Anthropology Commons^™

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.

Paisajes Sonoros De Un Mundo Coherente. Prácticas Musicales Y Religión En La Sociedad Wichí, Ana Maria Spadafora

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

Book review of Paisajes Sonoros de un Mundo Coherente. Prácticas Musicales y Religión en la Sociedad Wichí. Miguel A. García. Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de Musicología, 2005. 254 pp., 2 mapas, 7 transcripciones musicales, 3 diagramas, 1 CD de audio con 7 tracks, bibliografía, índice. ISBN 950-9726-10-9.

On Whitten’S “Interculturality And The Indigenization Of Modernity”, Anne-Christine Taylor

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

No abstract provided.

Language Contact In Amazonia, Ellen B. Basso

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

Book review of Language Contact in Amazonia. Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 320 pp., 1 map. ISBN 978-0-19-925785-0.

The Amazon: Land Without History, John Hemming

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

Book review of The Amazon: Land Without History. Euclides da Cunha (translation by Ronald Sousa of À margem da história (1909), with an introduction by Lúcia Sá). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 96 pp., introduction, maps, bibliography, index. ISBN 0195172051, 0195172043.

Pioneer In Brazilian Ethnography And Indigenous Rights Advocacy: David Maybury-Lewis (1929-2007), Harald E. L. Prins, Laura R. Graham

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

No abstract provided.

Latin American Indigenous Warfare And Ritual Violence, Fernando Santos-Granero

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

Book review of Latin American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence. Richard J. Chacon and Rubén G. Mendoza, editors. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2007. x + 293 pp., illustrations, notes, references, index. ISBN 978-0-8165-2527-0.

Interculturality And The Indigenization Of Modernity: A View From Amazonian Ecuador, Norman E. Whitten Jr

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

After introducing the history and topography of the "forest of Canelos," I turn to the central theme of this essay, "the indigenization of modernity." I next illustrate pervasive mythic cosmology to orient the reader to Canelos Quichua Amazonian perspectives on cultural topography. The relationships that obtain in language, history and ecology between the "lowlands" and the 'highlands" address the subject of ethnogenesis in indigenous thought and in written historical portrayal. Bulding toward an indigenous structure of conjuncture, I treat "epistemic distortion" in various academic sectors and attept to counter or deflect what I take to be such distortions. In so …

Cannibals, Amazons, And Social Reproduction In Amazonia, Astrid Steverlynck

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

This paper analyzes Amerindian representations of Amazon-like women and cannibalism in the context of ideas about the processes of creation. While cannibalism focuses on the socialization of death through male agency and control int he context of relationships with external others, the myths about Amaon-like women focus on the social control of sexuality and female creativity (pregnancy and birth) through the establishment of male-female cooperation. Both discourses rely on the intrinsic qualities of male and female creativity that constitute the elementary structure of Amerindian cosmology. they explore the two most fundamental moments in the chain of creative processes that constitute …

Making Indigenous Citizens: Identity, Development And Multicultural Activism In Peru, Hanne Veber

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

Book review of Making Indigenous Citizens: Identity, Development and Multicultural Activism in Peru. Maria Elena García. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005, xi+213 pp., notes, index. ISBN 0-8047-5015-7.

Landscapes Of Power And Identity: Comparative Histories In The Sonoran Desert And The Forests Of Amazonia From Colony To Republic, Michael F. Brown

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

Book review of Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic. Cynthia Radding. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005. 432 pp., 27 figures, 2 maps, 19 tables, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8223-3652-9.

Cubeo Hehenawa Religious Thought. Metaphysics Of A Northwestern Amazonian People, Robin M. Wright

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

Book review of Cubeo Hehenawa Religious Thought. Metaphysics of a Northwestern Amazonian People. Irving Goldman. Edited by Peter J. Wilson. Afterword by Stephen Hugh-Jones. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. xlv + 438 pp., glossary, references, index. ISBN 0-231-13021-X.

Did The Kulinas Become The Marubos? A Linguistic And Ethnohistorical Investigation, David W. Fleck

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

This paper presents the results of a study designed to clear up confusion surrounding the ethnic and linguistic identity of several indigenous groups from western Amazonia that have been denominated “Kulina,” “Marubo,” or variants of these terms.  Linguistic analysis revealed unequivocally that the term Kulina has been used to refer to three different languages, two in the Panoan family and one in the Arawan family, and that the term Marubo has been used to refer to two different languages in the Panoan family.  To elucidate the ethnohistory of each of these five groups, the usage of the terms Kulina and …

Shipibo Hunting And The Overkill Hypothesis, Warren M. Hern

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

The "overkill" hypothesis, as promulgated by Paul Martin and others, is supported by evidence of asynchronous extinction of megafauna and other species in North America associated with the arrival of Pleistocene hunters in the Western Hemisphere. In this essay, further evidence—based on observations made of the response of a small party of Shipibo hunters in the upper Peruvian Amazon—is offered in support of the hypothesis. These observations were made during an exploratory tripinto the headwaters of a remote Amazonian tributary, a pristine area not occupied by human beings that was plentiful with wildlife. The Shipibo aggressively took the opportunity to …

Consuming Culture: Extralocal Exchanges And Kalinago Identity On Dominica, Kathryn A. Hudepohl

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

Tourism is a significant global force affecting indigenous residents of numerous destination locales worldwide. This paper considers the effects of tourism on Kalinago ethnicity in the Commonwealth of Dominica. In this particular case, tourist consumption of indigenous handicrafts reinforces Kalinago claims to a distinct ethnic identity. Extralocal exchanges that occur as a result of tourism strengthen identity in part by heightening awareness of the ethnic boundary that differentiates the community from outsiders and by stimulating participation in traditional handicraft production. In addition to tourism, other types ofinteractions with outsiders, such as land boundary disputes and cultural borrowing from other indigenous …

The Canela Diaries: Their Nature, Uses, And Future, William H. Crocker

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

In 1966, three Canela Indians of Brazil started writing diaries about their lives and tribal events for me. Since then, I have collected about 150,000 manuscript pages and 2,000 hours on tape. About twenty-two diarists have contributed through the years, though never more than twelve at once. The Canela diary program grew out of my predilection for a personal approach to field work as well as my preference for qualitative over quantitative research methods. Excerpts from the diaries are included, one set to provide different points of view about a murder and others to show how I have used diarists' …

Anchoring “The Symbolic Economy Of Alterity” With Autobiography, Suzanne Oakdale

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

This essay addresses the usefulness of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's concept of the "symbolic economy of alterity" for understanding the subjectively meaningful historical details of individual lives. My focus is the autobiographical narratives of two Kayabi men from central Brazil whose lives have spanned the twentieth century. Their accounts show that these men do, in fact, speak of identity, with kin as being fashioned gradually out from alterity, in keeping with Viveiros de Castro's model. However, this process, when seen over a significant span of time, is highly reversible, causing others and selves to become very ambiguous figures with respect …

Merits And Motivations Of An Ashéninka Leader, Hanne Veber

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

Recent approaches to life history studies emphasize the power of biography in processes of social construction, highlighting the individual—storyteller and social being—as creative and created in relation to others. Situated in collective meaning systems and their dynamics, autobiographical narration is transformed into agency as it provides definitions of situations and encodes models for action. This essay discusses alternative interpretations of the autobiographical narrative of an Ashéninka leader, Miguel Camaiteri, in Peru's Upper Amazon, focusing on the exposition of his motivations for becoming an indigenous activist and contemplating the way his self-presentation is contingent upon the political agenda he is pursuing …

A Yaminahua Autobiographical Song: Caqui Caqui, Pierre Deleage

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

This essay proposes a theoretical framework of the relationship between autobiography and tradition. In support of this framework, I present a transcription and translation of an autobiographical song recorded among the Yaminahua (in the Western Amazon of Peru). My account of this song allows me to define an original discursive genre: the traditional autobiography. Two contradictory features characterize this genre. On the one hand, it is autobiographical because it makes reference to the personal life of the speaker. On the other hand, it is traditional in the sense that it is inherited from another speaker and faithfully reproduced. I explore …

Introduction, Suzanne Oakdale

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

No abstract provided.

The Stench Of Death And The Aromas Of Life: The Poetics Of Ways Of Knowing And Sensory Process Among Piaroa Of The Orinoco Basin, Joanna Overing

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

The Piaroa are people, living along tributaries of the middle Orinoco, who recognize that the dance of every bodily process participates in a poisonous, primordial design of things. This paper explores the relation of sensory processes and the cosmic to Piaroa ways of knowing and doing their arts of the culinary. In so doing it is an expedition into ethnopoetics. My focus is upon the interplay of two contrasting narrative genres—the sublime and grotesque realism—as used by shamanic chanters to unfold the manifold ways in which bodily processes and sensory life are intimately involved in ways of knowing. The imagery …

Laughing At Power And The Power Of Laughing In Cashinahua Narrative And Performance, Elsje Lagrou

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

The grotesque humor of pantomime and myth, the festive humor of play, and the humor used to criticize excesses in myth and comic sketches, can all be read as modes of native knowledge of the world and of the relationships holding this world together. Native exegesis of humorous imagery reveals crucial values related to Cashinahua concepts about sociality and ritual agency. These are iconic discourses about the quality of relations between people and between people and the animated world. The humor of the grotesque body, which is composed of parts of the body acting as autonomous forces, and the festive …

From One To Metaphor: Toward An Understanding Of Pa’Ikwené (Palikur) Mathematics, Alan Passes

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

This article addresses an aspect of Pa’ikwené knowledge called púkúha, which means both “to understand” and “to count.” It explores the indigenous numerology and the close relationship,no less imaginative than empirical,between mathematics and linguistics that is not always apparent in non-oral societies such as ours. The Pa’ikwené mathematical system is conceptually inventive and lexically profuse, some numerals having over two hundred different forms in current usage thanks to an intensive, affix-based process of morphemic transformations. Thereby, a number word can belong to twenty-one numerical classes relating to five distinct semantic categories incorporating diverse discrete states or qualities (male/female, concrete/abstract, …

Bororo Funerals: Images Of The Refacement Of The World, Sylvia Caiuby Novaes

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

In this article I analyze Bororo funerals as moments of defacement and refacement. Death triggers a series of transformations that involve the dead person, the corpse itself, the soul, the making of the deceased’s representative, and the relationships among the living. All these transformations—which are the object of public secrecy—take place during the various rituals that compose the funerary cycle. The text is accompanied by a selection of photographs taken during thirty years of field research among the Bororo Indians of Mato Grosso, Brazil, in order to illustrate Bororo funerals as moments of re-creation of the world, following the theoretical …

Instrumental Speeches, Morality, And Masculine Agency Among Muinane People (Colombian Amazon), Carlos David Londono Sulkin

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

Individuals among People of the Center (Colombian Amazon) produced numerous discursive depictions of themselves and of others, regarding their own competence and morality and others’ lacks thereof. Here, I attend particularly to a set of portrayals that pertained mostly to men: those concerning forms of knowledge that each People of the Center deemed uniquely their own. Individuals stressed the great amount of knowledge they possessed, the propriety of their processes of acquisition and the legitimacy of their use of it, its effectiveness and authentically patrilineal character, and the respect and fear others had of them because of it. They also …

The Triumph And Sorrow Of Beauty: Comparing The Recursive, Contrapuntal, And Cellular Aesthetics Of Being, George Mentore

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

The principal assumption put forward in this paper will be that for the Waiwai the privileging of lateral visibility brings ideas about a fractal individual into association with recursive power, while for coastal Guyanese and U.S. societies, respectively, the privileging of axial visibility brings concepts about an autonomous individual into association with contrapuntal and cellular relations of power. It will be argued that, contrary to the Waiwai situation, in its agenda to achieve a greater efficiency for the workings of its political relations with its citizens, the desire of the modern state, expressed through its privileged use of axial visibility, …

Introduction: Amerindian Modes Of Knowledge, George Mentore, Fernando Santos-Granero

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

No abstract provided.

On Body And Soul, Guilherme Werlang

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

The notions of “body”and “soul,” within the dual universe of the Marubo from southwestern Amazonia, intersect other contributions to this volume: first, in view of the present concern, from a universalizing perspective, on epistemological issues in Amazonia; and second, in view of a now ever-present relevance of indigenous ontology (here more as the “presentation,” rather than the “investigation” or “account” of the origins of the cosmos and all forms of being therein) vis-à-vis the knowledge, with a particularizing tenor, of the performance of a cognitive ethos.

As noções de “corpo” e “alma,” dentro do universo dual dos Marubo do Sudoeste …