2023 Volume 87 Issue 4 Pages 573-592
This paper explores the interactions between humans and nonhumans through the milpa in the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula as intersubjective processes, experienced through signs, perceptions, and actions. In a recent anthropological study, which seeks to free itself from anthropocentrism, the interaction between humans and nonhumans has often been the focus of attention. However, the empirical process of this interaction has not been sufficiently discussed in light of the perceptual experiences, which occur in iterative interactions between humans and nonhumans emerging as persons, and the links between shared objects or signs and actions in each interaction. The milpa is a slash and burn shifting cultivation that depends on meteorological conditions and forest products. Analysis of narratives on the milpa, focusing on the intersubjectivity that conditions the possibility of trading places among persons through their similar body "pieces" reveal a folded interaction, in which human and nonhuman perceptions and actions fold and unfold through signs peculiar to the milpa.
