Vaupés Multilingualism And The Substance Of Language, 2023 University of Cambridge
Vaupés Multilingualism And The Substance Of Language, Stephen Hugh-Jones
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
By focusing on ordinary conversational language, relying on a notion of “group” derived from unilineal descent theory, and neglecting mythology and ritual, studies of Vaupés Tukanoan multilingualism have inadvertently tended to reproduce a Western ideology of language as marking national identity and concerned with conveying meaning. This paper suggests that attention to musical, ritual, and shamanic contexts reveals multilingualism in a different light, with ritual speech acts as constitutive of social groups, names as vehicles of reproduction, and breath as a substance-like bodily element and source of vitality. The more esoteric, rhetorical, musical, or visual ornamentation is given to breath, …
Language, Exogamy And Ethnicity In The Upper Rio Negro Region, 2023 University of Brasília
Language, Exogamy And Ethnicity In The Upper Rio Negro Region, Thiago Chacon, Luis Cayón
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
In this article we explore how languages interact with exogamous social units (e.g., clans and phratries) and descent ideologies (such as having a common mythical ancestor and emergence from the same mythical place) to help organize the multilingual and interethnic societies from the Upper Rio Negro region (URN) in the Amazon. We show that the expected alignment of language boundary, exogamous group and descent group is actually quite unusual. Complex social structures involving the aggregation of clans into larger ethnic groups or marriage alliances with other clans have important variations in the alignment of language, exogamy, and descent ideology. Existing …
Into An Interference Zone: Childbirth And Care Among Mehinako People, 2023 University of Sao Paulo
Into An Interference Zone: Childbirth And Care Among Mehinako People, Aline Regitano
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
This article addresses issues of care and corporeality during gestation, childbirth, the postpartum period, and childcare through a case study conducted with Mehinako people. Among this Amazonian people, care forms the person, having an elementary function in the daily construction of kinship relations through means of affection. A recent trend has caused expressive transformations in the way women experience corporeality and the making of a person: the displacement of birth from the home to hospitals, motivated by women’s fear, desire, and curiosity. In the city, Indigenous women transit through medical institutions, which I propose may be read as interference zones …
Jean E. Jackson: A Pioneering Ethnographer In The Colombian Amazon, 2023 University of Texas at Austin
Jean E. Jackson: A Pioneering Ethnographer In The Colombian Amazon, Patience Epps, Danilo Paiva Ramos, Flora Dias Cabalzar
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
This essay celebrates the work of Jean E. Jackson, a pioneering female ethnographer who devoted most of her fifty-year career to the Indigenous peoples of Colombia. Her research, represented in an extensive set of publications from the early 1970s to the present, engages with themes of identity, stigma, and social inequality, manifested across a range of contexts. Jackson’s ethnographic contributions include her ground-breaking early work on Indigenous Tukanoan society in the Colombian Vaupés, focusing on the practice of linguistic exogamy (obligatory marriage across language groups) among the Bará people. Later, she expanded her focus to address Indigenous experiences in the …
Introduction: Indigenous Multilingualism In Lowland South America, 2023 University of Texas at Austin
Introduction: Indigenous Multilingualism In Lowland South America, Patience Epps
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in our understanding of the indigenous languages of lowland South America – from their structures and interrelationships to the dynamics of their day-to-day use and the ways they are conceptualized by their speakers. These advances highlight not only the diversity of languages in lowland South America, but also the complexity of the dynamics of interaction among speakers in multilingual settings. The region is home to a range of interactive indigenous ‘regional systems’, such as the Vaupés, Upper Xingu, and other areas, where multiple languages have thrived alongside each other for generations, and interaction …
The Way Of Warriors: Annotated Narratives Of The Mebengokre (Kayapo) In Brazil, By Gustaaf Verswijver, 2023 Trinity University
The Way Of Warriors: Annotated Narratives Of The Mebengokre (Kayapo) In Brazil, By Gustaaf Verswijver, John Hemming
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
No abstract provided.
Multilingual Pantanal And Its Decay, 2023 University of Texas at Austin
Multilingual Pantanal And Its Decay, Gustavo Godoy, Kristina Balykova
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
Historically, the Pantanal wetlands were inhabited by diverse ethnicities belonging to various linguistic groups, including Bororoan, Arawakan, Tupian, Gauicuruan, and Zamucoan, as well as some isolates and unclassified languages. Numerous ethnic groups disappeared without leaving any records of their languages, leaving behind only a list of ethnonyms. A point of confluence of different peoples that also circulated in other major South American areas, the Pantanal was a place with high linguistic diversity. Trade networks surrounded and permeated the area, as described in the earliest accounts by Portuguese and Spanish colonizers. As Indigenous groups were affected by colonial disputes over labor …
The Age Of The Onanya - Regarding The Spread Of Ayahuasca Use Throughout The Ucayali Basin, 2023 Independent scholar
The Age Of The Onanya - Regarding The Spread Of Ayahuasca Use Throughout The Ucayali Basin, Carlos Suárez-Álvarez
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
The spread of ayahuasca shamanism throughout the Upper Amazon has become a matter of debate among scholars since, in 1994, anthropologist Peter Gow formulated the controversial suggestion that it could be a recent phenomenon in the Ucayali basin, usually considered the stronghold of a millenary tradition. Following Gow, Brabec de Mori argued that the Shipibo-Conibo people, a paradigmatic example of the antique practice of ayahuasca shamanism, adopted both the brew and the associated shamanic practices in a “relatively recent” past. Gow and Brabec pointed at the Maynas missions as the origin of this shamanic complex, and the mestizo and Cocama …
"Where Is Your Accent From?": The Voice Of My Identity, 2023 Portland State University
"Where Is Your Accent From?": The Voice Of My Identity, Robert Northman
Amplify: A Journal of Writing-as-Activism
This essay probes the role of language in how it contributes to the construct of one's identity. The author discusses lived experiences centered on the the perceptions of accented English that is actually African American Vernacular English. The essay explores how these experiences were formed and how they developed over the course of the author's lifetime. The author also discusses ways in which language has caused both comfort and conflict, and provides a glimpse into a unique perspective that can contribute to a greater understanding of the power and importance of language.
Kxanuw! (Miichuwaakan Waak Aweeyayusak), 2023 Montclair State University
Kxanuw! (Miichuwaakan Waak Aweeyayusak), Kira Fucci, Camilla Bager
Games
Kxanuw! (I have it!) is modeled after bingo. This version allows players to practice plant and animal names, engaging listening comprehension, speaking, and visual recognition. The game kit includes instructions, a caller's card, and printable player cards.
Nii Neemun..., 2023 Montclair State University
Nii Neemun..., Johanna Tumux, Hannah Nosch
Games
Nii Neemun... (I Spy...) is designed for use inside a classroom, where learners can practice hearing and naming the objects that surround them. This game includes a full set of instructions, a learner worksheet, and an answer key, as well as recommendations for adjusting play for beginning and more experienced participants.
Nikole Uw!, 2023 Montclair State University
Nikole Uw!, Erin Catoggio, Aj Humenik, Emily Papagiannis, Alyssa Varga
Games
Practice speaking, hearing, and moving in Munsee (Lenape)! This game is modeled after Simon Says and includes instructions, a caller's card, and a sample color wheel, all of which can be adapted to players' interests and abilities.
Narrating & Living With Loss: Towards An Ethnography Of Grief, 2023 American University in Cairo
Narrating & Living With Loss: Towards An Ethnography Of Grief, Fayrouz Ibrahim
Theses and Dissertations
Through this paper, I seek to approach grief through how it is lived, the nexus between loss, and the sought-for physical abstractions through memory, objects, and materials to live with/despite such a loss. This paper is a phenomenological and ethnographic research project on the curatory rituals and practices that individuals employ in keeping lost loved ones alive in their everyday. I explore grief through a multidisciplinary and multimodal conceptualization rather than simply through cultural and social practices such as burial and mortuary rituals. The research follows the grief narratives of different individuals in Egypt in inquiring about the objects, memories, …
The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, 2023 American University in Cairo
The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan
Theses and Dissertations
The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …
Warp/Weft/Word: Inscriptive Materiality, Epistemological Violence, And The Inka Khipu, 2023 Howard University
Warp/Weft/Word: Inscriptive Materiality, Epistemological Violence, And The Inka Khipu, Travis Sharp
Criticism
Many competing theories of the Indigenous inscription practice known as the khipu have been offered, from L. Leland Locke’s long-standing postulation that khipus are accounting devices, to Walter Ong’s description of them as aide-mémoire, to Gary Urton’s more experimental theory that they constituted an early form of binary composition. Just as fraught is the history of the khipu, which were utilized by the Inka, intermediated by Spanish and Catholic authorities in their legal and religious systems, and, finally, banned and burned as seditious and sacrilegious. Contemporary khipus are primarily limited to those used by herders, but Chilean American poet-artist Cecilia …
Review: Of Mixed Blood, 2023 Independent Scholar
Review: Of Mixed Blood, Luis Felipe Torres
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
The review revises the most inportant concepts of the book Of Mixed Blood
An Amazonianist And His History, 2023 Cambridge University
An Amazonianist And His History, Victor Cova, Juan Pablo Sarmiento
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
No abstract provided.
Civilized Elders And Isolated Ancestors: The Multiple Histories Of Contemporary Amazonia, 2023 University of Edinburgh
Civilized Elders And Isolated Ancestors: The Multiple Histories Of Contemporary Amazonia, Casey High
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
In this article I consider the impact of Peter Gow’s writing on indigenous histories as a key area of research on Amazonia. Building on his study of kinship as history on the Bajo Urubamba (1991) he presented a regional perspective on the dynamic social categories by which Amazonian people understand their relations with various “others.” Focusing on indigenous agency and modes of thought, Gow challenged certain lines of historical thinking that dominated anthropology at the time. I explore how his ethnographic approach to history has influenced a generation of regional scholarship, including my own work on memory and social transformation …
Marginal To Whom? Reflections On Gow's "Purús Song", 2023 University of Edinburgh
Marginal To Whom? Reflections On Gow's "Purús Song", Magnus Course
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
This paper constitutes a personal exploration of the impact of the work of Peter Gow on my own attempts to think through specific ethnographic problems, both in the Mapuche communities of Southern Chile and the Gaelic communities of Western Scotland. I focus in particular on how Gow’s lesser-known essay “Purús Song” inverts received wisdom about the relationships between center and periphery, and between nation-state and Indigenous people. I see this as one iteration of Gow’s broader aim of letting ethnographic realities transform theoretical complacencies.
Between Cocama And Modernity In The Ucamara (Peruvian Amazon), 2023 University of Warsaw
Between Cocama And Modernity In The Ucamara (Peruvian Amazon), Marta Krokoszyńska
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
Combining a contemporary ethnographic perspective with a review of historical records, the article extends Peter Gow’s re-reading of the ex-Cocama phenomenon in the Western Amazon. It argues that the foundation of the Amazonian Peruvian town of Requena at the beginning of the 20th century took place during an important historical moment in the region. Within the post-rubber boom context, schools became a particularly important idiom that enabled Requena’s growth as the centre of education and modernity. The paper investigates relations between the widespread desire for education in the Ucamara region, and Cocama descendants’ and other “ribereño” ex-Mainas peoples’ specific notions …