ABSTRACT

The human-centeredness intrinsic to dominant understandings of intercultural relations tends to undermine, or maybe completely forget, the ecological dimension of our human selves and the environmental conditions in which identities arise. In Chapter 4 of the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity, Castro-Sotomayor demonstrates how an ecocultural perspective on identity illuminates different ways to understand intercultural relations and ethnicity, race, and class-based approaches to these relations. The author examines his collaborative work with the Gran Familia Awá Binacional, a transboundary Indigenous organization working on the border between Ecuador and Colombia, to understand the discursive construction of Awá, Mestizo, and Afrodescendant ecocultural identities and its implications for Awá territoriality. Castro-Sotomayor illustrates the ecological perspective on the politics of identity and interrogates the emphasis on the cultural dimension in current understandings of identity formation. Then, the author focuses on two kinds of ecocultural identities, restorative and unwholesome, and illustrates how the insider–outsider and respect–disrespect dialectics inherent in these dueling identities inform inter- and intra-ecocultural relations among Awá, Mestizo, and Afro populations. Castro-Sotomayor closes this chapter by presenting ideas on how an ecocultural perspective can contribute to efforts to diversify and enhance transdisciplinary fields of inquiry that seek to open paths away from anthropocentric identity constraints that impede the embrace of radical changes our species needs for survival.