When Forests Run Amok

“When Forests Run Amok practices thought beyond the limits of the historically possible. In so doing, it unfolds a palimpsest of violence that faces up to what Latour called ‘the war of the worlds.’ Populated by vividly described entities that are as perplexing as they are quotidian, the stories of war that make up this book request the reader to think the unthinkable and consider a paradox: inhabiting epistemic conflict without solving it may give peace a chance. Conjuring our senses into a vertiginous war, the realism this book narrates cannot be discounted as magical even as it defies the norms of the usual real.” - Marisol de la Cadena, author of Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds

“This beautifully written and profound book vividly describes how warfare and ecological ruination on Colombia’s Pacific coast affect Afro-Colombian and Indigenous experiences of forests and rivers and the nonhuman entities that populate them. A moving and sophisticated ethnography, When Forests Run Amok makes an important contribution to current debates about place, violence, posthumanism, and ontological entanglements in Latin America and beyond.” - Gastón R. Gordillo, author of Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction

"When Forests Run Amok is an ambitious work that challenges readers' understandings of culture, territories, and justice. . . . Recommended. Graduate students and faculty." - A. E. Leykam, Choice

"When Forests Run Amok is a provocative work that will no doubt spark animated discussion. Whether or not we, as readers, entirely follow Ruiz-Serna’s epistemological leap, his approach does provide for an exceptionally intimate, creative, and illuminating study of a place and conflict that have rightly been receiving a lot of scholarly attention." - Nancy P. Appelbaum, Ethnic and Racial Studies

"In the book When Forests Run Amok, author Daniel Ruiz-Serna skillfully weaves narratives that depict the scars inflicted by violent exchange between guerrilla and paramilitary forces within the Indigenous and Afro-Colombian territories of Bajo Atrato." - Ajayant Katoch, Cultural Politics

"There is much rich empirical material . . . in the book that deepens our understanding of the pluriversal entanglements which animate life in regions such as Chocó. The book’s most important contribution lies in uniting tenets of the decolonial and peacebuilding literatures, as well as advancing valuable policy insights." - Allan Gillies, Bulletin of Latin American Research

"Interweaving vivid ethnography with a larger epistemic message about the politics of responsibility, this book is guaranteed to stimulate conversation among scholars of various persuasions."
  - Amy Penfield, Journal of Anthropological Research

". . . This book makes a very valuable contribution to anthropological debates on war, justice, and nature. Ruiz-Serna opens an important theoretical pathway for translating anthropological concerns on the relationship between humans and more-than-human beings into pressing political concerns, thinking about how to translate them into legal frameworks and viable forms of reparative and transitional justice." - Chiara Chiavaroli, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"A delight to the mind and the senses. . . . Daniel’s deep knowledge of the place gives firm footing to this work, just as his fondness for it transpires in the respect he shows throughout every page. . . . Many will read and enjoy this book, and learn from it." - Claudia Leal, Conservation & Society