01/07/2025: 4:00 – 5:30 PM
Webinar: Commoning as a Healing Practice? Potentials, Challenges, and Promises
We would like to invite you to our next online Commoning Dialogue on Monday, July 7th, 4pm-5:30pm German time (CET). The dialogue “Commoning as a Healing Practice? Potentials, Challenges, and Promises” with Eveline Dürr, Karla Garcia, Meret Haack, Wolfgang Kapfhammer and Markos Panayiotou (Planetary Healing Group, LMU Munich) will explore commoning within the broader context of healing in the Anthropocene. Drawing on case studies from Indigenous communities, they will show how the commoning of both material and immaterial goods can generate healing effects, such as individual well-being, the recognition of collective rights, and the pledge for environmental justice.
**Zoom Information:
https://uni-koeln.zoom.us/j/94465812447?pwd=AOJbpcOCqdwbspsSkxoXi4tEW7mpk1.1
Meeting-ID: 944 6581 2447
Passwort: 854180
08/07/2025: 6:00 PM
Amerikas Kolloquium: Suma Qamaña in the 21st Century: Aymara Traders and Economic Well-being in El Alto, Bolivia
Rubén Darío Chambi (LMU Munich)
This presentation offers a reinterpretation of the Aymara concept Suma Qamaña (commonly translated as Vivir Bien), based on the everyday practices of Aymara traders in the city of El Alto, Bolivia. Unlike state-driven formulations of Vivir Bien, which present it as an anti-capitalist and essentially communal philosophy, historical and ethnographic analysis reveals that Suma Qamaña originates and evolves dynamically, articulating with economic, ritual, and linguistic practices specific to the contemporary urban context. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and semantic analysis of Aymara notions such as Qama (vital energy to exist), the study examines how traders reconfigure their understandings of well-being in settings marked by informality, commerce, and rituality. From this perspective, the presentation challenges dualistic readings that frame Suma Qamaña through oppositions such as Indigenous/non-Indigenous or capitalist/non-capitalist, as well as interpretations that assign it fixed and homogeneous meanings. Instead, it proposes understanding Aymara notions of well-being through their versatility, agency, and adaptability. This approach highlights how Aymara lifeways and contemporary urban realities are not mutually exclusive, but rather interwoven in complex forms of inhabiting, producing, and signifying life in the 21st century.
*Hybrid Session in English
*This lecture is part of the Colloquium Wissen verflechten: „Planetary Healing“ im Dialog, chaired by Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr and will be presented in hybrid format.
Location: Institut für Ethnologie, LMU München. Oettingenstr. 67. Raum L-155
More info here: https://www.ethnologie.uni-muenchen.de/ueber_uns/schwerpunkte/amerikas-neu/amerikas-kolloquium/index.html
11/07/2025: 6:30 PM
Film: Daughter of the Lake
Markos Panayiotou and the Decolonial Practices Group are organising a screening of the award-winning film Daughter of the Lake at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with the director of the film Ernesto Cabellos Damian and a representative of the Ecuadorian activist group ‚Napo Ama La Vida‘.
Location: Rachel Carson Center, Leopoldstraße 11A, 4th Floor Conference Room
More info about the film: https://hijadelalaguna.pe/en/home/
04/08/2025 – 06/08/2025
The Agency of Other-than-Humans in the Context of Fasting: The Perspectives of Napo Runa Healers
Markos Panayiotou (LMU Munich)
Participation in the 23rd Panel of the XV Salsa Conference: „Engaging with Others in More-Than-Human Worlds: Conceptualizations, Relations, and Interactions“, organized by Francesca Mezzenzana, Jan David Hauck, and Alejandro Erut.
Location: University of Helsinki
More info here: https://salsa-tipiti.org/salsa-conferences/2025-helsinki/
29/09/2025 – 02/10/2025
Conference: “Un/Commoning Anthropology“
The 2025 biennial conference of the German Association of Social and Cultural Anthropology invites you to critically examine the possibilities and politics of un/commoning in the face of multiple crises, as they are currently being discussed for the sustainable and just treatment of our planet and each other. In light of current ethnographic research, the conference calls for new discussions about questions of what can be common – and to whom – as part of local, situated struggles that may also have global implications. At a minimum, this includes critical reflections on whether, how, and by whom anthropological knowledges, methods, and theories can or should be used to solve boundary-crossing challenges.
Location: University of Cologne.
More info here: https://tagung.dgska.de/en/
30/09/2025: 11:00 – 12:30 & 2:00 – 3:30 pM
Commoning as a Healing Practice? Potentials, Challenges and Promises
The Panel “Commoning as a Healing Practice? Potentials, Challenges and Promises” at GASCA’s conference, explores Indigenous practices of healing as commoning to address the planetary crises. Healing, as well as commoning, is a relational practice linking different scales, such as individual wellbeing, collective rights, and environmental justice.
Location: University of Cologne.
More info here: https://tagung.dgska.de/en/