Prof. Magdalena Krysińska-Kałużna paskaita
Welcome to the Center for Social Anthropology (VMU) Seminar series of the Spring term 2024.
This Thursday – April 11, 2024 we are inviting you for a lecture-seminar by the visiting anthropologist:
Prof. Magdalena Krysińska-Kałużna (University of Wroclaw)
Title of Presentation: “The Ontological Foundations of Indigenous Customary Law in the Amazon: The Shaman as the Doctor and the Judge”
Date: April 11, 2024, at 6:00 p.m.
Place: Faculty of Social Sciences, Jonavos Street. 66, Room 324.
About the lecture:
Ancestors and mythical events are bearers of truths and knowledge that guided and often still continue to guide the lives of indigenous communities. The indigenous world is not definitively demarcated and divided between human and non-human and the “acts” of people are not limited to the activities they do when they are in their human bodies. A good example of how the Amazonian indigenous people perceive the interdependence between the human and the non-human world, the “visible” and the “invisible”, is the healing process. During this process the shaman very often decides who is to blame for an illness or another disaster. I will use several examples from the Amazon region to showcase the link between the indigenous customary law and shamanic practices as well as the social consequences of this link.
About the author:
Prof. Magdalena Krysińska-Kałużna is a cultural anthropologist who work mostly on legal anthropology (mainly the relations between indigenous customary law and positive law) but also, inter alia, problems of cultural contact (research in the Amazon), cultural violence and other problems faced by indigenous communities. She has conducted field research in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia. For 25 years she was a member of Amnesty International, leading for several years the team for Indigenous Affairs of Latin America in the Polish section. She worked as a professor at the Center for Latin American Studies of the University of Warsaw, formerly at the University from Lodz. Now she works at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Wroclaw.
