Anthropology Commons^™

“The Effectiveness Of Symbols” Revisited: Ayoreo Curing Songs, John Renshaw

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

This essay considers a specific field of Amerindian knowledge, namely the sarode, or curing songs, of the Ayoreo of the Gran Chaco. It attempts to elucidate some of the taken-for-granted metaphysical assumptions that underlie Ayoreo epistemology. Following the approach taken in Joanna Overing’s introduction to Reason and Morality (1985), I will suggest that even these apparently simple, repetitive curing songs have to be understood as part of a broader corpus of “mythical” knowledge. They acquire their effectiveness or power, not through suggestion or metaphor but rather by harnessing the power of the “mythical” world of the jnani bajade, the …

Sensual Vitalities: Noncorporeal Modes Of Sensing And Knowing In Native Amazonia, Fernando Santos-Granero

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

Yanesha people of eastern Peru would agree with Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas that knowledge can only be achieved through sense perception. They would, however, disagree on what exactly “sense perception” means. In the Western tradition the senses are considered to be the “physiological” modes of perception. We can only know, it is asserted, through the body and its senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. In contrast, Yanesha people view bodily senses as imperfect means of knowing, unable to grasp the true, spiritual dimension of the world. Only one of the noncorporeal components of the self, yecamquëñ or “our …

Matsigenka Corporeality, A Nonbiological Reality: On Notions Of Consciousness And The Constitution Of Identity, Dan Rosengren

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

Departing from the specific case of Matsigenka people in the Montaña of southeastern Peru, this article challenges some of the assumptions associated with predominant conceptions of Amazonian perspectivism. Examining different cultural registers such as birth rituals and mythology, Matsigenka peoples’ notions about being, soul, and self are discussed in relation to the importance that often is ascribed to physical shape for conceptualizing the world. In contrast to this stress on the corporeal, it is argued that Matsigenka people consider the noncorporeal cognizant self to determine outlook and identity. In accordance, corporeal transformation is seen as a result of “the self …

The Strength Of Thoughts, The Stench Of Blood: Amazonian Hematology And Gender, Luisa Elvira Belanunde

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

This paper lays the grounds for an Amazonian hematology aiming to unlock the significance of blood with relation to gender, knowledge, and cosmology. Drawing guidance from Overing’s critique of patriarchy theory and her examination of Piaroa understandings of menstruation, it explores cross-cultural ideas about the embodiment and gendering of spirits, thought and strength in the blood, arguing that the flow of blood is conceived of as a relationship, for it transports knowledge to all body parts, both uniting and differentiating men and women, and constituting the hub of a person’s existence throughout his or her lifecycle. Through an examination of …

The Politics Of Shamanism And The Limits Of Fear, Robert Storrie

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

The Hoti are a small group of hunter-horticulturalists living in the highlands of central Venezuelan Guiana. In this article I examine Hoti understandings of equality, hierarchy and power and the coercive use of fear by individuals who cultivate a reputation as “Light Ones”—that is people especially skilled in their interaction with the powerful beings of the shamanic environment—a role that is essential for the safety and fertility of the community. Hoti people are highly egalitarian and anti-hierarchical in their moral understandings and for them all power is ambiguous, and all claims to authority can arouse suspicion. For this reason it …

“Purús Song”: Nationalization And Tribalization In Southwestern Amazonia, Peter Gow

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

Starting from a statement about knowledge and power by a Piaroa informant of Joanna Overing, the article analyses two descriptions of a meal on the Purús river in the early twentieth century: a Piro song and a short essay by Euclides da Cunha. Contrasting these two pieces in the context of how the ancestors of the Piro people of today came to meet the famous Brazilian writer, I propose the concepts of “nationalization” and “tribalization” as modes of symbolic action. Nationalization takes local events and escalates them into the space-time of the nation state, while tribalization deactivates the dangerous ramifications …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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, …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.