Sustainability and Ecological Intervention: Comparing the Ontological Presuppositions of Geoengineering and Amazonian Shamanism

The goal of this chapter is to argue that different forms of understanding ecological interventions and temporality, materialize different practices of sustainability. It also intends to demonstrate that the promotion of sustainability may be related to things other than the conscious intentions of human societies about their knowledge of what to do with the environment. The central point of the argument is that knowledge is effectively connected to care for the environment when the latter is a direct performative effect of the former. The text explores these questions through the comparative analysis of how ecological intervention is understood and materialized in two case studies: a form of climate engineering known as solar radiation management and the shamanic practices of intervening in atmospheric phenomena of the Yanomami people of the Amazon.