Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

To Love To Survive: Culture And Maternal Sentiment In Brazil, Elizabeth Farfan

Sociology & Anthropology Student Works

This paper examines the cultural construction of maternal sentiment on Ilha de Maré, and attempts to describe the social reality of mothers on the island; the social conditions in which they live, their work, their kinship networks, and the ways in which they define motherhood. I will attempt to portray a mother s love as defined by a marezeira (woman of Ilha de Maré); to illustrate how maternal sentiment manifests itself for a woman facing scarcity and multiple jobs under difficult working conditions, and for whom, no matter how poor, young, or overworked, the responsibility of loving, educating, feeding, and …

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, …

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.

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.

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.

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.