Biocultural relational actors across scales: enacting ways of knowing, doing, and becoming in the southern Andes

Abstract

The concept of keystone species has been widely used to identify organisms with disproportionate ecological and cultural importance, yet less attention has been given to how such significance is continually produced through relational processes across scales. Here, we develop the concept of biocultural relational actors as an analytical framework for tracing how reciprocal relationships among humans and more-than-human beings unfold across social-ecological processes and scales through knowing, doing, and becoming. Drawing on the pewen (Araucaria araucana) and Mapuche Pewenche livelihoods in the southern Andes, we show how gathering, ecological observation, and territorial mobility connect organisms, communities, ecosystems, and institutions. By shifting analytical attention toward how relations are made and remade across scales, this perspective complements contemporary cultural keystone species approaches and offers pathways for understanding, governing, and stewarding social-ecological systems.