Abstract: Highland people in the Cuzco region of Peru eat so much potato that they are aware of their body as being made of this tuber. Not an ingredient to be passively absorbed, potatoes are related to humans in a reversible genealogy whereby they are both mother and child to their grower. Observing how this relation is enacted in practices highlights mutual nurturing as a key interaction that creates kinship. Nurturing entails the circulation of kusisqa, a Quechua notion of joy which complexifies an established conceptualization of affect as pre-reflexive reaction. Imbued with emotionality and self-reflexivity, potatoes’ contentment is a core concern for cultivators. A focus on affective attunement between humans and plant crops through labour and ingestion offers new perspectives on the substance of kinship and interspecies mutuality of being.
Short bio: Olivia Angé (she/her) is Professor of anthropology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant SeedsValues. She specializes in the study of agriculture, value creation, and relatedness in the Andes. Since 2014, she has been doing research on potato cultivation in Peru. She has also conducted extensive fieldwork on barter fairs in the Argentinean cordillera. She is the author of Barter and Social Regeneration in the Argentinean Andes (Berghahn 2022, 2nd edn.), and co-author of Ecological Nostalgias (Berghahn 2021, 1st edn.).
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