Abstract

MAFFERRA, Luis Eduardo. Fray Agustin The Book of Agricultural Secrets and the Human-Plants Relationships during Early Modernity. Rev. Mus. Antropol. [online]. 2019, vol.12, n.3, pp.93-104. ISSN 1852-060X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.31048/1852.4826.v12.n3.21895.

Based on the analysis of an agriculture book written in 1617 in Spain, I propose to discuss the concepts used by the anthropological sciences to understand people relationships with plants, especially with trees, in early modernity. Through a comparative exercise, I reflect on the application of modern subject/object and wild/domestic dualisms. I observe some nuances that reconfigure these categories here, in the first case, given by the recognition of analogies between plant and human anatomy, as well as some sensitivity and sociability in trees. In the second, based on the non-taxative distinction of plants, practices, places and valuations associated the wild and domestic. In addition, I also analyse the relational framework in which trees are included in the studied case, which allows me to observe temporal and spatial orders as well as their affectation on materiality. In short, the work aims to problematize the relational scheme that linked humans and trees in agricultural practice during early modernity. The results are of comparative interest both for Spain and Western Europe and for other contexts associated with its colonial expansion.

Keywords : Trees; Subject/object; Wild/domestic; Ontological turn; Colonial Period.

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