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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Patrimony, Publishing, And Politics: Books As Ritual Objects In Northwest Amazonia, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones
Patrimony, Publishing, And Politics: Books As Ritual Objects In Northwest Amazonia, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
With particular reference to works by Tukano and Desana authors, this paper examines some of the cultural and historical factors that underlie the unique propensity of indigenous peoples of Northwest Amazonia to publish their narrative histories in books. Jointly written by a knowledgeable elder and a younger literate amanuensis, each book in Coleção Narradores Indígenas do Alto Rio Negro series contains the origin narratives, myths, and recent history of a particular group, told from the point of view of one of its clans. Writing down and thus rescuing oral traditions under threat from the pressures of education, urbanization and other …
The Political Man As A Sick Animal: On The “Ideology Of Kisêdjê Political Leadership”, André Drago
The Political Man As A Sick Animal: On The “Ideology Of Kisêdjê Political Leadership”, André Drago
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
Eloquent, wise, generous; in short, “exemplary,” Kisêdjê political leaders are also said to be “animal-like” dangerous beings. For Anthony Seeger, this “ideological ambivalence” expresses the contradiction which constitutes the leader’s position-function, whose “political power” working at the center of the village derives from peripheral kinship affiliations. Moreover, supposed to withhold the group’s “norms”, he is surprisingly entitled to violate them–primarily, he is exempted from uxorilocality. I try to demonstrate that the inflections the leader subjects patterns of kinship-making process alter his body and agency, rendering him more or less human and, therefore, capable of mediating between the Kisêdjê and their …