In the Anthropocene, a question has become increasingly urgent: What
does it mean to be human? Set against the backdrop of southern Chile’s
conservation frontier, Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier (University of Arizona Press, 2025)
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,
Piergiorgio 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.
Piergiorgio
Di Giminiani is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile. His research focuses on land,
indigeneity, conservation, agriculture, and statecraft, with
ethnographic fieldwork experience in both Chile and Italy. He is the
author of Sentient Lands: Indigeneity, Property, and Political Imagination in Neoliberal Chile (2018) and Alterhumanism (2025). He has also co-edited several volumes, including The Futures of Reparations in Latin America: Imagination, Translation, and Belonging (2026), with Hélène Risør and Karine Vanthuyne, which was featured on the New Books Network; Theorizing Relations in Indigenous South America (2022), with Marcelo González and Giovanna Bacchiddu; and Ecopolíticas globales: medioambiente, bienestar y poder (2016), with Ángel Aedo and Juan Loera.
Yadong
Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of
Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his
scholarship and research interests can be found here.
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