Alterhumanism
304 pages, 6 x 9
11 b&w photos, 1 map
Paperback
Release Date:11 Nov 2025
ISBN:9780816555703
Alterhumanism
Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier
The University of Arizona Press
What does it mean to be human in the Anthropocene? Set against the backdrop of southern Chile’s conservation frontier, Piergiorgio Di Giminiani’s Alterhumanism invites us to recognize the centrality of the human condition in the face of an increasingly uncertain world and imagine future forms of coexistence.
Reflecting on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with smallholding settlers, Indigenous Mapuche farmers, environmental activists, entrepreneurs, and conservation scientists, Di Giminiani brings to light how these diverse groups navigate the enduring impacts of settler-caused environmental depletion and their aspirations for new ethics of care. Di Giminiani challenges traditional Western humanism, proposing a more relational and open-ended understanding of humanity shaped by interactions with nonhuman others.
Rather than seeking fixed answers, the book explores the fluid and multifaceted nature of becoming human through the lens of conservation politics. By highlighting the entangled, multispecies worlds of southern Chile, Di Giminiani offers a novel approach to understanding the political project of becoming human in the Anthropocene. Alterhumanism is a rich, ethnographically grounded perspective on humanity’s evolving relationship with the natural world.
Reflecting on more than a decade of ethnographic fieldwork with smallholding settlers, Indigenous Mapuche farmers, environmental activists, entrepreneurs, and conservation scientists, Di Giminiani brings to light how these diverse groups navigate the enduring impacts of settler-caused environmental depletion and their aspirations for new ethics of care. Di Giminiani challenges traditional Western humanism, proposing a more relational and open-ended understanding of humanity shaped by interactions with nonhuman others.
Rather than seeking fixed answers, the book explores the fluid and multifaceted nature of becoming human through the lens of conservation politics. By highlighting the entangled, multispecies worlds of southern Chile, Di Giminiani offers a novel approach to understanding the political project of becoming human in the Anthropocene. Alterhumanism is a rich, ethnographically grounded perspective on humanity’s evolving relationship with the natural world.
In this fascinating account, Piergiorgio Di Giminiani examines the diverse ways ‘being human’ emerges in a conservation frontier in southern Chile. Based on years of fieldwork with Indigenous settlers, forest lovers, timber harvesters, and avian ecologists, among others, Alterhumanism helps us see humanity as a kind of ongoing experiment, full of possibility and contradictions—an important reminder to all of us.’—Laura A. Ogden, author of Loss and Wonder at the World’s End
‘Piergiorgio Di Giminiani provides an ethnographically rich and intellectually provocative study of the Anthropocene within the conservation frontier of southern Chile. Plural renderings of ‘the human’ emerge within the entangled, multispecies worlds of Indigenous farmers, national settlers, ecotourists, conservation scientists, birds, and forests. Di Giminiani develops an innovative theoretical approach termed ‘alterhumanism’ that will reward engaged readers within the fields of environmental anthropology, multispecies ethnography, posthumanism, and Latin American studies.’—Marcos Mendoza, author of The Patagonian Sublime: The Green Economy and Post-Neoliberal Politics
Piergiorgio Di Giminiani is an associate professor in anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He is the author of Sentient Lands: Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile.
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