Allqu

• Main Authors: Óscar Muñoz Morán, Kimberley Raas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherches sur les Mondes Américains 2021-06-01
• Series: Nuevo mundo - Mundos Nuevos
• Subjects: dog; human; Andes; relations; intermediations
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/84813

In this article we will present the dog through an ethnographic study of a Quechua-speaking community in Bolivia and an ethnological analysis of how anthropologists have traditionally approached these animals in the Andean region. We will focus on their role during human life and death: on the dog as a social being and as a liminal entity. Our aim is to understand why the dog is presented as the closest of animals to humans and how this closeness is to a great extent marked by the relationship of company which is, at the same time, a relationship between different but connected ontological realities according to the Andean principles of animation and fluidity.