-range of groups of people. Anthropology utilizes those four characteristics of humans as analytics for study and observation. Eduardo Kohn challenges the norms of anthropology by trying to reach beyond the standard analytics …show more content…
Kohn’s approach benefits the study of anthropology and the process of obtaining ethnographies by placing importance on other living selves in addition to humans. Kohn expands the discipline by moving past the restricted and limited observation of human life. Kohn details the beneficial aspects of the anthropology of life, “The approach I advocate seeks to be attentive to the dander-fraught, provisional, and highly tenuous attempts at communication—in short, the politics—involved in the interactions among different kinds of selves that inhabit very different, and often unequal, positions” (Kohn 18). The majority of ethnographies focus on humans within an indigenous group but neglect their interactions with non-human lifeforms. By invoking Kohn’s approach, the study of anthropology is more encompassing of reality rather than interpretations alone. For example, the Runa guide and advise their dogs into adulthood by having the dogs ingest “tsita” in order for their dogs to become “more human” and as one with their master. This practice illustrates the colonial and modern beliefs of the Runa people and their relations to their dogs and how the human interacts with the