The Earth Beings: Ecologies of practice across Andean worlds by Marisol de la Cadena

Great ethnography, helped me to understand the 'ontological turn' in a concrete way.

De la Cadena writes on page 283 that "the ethnography that is this books has the intention to invite awareness to the ontological disagreement in which modern politics already participates in while ignoring such participation."

By the ontology of modern politics, de la Cadena is referring to Bruno Latour's 'modern constitution,' which is the "invention of the ontological distinction between humans and nonhumans, and the practices that allowed for both their mixture and separation." 

The Quechua runakuna live in a different ontological mode that recognizes the agency nonhuman beings (the Earth Beings). Through indigenous labour leader Mariano Turpo, de la Cadena tells a story of (mis)translations, as Earth Beings participate in the political process through Turpo, but escape recognition in the ontology of modern politics.
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