Andrew Pickering is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Philosophy at Exeter University and author of
This chapter extends the sense of agency to the nonstandard agencies found in Amazonian shamanism: the peculiar and coupled powers of both the shaman and nature as manifested as willful spirits. Ontologically, this entails a different dualism from that of the modern West, a symmetric dualism that recognizes and works with the agency of nature rather than hoping to dominate it—another manifestation of poiesis in action.
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