Cited by 1Afro-Latin American StudiesIndigenous Studies in Latin AmericaAnthropological Studies and Insights

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 11 of the 11 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 2 of the 96 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Corporalidades afrodescendientes en el Pacífico colombiano

Open access
Restrepo, Eduardo·2024·Revista Colombiana De Antropología

Abstract

Este artículo examina nociones y prácticas corporales de los afrodescendientes del Pacífico colombiano, y destaca la relevancia de comprender cómo se entrelazan múltiples redes de significados y tecnologías corporales en distintos contextos. A partir de la revisión de literatura y archivo etnográfico, se identifican principios de inteligibilidad que configuran las condiciones de posibilidad de las prácticas de significación en el mundo social. Lejos de entenderse como modelos cerrados, estos principios mantienen configuraciones abiertas y contestables, en línea con una lógica de la heterogeneidad. En contraste con el enfoque ontológico y la folclorización de las creencias, se enfatiza la importancia de contextualizar e historizar dichos principios. El artículo se basa en décadas de trabajo etnográfico en la región y examina prácticas de modelación corporal desde la gestación hasta la terapéutica y la brujería, así como los contrastes térmicos y la dicotomía entre lo divino y lo humano. Las conclusiones proponen abrir horizontes interpretativos más allá de los enfoques etnicistas actuales.

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

The article identifies several shared “principles of intelligibility” shaping Afro-descendant bodily notions and practices in Colombia’s Pacific—bodies in process, open/closed, hot/cold, and divine/human—drawing on documentary and decades of ethnographic work. It argues these principles are heterogeneous, contestable, and not reducible to ethnicist or folklorizing accounts.

Key findings

  • Early body-modeling practices treat newborns as unfinished and moldable: umbilical cutting is reported as two fingers for boys and two and a half for girls in Velásquez’s study, and two fingers for boys and three for girls in Losonczy’s Atrato material; other practices include differential lactation, *chumbar*, *pringar*, and *ombligada*, the latter performed in the first five to fifteen days after birth with substances such as gold, fish spine, ants, guayabo, money, book leaves, mother’s sweat, or midwife’s saliva.
  • Bodies are classified as open or closed: infants are open and vulnerable to *ojeo*; menstruating and recently parturient women are more open, while pregnant women are closed; men can close almost their whole body, whereas women can close up to three quarters; at death the body must open for the soul and shadow to leave.
  • Hot/cold distinctions organize bodies and the world: the body is normally hot, blood loss cools it, women menstruating or postpartum are colder than men or pregnant women, aging brings cooling, the lower body is colder but genitals are among the hottest parts, and sexual dysfunction or infertility is often explained as cold and treated with hot substances such as *botellas curadas* or *balsámicas*.
  • Divine/human distinctions frame illness, death, and witchcraft: divine phenomena belong to God, saints, and virgins, while human phenomena relate to the devil, *brujería*, *daños*, and *maleficios*; bodily traces and fluids—footprints in mud, blood, sweat, urine, semen, hair, nails—are treated as still connected to the body and usable in practices such as *coger el rastro* or love magic.

Methods

  • Theoretical framing is poststructuralist, drawing on Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall; the notion of “principle of intelligibility” reworks Losonczy’s cognitive model, linked to Lévi-Strauss, and is thought through Grimson’s “cultural configuration” as a logic of heterogeneity.
  • Data come from a documentary/literature archive and the author’s ethnographic fieldwork in the Colombian Pacific since the early 1990s, including the last three years living in Tumaco.
  • Analysis is qualitative: the article reviews archival and ethnographic records to trace a handful of principles across body-modeling practices from gestation and birth through therapeutics and witchcraft.

Limitations

  • The author explicitly states that his elaborations are abstract, non-historicized, and fragmentary; contextualizing and historicizing these principles exceeds the article’s purposes, as does an exhaustive analysis of the assemblages they enable.
  • The author also states that no semiotic-discursive analysis is proposed, despite noting it could be interesting.
  • Evident from the text: the argument relies on existing literature and the author’s own ethnographic archive rather than a systematic sampling or quantitative design, and it offers a first probe of selected principles rather than a comprehensive account.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.22380/2539472x.2671

Cites

11 of 11 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

70 No basis given · 47 Sources not found · 47 Own interpretation · 15 Not checked yet · 9 Own result · 2 No full text of the sources · 2 Own method · 1 Partly supported · 1 Couldn’t confirm · accuracy not yet measured

Verify all 1 references — free account

Show all 73 claims

  • It may state two separate claims as one. 86
  • Probably not a substantial claim. 74
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
121 of 121
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    The cited ethnographic cases and the author's decades of fieldwork in the Colombian Pacific are representative enough to support claims about Afrodescendant corporalities across the region.

    “El artículo se basa en décadas de trabajo etnográfico en la región”
    “en mi propio trabajo etnográfico de décadas en el Pacífico colombiano”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    El creciente posicionamiento de la medicalización desde el saber experto de la medicina facultativa ha socavado la autoridad y labor de las parteras.

    “con el creciente posicionamiento de la medicalización desde el saber experto de la medicina facultativa, que ha socavado la autoridad y labor de las parteras”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    El archivo documental y etnográfico revisado, aunque diverso y fragmentario, es suficiente para identificar principios de inteligibilidad que operan entre los afrodescendientes del Pacífico colombiano.

    “A partir de la revisión de un diverso y fragmentario archivo documental y etnográfico, se pueden trazar principios de inteligibilidad que operan en una serie de nociones y prácticas corporales afrodescendientes en el Pacífico colombiano.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Los principios de inteligibilidad identificados son compartidos por los afrodescendientes del Pacífico colombiano como grupo, y no son solo características de casos locales o de las fuentes citadas.

    “En suma, el contraste entre caliente y frío es parte de las nociones de cuerpo que se encuentran entre afrodescendientes del Pacífico colombiano.”
4 of 4

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

2 of 2

Citations

Cites

Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. Gutiérrez, Alejandra. 2014. “‘En el ombligo de toda cosa les echan’: ombligada y parteras en las poblaciones negras del Medio Atrato”. Revista de Estudios del Pacífico 1 (2): 157-186. https://revistas.uniclaretiana.edu.co/index.php/Pacifico/article/view/157
  2. Irvine, Judith T. y Susan Gal. 2000. “Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation”. En Regimes of Language: Ideologies Polities, and Identities, editado por Paul V. Krokrity, 35-84. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

Cited by

Metadata

Authors
Restrepo, E.
Affiliations
Universidad Católica de Temuco (CL)
Corresponding author
Restrepo, Eduardo
Venue
Revista Colombiana De Antropología
Published
2024-09-01
Volume
60
Issue
3
Pages
e2671
ISSN
  • 0486-6525 (ISSN-L)
  • 2539-472X
OpenAlex
W4402407093
Cited by
1
References
11
Citations by year
2026: 1
FWCI
1.39
Type
journal article
Language
es
Open access
Locations
  • Revista Colombiana de Antropología (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • Redalyc (Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México) (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Afro-Latin American Studies
  • Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Indigenous Studies in Latin America
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
Keywords
Colombian Pacific coast, body practices, body modeling, pregnancy, witchcraft, body temperature, human and divine, heterogeneity, ontological approach, folklorization, ethnicism, Afro-descendants

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