Anthropology Commons^™

The Objects Of The Whites: Commodities And Consumerism Among The Xikrin-Kayapó (Mebengokre) Of Amazonia, Cesar Gordon

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

In this paper I discuss the recent phenomenon of conspicuous and increasing consumption of goods among the Xikrin-Kayapó (Mebengokre) of Pará, Brazil. Money and goods have become embedded in every domain of Xikrin life, including kinship, economy, politics and ritual. Merchandise can now be seen as a total social fact in Xikrin‑Kayapó society. I show that this sort of consumerism results from a complex interaction between general principles of Mebengokre sociocosmology and the particular historical conditions in which such principles operate and are actualized. In particular, I suggest that the meaning and function of manufactured goods and money (“Whites’ stuff,” …

Ambiguous Environments, Peter Riviere

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

No abstract provided.

Land. Its Occupation, Management, Use And Conceptualization: The Case Of The Akawaio And Arekuna Of The Upper Mazaruni District, Guyana, Janette Bulkan

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

Book review of Land. Its occupation, management, use and conceptualization: the case of the Akawaio and Arekuna of the Upper Mazaruni District, Guyana. Audrey J. Butt Colson. Panborough, Near Wells, UK: Last Refuge Ltd, 2009. 408 pp., 8 figures, 8 maps, 42 plates, bibliography, index. £40 (hard cover). ISBN: 978-0-9544350-7-3 [www.lastrefuge.co.uk].

Mobility And Migration In Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives, Alf Hornborg

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

Book review of Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia: Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives. Miguel. N. Alexiades, editor. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009. Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology. Xviii + 310 pp., figures, tables, notes, references, index. $90.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-84545-563-7 [http://www.berghahnbooks.com].

Time And Complexity In Historical Ecology: Studies In The Neotropical Lowlands, Alf Hornborg

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

Book review of Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands. William Balée and Clark L. Erickson, editors. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. The Historical Ecology Series. xii + 417 pp., maps, figures, tables, notes, references, index. $80.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-231-13288-3. [www.columbia.edu/cu/cup]

On -Yesamarî And Laterality: Waiwai Meanderings, Evelyn Schuler Zea

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

This paper introduces the figure of “laterality” to differentiate two modes of conceiving relationships among the Waiwai of Northern Amazonia. One mode that works through direct unmediated relations, and another mode that works through particular non-direct mediated forms of relating. The aim of the paper is to describe the gap between these two forms of relatedness, while at the same time discuss the demands and expectations as well as promises and potentialities that accompany the deployment of these two modes. These issues are articulated by means of a sequence of conceptual images that go from the so-called -yesamarî or meanders …

Soulful Voices: Birds, Language And Prophecy In Amazonia, Harry Walker

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

This paper explores the significance of human-bird interactions among Peruvian Urarina, focusing on bird speech and its relation to concepts of voice, power and prophecy. It suggests that while the potential status of birds as subjects remains complex and uncertain, this very ambiguity has stimulated the development and refinement of more abstract ideas of meaning, language, and what it means to be human. The ways in which bird sounds signify is not simply arbitrary, but rather indexical or analogic, leading to the impression of a privileged access to reality and a powerful claim to truth. Together with their vocal transparency …

Amazonian Dark Earths, William Balee

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

Review article of Amazonian Dark Earths: Origins, Properties, Management. Johannes Lehmann, Dirse C. Kern, Bruno Glaser, William I. Woods, eds. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003. 505 pp., $279.00 (cloth).

ISBN 978-1-4020-1839-8 [http://www.springer.com/]. Amazonian Dark Earths: Explorations in Space and Time. Bruno Glaser and William I. Woods, eds. Berlin: Springer-Verlag., 2004. 216 pp., $189 (cloth). ISBN 978-3-54000754-8 [http://www.springer.com/].

Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek’s Vision. William I. Woods, Wenceslau G. Teixeira, Johannes Lehmann, Christoph Steiner, Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins, and Lilian Rebellato, eds. New York: Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2009. 502 pp., $249 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-4020-9030-1 [http://www.springer.com/].

Understanding The Relationship Between Nutritional Status, Obesity, And Academic Achievement, Hannah Schmunk

Sociology and Anthropology Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Whose Identity? The Responsibilities Of Museums In The Representation Of The Past And Present, Stephanie Allen

Sociology and Anthropology Honors Theses

The goal of this thesis is to investigate the nature of cultural identity as represented in, and connected to museums and the artifacts they contain. In particular, I will focus on the different ways anthropologists, archaeologists and many museums approach the problem of representation within a museum setting. Based upon a review of the literature within the fields of anthropology, museum studies, and archaeology, I will discuss how cultural identity is constructed and represented in a museum setting, demonstrating that the collective identities of both those who view archaeological collections, and the descendents of those represented may be influenced by …

A Conversation With Philippe Descola, Eduardo Kohn

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

The distinguished anthropologist Philippe Descola has worked among the Jivaroan Achuar in Ecuador’s Amazon region, since the mid-1970s. Author of numerous influential books and publications, he holds a professorship at the Collège de France and is also Directeur d’études and Directeur du Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Made-From-Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, And History From The Amazon, Evan Killick

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

Book review of Made-from-Bone: Trickster Myths, Music, and History from the Amazon. Jonathan D.Hill. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. 2009. 224 pp., 17 figures, 6 maps, bibliography, index $65.00 (Cloth), $22.00 (Paper). ISBN 978-0-252-07570-4. [www.press.uillinois.edu].

Worthless Movement: Agricultural Regression And Mobility, Luiz Costa

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

Theories of agricultural regression have questioned the standard view that Amazonian foraging represents an ancient adaptation to regional environments by demonstrating that contemporary foragers are former agriculturalists whose historical trajectory led to the adoption of a foraging subsistence strategy. Recent studies have further shown that Amazonian foraging is not an adaptation to a pristine environment, but an engagement with tracts of forest that have been transformed by former agriculturalists. These theories, however, explain the historical process of agricultural loss through an investigation of contemporary foragers or trekkers, as if a certain subsistence strategies and mobile patterns were the inevitable outcome …

Kaptëlo: L’Origine Du Ciel De Case Et Du Roseau À Flèches Chez Les Wayana (Guyanes), Philip Compton

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

Book review of Kaptëlo: L’origine du ciel de case et du roseau à flèches chez les Wayana (Guyanes). Mataliwa Kulijaman and Eliane Camargo. French Guyana: GADEPAM. 2007. 111pp, 25 euros (paper) ISBN 978-2-7355-0646-0.

Time And Memory In Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives, Laura Rival

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

Book review of Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives. Carlos Fausto and Michael Heckenberger, editors. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. Foreword by Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, ivx + 322 pp., maps, figures, tables, notes, references, index. $ 65.00 ISBN 13: 978-0-8130-3060. [www.upf.com].

Theft As “Involuntary Gifting” Among The Tacana Of Northern Bolivia, Laura Bathurst

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

It has been well established in the anthropological literature that reciprocity, in its various cultural forms, is simultaneously produced by and productive of social relationships; it both comments upon social relationships and plays a role in creating them. However, this has generally been demonstrated using positive forms of reciprocity. In this paper I examine how theft, as a form of negative reciprocity, fit with a wider set of positive reciprocal obligations among the Tacana in northeastern Bolivia in 2001-2002. Theft, I argue, was part of a coherent cultural system in which a material basis, social norms, and values and beliefs …

Ethnology And Indigenism In The Brazilian Northwest Amazon, Robin M. Wright

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

Article review of De Volta ao Lago de Leite. Lasmar, Cristiane. Sao Paulo: Edusp/ISA/NuTI. 2005. 285 pp., illustrations, maps, references. RS37,00 (paper). ISBN 85-7139-621-3. [www.editoraunesp.com.br].

Cidade do Indio. Andrello, Geraldo, Sao Paulo: Edusp/ISA/NuTI 2006.445 pp., illustrations, map, tables, references, R$54,00. (paper) ISBN: 85-7139-659-0.[www.editoraunesp.com.br]

Becoming A Real Woman: Alterity And The Embodiment Of Cashinahua Gendered Identity, Cecilia Mccallum

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

As they grow, Cashinahua boys and girls acquire gendered human agency through their embodied experiences and the conscious work of their kin and close affines. Men and women come to occupy specific relations with the interior and the exterior of the social domain they construct through their daily productive and consumptive activities, such that women are associated with the former and men with the latter in the constitution of sociality. A classic ethnological depiction might say that, in the first instance, relations with the exterior are conducted by men, take the form of predation or of exchange and use the …

Comparative Studies And The South American Gran Chaco, Isabelle Combes, Diego Villar, Kathleen Lowrey

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

No abstract provided.

Puyo Runa: Imagery And Power In Modern Amazonia, Marc A. Brightman

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

Book review of Puyo Runa: Imagery and Power in Modern Amazonia. Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Dorothea Scott Whitten. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008. 336 pp., 29 figures, 3 maps, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-252-03239-X (cloth), 0-252-07479-3 (paper).

The Napo Runa Of Amazonian Ecuador, Evan Killick

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

Book review of The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador. Michael Uzendoski. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005. 216 pp., 12 figures, 3 maps, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-252-07255-3.

Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance And Cognition In Pastaza Quechua, Michael A. Uzendoski

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

Book review of Sounds Like Life: Sound-symbolic Grammar, Performance and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics) by Janis B. Nuckolls. 1996. Oxford University Press [http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/].

The Crisis Of Late Structuralism. Perspectivism And Animism: Rethinking Culture, Nature, Spirit, And Bodiliness, Terry S. Turner

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

The paper takes as its point of departure an assessment of the achievements and limitations of structuralism as exemplified by the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, with particular attention to its applications to Amazonian ethnographic data. I attempt to identify the original contributions of structuralism, while explaining how it has distorted and misunderstood the Amazonian cultural structures and themes that it has sought to analyze by misapplying its own theoretical and methodological concepts, thus giving rise to what I call the “Crisis of Late Structuralism.” I then suggest how recent developments in Amazonianist anthropology, notably the rethinking of animism by Philippe …

Response To Taylor And Platt, Norman E. Whitten Jr

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

No abstract provided.

Time And Complexity In Historical Ecology: Studies In The Neotropical Lowlands, Alf Hornborg

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

Book review of Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands. William Balée and Clark L. Erickson, editors. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. The Historical Ecology Series. xii + 417 pp., maps, figures, tables, notes, references, index. ISBN 0-231-13288-3.

On Whitten’S “Interculturality And The Indigenization Of Modernity”, Tristan Platt

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

No abstract provided.

La Cultura En Disputa: Pintura Figurativa E Identidad Étnica Entre Los Ishir (Alto Paraguay), Ana Maria Spadafora, Luisina Morano

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

Desde mediados del Siglo XX, los ishir del Gran Chaco han sufrido transformaciones económicas, políticas e ideológicas que derivaron en una substitución de pautas y prácticas de comportamiento y pusieron en disputa el valor y el significado de la cultura en el nuevo contexto. Esta discusión se manifiesta—como en muchos otros casos etnográficos—en una marcada fractura generacional entre padres que vivieron la vida montaraz e hijos cuya crianza citadina los ubica en un umbral lejano a la experiencia del monte y en un contexto interétnico ajeno a los valores y motivaciones culturales de los ancianos. Sobre la base de nuestra …

Of Passionate Curves And Desirable Cadences: Themes On Waiwai Social Being, Tim Ingold

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

Book review of Of Passionate Curves and Desirable Cadences: Themes on Waiwai Social Being. George Mentore. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. xiv + 378 pp., illustrations, notes, references, index. ISBN 978-0-8032-3175-7.

Social Networks And Cultivated Plants: Exchange Of Planting Materials And Knowledge, Joana Cabral De Oliveira

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

Este artigo discute a dinâmica de trocas e importação de plantas cultivadas feitas pelos Wajãpi, grupo indígena que vive nas bacias dos rios Amaparí e Jarí na Amazônia brasileira. A história dos Wajãpi é permeada por intensas relações de trocas entre subgrupos Wajãpi, com outros grupos indígenas e, mais recentemente, com não-índios, sendo as espécies cultivadas um objeto de vivo interesse nessas relações. Parto de dados sobre os sistemas de classificação nativos das plantas cultivadas para reconstruir a dinâmica e os padrões de relações sociais internas a esse grupo, bem como suas alteridades. Procuro desvendar assim, uma intricad rede de …

Ethnobotany Of The Shuar Of Eastern Ecuador, Serena Heckler

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

Book review of Ethnobotany of the Shuar of Eastern Ecuador. Bradley Bennett, Marc Baker and Patricia Gómez Andrade. Bronx: New York Botanical Garden Press (Advances in Economic Botany, v. 10), 2002. 304 pp. ISBN: 0893274216.