Abstract
In this article, as a part of an ongoing dialogue, we reflect on the relevance of Tim Ingold’s recent theoretical propositions for our own anthropological experiences with indigenous people in Andean Bolivia and Argentina. First, we briefly retrace the development of some of his central concepts, homing in on “correspondence” and “attentionality” as a possible basis for an integrated socioecological theory and its concomitant ethics. Then, we explore how these concepts can help us arrive at an understanding of the way in which attentive correspondence, based on care and respect, allows people to carry on their lives through Andean temporalities and relational environments, considering specifically their “troubledness”: discrepancies, ambiguities and conflicts, both in connection with local cosmopraxis (our main focus) as it is evolving amidst postcolonial scenarios and the global ecological crisis. In this sense, the abilities of human groups to correspond can be seen as ways of coping with ecological and social turbulences. Finally, we discuss Ingold’s vitalism as a form of “organic materialism”, and as a non-anthropocentric “new humanism”, one which considers the lines of life of humans and non-humans as they entangle with each other.