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New Bodies, Ancient Blood: “Purity” And The Construction Of Zápara Identity In The Ecuadorian Amazon, Maximilian Viatori

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In this article, I explore how the Zápara in Amazonian Ecuador stress the biological side of their bodies, particularly the “purity” of their blood, as an indicator of the uniqueness of their identity. In order to imagine themselves as distinct from their Kichwa neighbors—with whom they share similar cultural and linguistic practices—Zápara assert that the essence of their difference resides in their blood, which links them in an unbroken continuum to their precontact ancestors. I argue that this new focus on blood purity represents a shift from cultural practices—speaking Zápara—to bodily attributes—having “pure” Zápara blood—as the primary basis for Zápara …

Amerindian Torture Revisited: Rituals Of Enslavement And Markers Of Servitude In Tropical America, Fernando Santos-Granero

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Western fascination with the body and all things corporeal has permeated millennial anthropology,capturing the attention of anthropologists working in different parts of the world. In lowland South America, Seeger, da Matta, and Viveiros de Castro (1979) called attention, early on, to the Amerindian propensity to use the body as the main instrument to convey social and cosmological meanings. In a now famous essay entitled “Of Torture in Primitive Societies,” Pierre Clastres (1974) suggested that Amerindian initiation rituals—always entailing some kind of torture and bodily modification—were meant to mark initiates not only as adults but, above all, as fellow and equal …

People Into Ghosts: Chachi Death Rituals As Shape-Shifting, Istvan Praet

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article deals with the corporeality of the dead in native South American societies. Focusing on the Chachi of Northwest Ecuador, I question whether the separation of the dead from the living is best analyzed in terms of the lack of a body. While relevant in most ordinary circumstances, the division between having or not having a body hampers ourcapacitytounderstandcrisissituations,especiallywhensomebodydies. I then turn to the particular role played by “ghosts” during funerary rituals,and the ways in which mourners “shift shape” into visible and physically present ghosts, thus assuming the forms of the dead. I suggest that similar kinds of metamorphoses …

Mutually Exclusive Relationships: Corporeality And Differentiation Of Persons In Yine (Piro) Social Cosmos, Minna Opas

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In Amazonia, body is a central organizing element of social life. Recent discussions in Amazonian anthropology show,on the one hand, the multiple ways in which the body acts in the formation of social relations, and, on the other, how social relations work in the formation of bodies. Bodies are relationally constituted in the diverse embodied processes through which Amazonian peoples form, maintain and regulate relations to each other. It is in this same manner that people also relate to, and are transformed into, different nonhuman persons. This article examines these dynamics of the body among the Yine (Piro) of Eastern …

Introduction: What Constitutes A Human Body In Native Amazonia?, Laura Rival

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, And Neoliberalism In Ecuador, Michael C. Cepak

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador. Suzana Sawyer. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. xii + 294 pp., notes, glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8223-3272-8.

Die If You Must: Brazilian Indians In The Twentieth Century, Donald Pollock

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Die If You Must: Brazilian Indians in the Twentieth Century. John Hemming. London: Pan Macmillan, 2003. xxxiv + 855pp., illustrations, maps, bibliography, notes, references, index. ISBN:1-4050-0095-3.

The Origins Of Indigenism: Human Rights And The Politics Of Identity, Alcida Rita Ramos

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity. Ronald Niezen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xix + 272 pp., notes, references, index. ISBN 0-520-23554-1, 0-520-23556-8.

Gertrude Dole (1915−2001), Janet Chernela

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

Emerald Freedom: “With Pride In The Face Of The Sun”, Norman E. Whitten Jr.

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Esmeraldas, Ecuador, became home to free African and Afro-Hispanic people in the mid 1500s. It is the only region in the Americas where self liberation— cimarronaje—of Afro-descendant people preceded slavery. It is also the region that soon gave birth to zambaje, the emergence of an African-Indigenous population. This article sets forth salient dimensions of historical and contemporary blackness before sketching the enduring and transforming cultural dynamics of this rain-forest littoral region of the neotropics by reference to cosmovision, the marimba dance, arrullos, chigualos, alabados, la tumba, and la tropa. Following this sketch I turn to political economy, cultural ecology, and …

Dark Shamans: Kanaimà And The Poetics Of Violent Death, E. Jean Langdon

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death. Neil L. Whitehead. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. ix+ 310 pp., notes, index. ISBN 0-8223-2988-3.

On The Death Of Orlando Villas Boas And The Legacy Of The Villas Boas Brothers, John Hemming

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

The Mystery Of The Cotton Tipití, Robert L. Carneiro

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In his article on the Arawak in the Handbook of South American Indians, Irving Rousecitesthe Taínoasusinga “cottontube”todetoxifybittermanioc.This “cotton tipití,” which is mentioned nowhere else, had always puzzled me. By going back into the early literature, however, it was possible to establish that this was an error based on the loose use of words by the chronicler Girolamo Benzoni in 1572. It is possible to conclude, therefore, that the cotton tipití never existed.

En su artículo en el Handbook of South American Indians, Irving Rouse menciona el uso de un “tubo de algodón” (“cotton tipití”) para exprimir el jugo venenoso de …

The Hunter-Self: Perforations, Prescriptions, And Primordial Beings Among The Jotï, Venezuelan Guayana, Eglee L. Zent

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article is an ethnographic exploration of reproducing the self and life through hunting among the Jotï, a group of about 900 persons living along the slopes and intermountain valleys of the Sierra Maigualida in the Amazonas and Bolívar states of the Venezuelan Guayana. Jotï hunting knowledge, as conceived by the author, is an instrumental part of a lifestyle. This essay concentrates on the dynamics of Jotï hunting as it involves magic and ritual practices, mythology and ontology, ecological symbolism, and spirituality. Analysis of the symbolic components of Jotï hunting habits discloses a deep, complex, and holistic conception of reality, …

La Vivienda Colectiva De Los Yanomami, Graziano Gasparini, Luise Margolies

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article on the shapono, the traditional dwelling of the Yanomami, is taken from our book, Arquitectura Indígena de Venezuela. The Yanomami are one of the three indigenous groups of the tropical forest region of lowland Venezuela who build large collective dwellings that house the entire community. In contrast to the neighboring Ye’kwana and Wôthuha, who inhabit closed structures located near large waterways, the Yanomami are forest people whose traditional shapono is a structure opening onto a large central patio. Here, we examine the cultural division of space into private, semiprivate, and public areas in the context of Yanomami …

Steps To A Political Ecology Of Amazonia, Steven L. Rubenstein

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Many recent studies of Amazonia have documented the ways in which agents of the state or capital seek to colonize not only indigenous land and labor, but indigenous desires as well. This colonization of the third kind has disastrous consequences: recently, William Fisher asked, “Why ... did it seem that Xikrin would sell their grandchildren’s environmental birthright just at the moment when reservations were finally being demarcated and boundaries guaranteed for generations to come?” Here I argue that this sort of question must become one of the central concerns of Amazonian ethnology. Drawing on work by Fisher and others, I …

The Devil And The Land Of The Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery And Popular Religion In Colonial Brazil, Stephen Selka

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery and Popular Religion in Colonial Brazil. Laura de Mello e Souza. Translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. xxiii + 350 pp., tables, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-292-7023601.

Histories And Historicities In Amazonia, Minna Opas

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Histories and Historicities in Amazonia. Neil L. Whitehead, editor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. xx + 236 pp., maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8032-9817-X.

Amazon Sweet Sea: Land, Life, And Water At The River’S Mouth, Alf Hornborg

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Amazon Sweet Sea: Land, Life, and Water at the River’s Mouth. Nigel J.H. Smith. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. xii + 296 pp., plates, map, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-292-77770-1.

Beneath The Equator: Cultures Of Desire, Male Homosexuality, And Emerging Gay Communities In Brazil; Travestí: Sex, Gender And Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes, James R. Welch

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of

Beneath the Equator: Cultures of Desire, Male Homosexuality, and Emerging Gay Communities in Brazil. Richard Parker. New York: Routledge, 1999. xvi + 288 pp., plates, maps, tables, notes, appendices, bibliography, index. $85.00 (cloth), $22.95 (paper). ISBN 0-415-91619-4, 0-415-91620-8.

Travestí: Sex, Gender and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Don Kulick. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. xi + 269 pp., notes, references, index. $50.00 (cloth), $20.00 (paper). ISBN 0-226-46099-1, 0-226-46100-9.

Perspectival Anthropology And The Method Of Controlled Equivocation, Eduardo Viveiros De Castro

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article argues that doing anthropology means comparing anthropologies. Comparison is not just our primary analytic tool, it is also our raw material and our ultimate grounding, since what we compare are always and necessarily, in one form or other, comparisons. If, as Marilyn Strathern suggests, culture consists in the way people draw analogies between different domains of their worlds, then every culture is a multidimensional process of comparison. Likewise, if anthropology studies culture through culture, then, following Roy Wagner, whatever operations characterize our investigations must also be general properties of culture. Intracultural relations, or internal comparisons, and intercultural relations, …

Amazonia: Territorial Struggles On Perennial Frontiers, Donald Pollock

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Amazonia: Territorial Struggles on Perennial Frontiers. Paul Little. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. xv + 298 pp., glossary, notes, field interviews, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8018-6661-8.

Kinship With Monkeys: The Guajá Foragers Of Eastern Amazonia, Nancy Flowers

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Kinship with Monkeys: The Guajá Foragers of Eastern Amazonia. Loretta A. Cormier. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. xxvi + 234 pp., notes, references, index. ISBN 0-231-12525-9.

History, Ethnography, And Politics In Amazonia: Implications Of Diachronic And Synchronic Variability In Marubo Politics, Javier Ruedas

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The idea that indigenous Amazonian societies have been and are essentially egalitarian has been criticized in recent years. This essay critiques frameworks for the study of power in lowland South America by examining diachronic and synchronic variation in Marubo political organization. First, I analyze change over time in Marubo politics and how it relates to population fluctuations linked to contact situations. Based on this analysis, I argue that the small, atomized villages that twentieth-century anthropologists perceived as typifying indigenous Amazonia were products of the historical processes of political organization. Next, I show that leaders of different Marubo villages range from …

The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule In The Río De La Plata, Bret Gustafson

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of The Guaraní Under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata. Barbara Ganson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. xii + 290pp., maps, illustrations, appendices, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8047-3602-2.

The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity, And Nationalism As Cultural Performance, Kathryn A. Hudepohl

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of The Festive State: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism as Cultural Performance. David M. Guss. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. ix + 240 pp., illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $18.95 (paper), $48.00 (cloth).ISBN 0-620-22331-4, 0-520-20289-9.

Darrell A. Posey (1947-2001), Warren M. Hern

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

Deforestation And Land Use In The Amazon, David L. Clawson

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of Deforestation and Land Use in the Amazon. Charles H. Wood and Roberto Porro, editors. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. xiii + 385 pp., index. $75.00 (cloth), $34.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8130-2464-1, ISBN 0-8130-2465-X.

Refiguring Palmares, Richard Price

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In this methodological/poetical exercise, the author attempts a mind-game in which he reads through the primary and secondary sources on the great seventeenth-century Brazilian quilombo of Palmares, drawing on his knowledge of Maroon societies elsewhere in the Americas, in order to imagine the institutions of that quilombo from their own, rather than outside observers’, perspectives. Using oral testimonies from the descendants of Maroons in Suriname, and comparing them to outsiders’ views of those societies as recorded in archives, he tries to better evoke the cultural institutions that would have existed in Palmares.

Dans cet essai, à la fois méthodolgique et …

Trekking Through History: The Huaorani Of Amazonia, Norman E. Whitten Jr

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Book review of, Trekking Through History: The Huaorani of Amazonia. Laura M. Rival.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. xx + 246 pp., plates, maps,

tables, figures, notes, references, index. ISBN 0-231-11844-9.