Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

We Will Not Be Saved: A Memoir Of Hope And Resistance In The Amazon Rainforest, Theodor Borrmann

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

Review: We will not be saved: a memoir of hope and resistance in the Amazon rainforest, by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson. London: Wildfire, 2024. 368 pp., plates.

Revitalizing While Transmitting: Conversations Around “Natural Birth”Practices With Kichwa Midwives In Ecuador’S Napo Region, Laura Rival

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

Despite its relevance for analyzing many distinctive native imaginaries and societal values, childbirth remains a relatively neglected theme within Amazonianist scholarship. Yet, birthing can be shown to structure contemporary struggles around kinship, politics, economics, and the place of transformation in social life. This article proposes to examine a Kichwa organization (AMUPAKIN) through an experimental anthropological lens. By putting childbirth at the center of its political struggle, AMUPAKIN seeks to keep Kichwa knowledge/power alive. The goal of the organization is that each child born the Kichwa way will be able to live a good life in multicultural contexts. The article documents …

“Nós Vamos Lutar Por Eles”: A Defesa Do Povo “Isolado” Pirititi Pelos Waimiri Atroari, Amazonas E Roraima, Brasil, Silvia Melo Futada, Glenn H. Shepard Jr., Walter Nicanor Fontoura Blos, Antônio Carlos Andrade Do Nascimento, Marcelo De Sousa Cavalcante, Associação Comunitária Waimiri Atroari

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

Os Pirititi são um grupo indígena “isolado” pouco conhecido, que ocupa um território altamente ameaçado na divisa entre os estados do Amazonas e Roraima (Brasil), e tem majoritariamente rejeitado todo tipo de contato e encontro. Os Waimiri Atroari já tiveram conflitos com os Pirititi no passado, mas nas últimas décadas assumiram a responsabilidade de defender os Pirititi e seu território, em processos de reconhecimento oficial, elaborando estratégias, organizando atividades e investindo seu tempo e recursos da associação comunitária. Diante da lentidão das respostas do Estado brasileiro às invasões e outras ameaças aos Pirititi, os Waimiri Atroari tornaram-se os principais protagonistas …

(Un)Worlding With Karipuna’S Shadowy Alliances: The Mirangã And The Isolados, Hanmin Kin

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

This ethnographically inspired article investigates the ways in which the Karipuna Indigenous people in Rondônia defend their land in the Western Brazilian Amazon against forces of deforestation and dispossession. I focus on the Karipuna’s plurivalent and collective forest spirits called the mirangã, through life experience accounts of two survivors from the “pre-contact” era who embody the Karipuna-mirangã connection. Through an analysis of the onto-epistemological entanglements in which the mirangã and my interlocutors are situated, I articulate another front of the Karipuna’s multi-faceted resistance: the struggle of worlding vis-à-vis the non-indigenous world. This process also reveals the association (from …

Ratting On The Coca Spirit Or Mastering Exchange? Andoque Negotiations Of Power And Commodification Between Forest And Market, Eliran Arazi

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

Asserting the importance of analyzing Indigenous involvement in the extraction and trade of nonhuman entities against the backdrop of Amazonian perceptions of personhood, this article investigates the risks and opportunities that coca commercialization by the Andoque of Northwest Amazonia, Colombia, holds for the Andoque’s relationships with the coca spirit, other nonhuman entities, and non-Indigenous agents. Considering the triangular relational dynamics between coca producers, urban consumers, and nonhumans as an inflection of Amazonian mastery dynamics within the context of market economic exchange, I analyze the Andoque’s statements and practices relating to this activity through the etic distinction between gifts and commodities …

Jean Langdon: Transformations And Perspectives From Half A Century Of Research About Shamanism, Isabel Santana De Rose

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

This text reviews some of Jean Langdon’s most important classical and contemporary writings about shamanism, highlighting her key contributions to the area, as well as her relevance to the anthropology of health and Indigenous health policies. The paper also reflects on Langdon’s influence in the discussions surrounding gender and female agency in ethnographies of lowland South America. Jean Langdon was one of the pioneers in the revival of the research on shamanism in the 1980s. During a period when male anthropologists largely dominated studies on this topic, she highlighted the complexity and diversity of Indigenous shamanisms, proposing that they should …

Call And Response : Experiments In Storytelling, Deanne Fernandes

Masters Theses

Being part of RISD's inaugural Masters of Illustration cohort has been an immense honor. This journey has been nothing short of transformative and healing, as it has allowed me to unearth layers of self-discovery through my creative practice.

In my thesis, I introduce a fresh research methodology rooted in the principles of call and response, with adaptability, creativity, and storytelling as its foundational pillars. Through the lenses of visual storytelling, experimental animation, graphic journalism, and fictional world-building, I demonstrate how these techniques can effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice. This dynamic approach fosters meaningful connections among diverse perspectives …

Women’S Routes: Gender, Mobility, And Knowledge Among The Makushi Of Southern Guyana, Lisa Katharina Grund

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

Exploring the journeys of some Makushi women, this article highlights the relevance of gender in the question of (im)mobility and female engagements with the world as central to contemporary Makushi life. Departing from the understanding that the category of space has proven crucial in the theoretical groundwork of the Guiana ethnographic area and drawing on the region’s classical ethnographies, it explores everyday practices of movement of the Makushi people who live along the triple frontier of southern Guyana. Rather than disruptive, these in and out journeys—collective or individual—prove to be crucial to the weaving of community. They are also central …

Replication And Growth In Cassava Cultivation And Uxorilocal Women’S Relations Among The Waiwai: A Mother's Reckoning With Death And Social Change, Laura H. Mentore

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

Through an ethnographic examination of the shared capacities of cassava and womanhood for what I term growth and replication, I argue that Waiwai sociality seeks to curtail the trajectory of life towards finite death through the intervening act of cutting and replanting or replicating life in a vegetatively inspired form of the “episodic present” (Strathern 2021). An extended vignette demonstrates how these features of Waiwai sociality take shape in mother-daughter and sister relations at the core of uxorilocal residential living, and in a senior woman’s reckonings with illness, death, and social change.

Propagating Conviviality: Waiwai Cultural Transformation Of Moral Depravity, George F. Mentore

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

This essay considers the problematics of anthropological translations when its responsibility to the codes of its modernist subjectivity persuades us to defer judgment on interpretations made of indigenous semiotics of life. It begins with this full disclosure before attempting to describe, from a translation of a Waiwai myth, how one can produce a guilty reading about their privileging of concern for conviviality. The Waiwai bodily feeling of well-being must be in place before relations of trust can be enacted. Transforming the vial aggressive feelings of strangers becomes a priority for hosting them. Maintaining feelings of conviviality within the community is …

Kita Vai À Kwamalasamutu, Fabio Ribeiro

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

No contexto de uma série de encontros entre pessoas zo'é e tiriyó na região da fronteira Brasil-Suriname, o presente artigo aborda a experiência de Kita, jovem zo’é que em 2010 viajou com alguns chefes e pastores tiriyó e permaneceu na aldeia Kwamalasamutu, no sul do Suriname, por alguns meses. A partir de dois relatos de Kita, procuro seguir as múltiplas conexões por ele mobilizadas e articulá-las a problemas relevantes da etnologia das Guianas. Seguindo a proposta metodológica de S. Oakdale (2007) no sentido de ancorar a “economia simbólica da alteridade” em autobiografias ameríndias, o objetivo é imbricar a crônica de …

Povos Indígenas Nas Guianas: Etnografias Contemporâneas, Luísa G. Girardi, Leonor Valentino, Virgínia Amaral

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

Na introdução a este número especial da Tipití, dedicado a etnografias recentes realizadas junto a povos indígenas na Amazônia guianense, sobrevoamos as principais tradições antropológicas que posicionaram a região no centro dos debates da etnologia amazonista. Alternativamente definida como “área linguística”, “área cultural” ou “área etnográfica”, a região das Guianas é compartilhada por coletivos indígenas falantes de idiomas da família Caribe e, em menor medida, de línguas Aruaque, Tupi, Yanomami, Sáliva e Warao, e está associada a algumas das monografias que inauguraram o período moderno da reflexão etnológica sobre o parentesco na Amazônia, além de influentes sínteses comparativas a …

Don’T Come Crying To My Funeral, Charlotte Hoskins

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

In this article, I describe a Makushi wake in Guyana, where an opposition was drawn between people in mourning and their perception of others who appeared to them to be much more like partygoers. This opposition in affective states was made evident through the enactment of associated oppositions in bodily practices: feeding and eating, speaking and singing, and forms of social availability. Rather than consider the divergence in affective states as a form of moral disorder, I argue that an affective divide allows grief to be expressed by the mourners and safely circumscribed by their still-living community, who continue to …

Indigenous Peoples In The Guianas: Contemporary Ethnographies, Luísa G. Girardi, Leonor Valentino, Virgínia Amaral

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

In the introduction to this special issue of Tipití, dedicated to recent ethnographies conducted among indigenous peoples in Guianese Amazonia, we offer an overview of the main anthropological traditions that have placed the region at the center of debates in Amazonianist ethnology. Alternatively defined as a "linguistic area," "cultural area," or "ethnographic area," the Guianas region is shared by indigenous collectives of the Cariban family and, to a lesser extent, Arawak, Tupi, Yanomami, Sáliva, and Warao-speaking groups, and is associated with some of the monographs that inaugurated the modern period of ethnological reflection on kinship in Amazonia, as well as …

The Little Black Book: When Recipes Tell Stories, Cordula C. Peters

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

In post-war Germany in the 1950s my grandmother used to collect recipes from magazines, newspapers, and the backs of food packaging that she neatly cut out and saved. Other recipes were carefully copied with pen and ink. At some point, when my mother was still a child and my grandmother still alive, she and her sister compiled all these recipes and tidily pasted them into a black notebook for safekeeping. Growing up many of the recipes from this book became much-loved dishes prepared by my mother and expected by my siblings and I almost religiously for important holidays such as …

Living With An Altered Body: A Qualitative Account Of Body Image With Cancer Diagnosis And Its Treatment Among Women In Kolkata, West Bengal, India, Mehboobun Nahar Milky

The Qualitative Report

Cancer diagnosis and its treatments influence the body image of patients in addition to bodily functioning. This qualitative study explores cancer patients' experiences with their bodies following cancer diagnosis and its treatment. For this study, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with five female cancer patients were conducted in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The interviews were transcribed verbatim to include the insider’s perspective and then analysed using thematic analysis. The findings are divided into three major themes and eight sub-themes: the altered body (changed appearance, failing functional capabilities), emotional conflicts (feelings and emotions, loss of identity), and coping strategies (avoidance, clothing adjustments, social …

A Manual On The Planning And Integration Of Archaeological Methods In To Outdoor Forensic Search Investigations, Jonathan Robert Garcia

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

As archaeology and its applications into forensic contexts develop into the growing discipline of forensic archaeology, an increasing amount of literature has resulted stemming from research on the integration of common archaeological methods. However, much of this literature is intended for professional archaeologists or forensic anthropologists who are well experienced in their respective disciplines. Emerging literature generally does not consider those who leads efforts at forensic scenes in the outdoors such as law enforcement officers who often lack a background in archaeology or forensic anthropology. This thesis seeks to resolve this dilemma by creating a new and accessible manual. The …

How I Obtained My Phd Admission Letter: A Reflective Interaction-Based Autoethnography, Qing Xu, Kei Wei Chia

The Qualitative Report

This account utilises autoethnography to explore how the “one-child generation’s” cultural context influences behaviours and character traits, focusing on the first author’s experiences during a 5-month doctoral program application. It examines interactions with the employer, unacquainted individuals, intermediaries, and family, encapsulated in three Episodes, to analyse the personality traits of this generation. The findings reveal that, though deeply rooted in traditional culture, character traits such as risk aversion, caution, and family dependency are not immutable. It highlights the potential for personal transformation through inward growth, proactive external engagement, and the support of families who challenge traditional norms. In terms of …

Containerization Of Seafarers In The International Shipping Industry: Contemporary Seamanship, Maritime Social Infrastructures, And Mobility Politics Of Global Logistics, Liang Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation discusses the mobility politics of container shipping and argues that technological development, political-economic order, and social infrastructure co-produce one another. Containerization, the use of standardized containers to carry cargo across modes of transportation that is said to have revolutionized and globalized international trade since the late 1950s, has served to expand and extend the power of international coalitions of states and corporations to control the movements of commodities (shipments) and labor (seafarers). The advent and development of containerization was driven by a sociotechnical imaginary and international social contract of seamless shipping and cargo flows. In practice, this liberal, …

Exploring The Factors That Influence Female Offending In The U.S. And Mexico, Dana Villasenor

CMC Senior Theses

Hollywood has painted a picture of the criminal woman as a sexy, sneaky, and often psychotic female fatale. This is because men run Hollywood. Much like movies, research on why women offend had historically focused on men as their stellar. However, towards the turn of the century and with the disproportionate rise in female incarceration, literature caught up to the fact that women and men do not experience the same socialization, standards, or reality and, therefore, have different reasons for and ways of offending. This research explores those reasons for women in the U.S. and Mexico and paints the picture …

Into An Interference Zone: Childbirth And Care Among Mehinako People, Aline Regitano

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

This article addresses issues of care and corporeality during gestation, childbirth, the postpartum period, and childcare through a case study conducted with Mehinako people. Among this Amazonian people, care forms the person, having an elementary function in the daily construction of kinship relations through means of affection. A recent trend has caused expressive transformations in the way women experience corporeality and the making of a person: the displacement of birth from the home to hospitals, motivated by women’s fear, desire, and curiosity. In the city, Indigenous women transit through medical institutions, which I propose may be read as interference zones …

Jean E. Jackson: A Pioneering Ethnographer In The Colombian Amazon, Patience Epps, Danilo Paiva Ramos, Flora Dias Cabalzar

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

This essay celebrates the work of Jean E. Jackson, a pioneering female ethnographer who devoted most of her fifty-year career to the Indigenous peoples of Colombia. Her research, represented in an extensive set of publications from the early 1970s to the present, engages with themes of identity, stigma, and social inequality, manifested across a range of contexts. Jackson’s ethnographic contributions include her ground-breaking early work on Indigenous Tukanoan society in the Colombian Vaupés, focusing on the practice of linguistic exogamy (obligatory marriage across language groups) among the Bará people. Later, she expanded her focus to address Indigenous experiences in the …

The Age Of The Onanya - Regarding The Spread Of Ayahuasca Use Throughout The Ucayali Basin, Carlos Suárez-Álvarez

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

The spread of ayahuasca shamanism throughout the Upper Amazon has become a matter of debate among scholars since, in 1994, anthropologist Peter Gow formulated the controversial suggestion that it could be a recent phenomenon in the Ucayali basin, usually considered the stronghold of a millenary tradition. Following Gow, Brabec de Mori argued that the Shipibo-Conibo people, a paradigmatic example of the antique practice of ayahuasca shamanism, adopted both the brew and the associated shamanic practices in a “relatively recent” past. Gow and Brabec pointed at the Maynas missions as the origin of this shamanic complex, and the mestizo and Cocama …

The Way Of Warriors: Annotated Narratives Of The Mebengokre (Kayapo) In Brazil, By Gustaaf Verswijver, John Hemming

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

This is a review of The Way of Warriors: Annotated Narratives of the Mebengokre (Kayapó) in Brazil, by Gustaaf Verswijver. Turuti Books: Almería, Spain.

Vaupés Multilingualism And The Substance Of Language, Stephen Hugh-Jones

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

By focusing on ordinary conversational language, relying on a notion of “group” derived from unilineal descent theory, and neglecting mythology and ritual, studies of Vaupés Tukanoan multilingualism have inadvertently tended to reproduce a Western ideology of language as marking national identity and concerned with conveying meaning. This paper suggests that attention to musical, ritual, and shamanic contexts reveals multilingualism in a different light, with ritual speech acts as constitutive of social groups, names as vehicles of reproduction, and breath as a substance-like bodily element and source of vitality. The more esoteric, rhetorical, musical, or visual ornamentation is given to breath, …

Marginal To Whom? Reflections On Gow’S "Purús Song", Magnus Course

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

This paper constitutes a personal exploration of the impact of the work of Peter Gow on my own attempts to think through specific ethnographic problems, both in the Mapuche communities of Southern Chile and the Gaelic communities of Western Scotland. I focus in particular on how Gow’s lesser-known essay “Purús Song” inverts received wisdom about the relationships between center and periphery, and between nation-state and Indigenous people. I see this as one iteration of Gow’s broader aim of letting ethnographic realities transform theoretical complacencies.

Indigenous Transformations In The Comunidad Nativa: Rethinking Kinship And Its Limitations In An Expanding Resource Frontier, Evan Killick, Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti

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

In Of Mixed Blood, Peter Gow sets out an account of the transformations of kinship and the construction of social relations among Indigenous, mainly Yine (Piro), people of the Bajo Urubamba valley in the early 1980s, when Peru’s “Comunidades Nativas” (“Native Communities”) were receiving their new official titles. We revisit Peter’s proposition by comparing it our more recent ethnographic engagements with Indigenous Asháninka/Ashéninka communities in the region. While tracing continuities from his observations, we also show how social relations now play out in different ways, as certain important resources have become scarcer and the need for …

An Amazonianist And His History, Victor Cova, Juan Pablo Sarmiento

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

No abstract provided.

‘One Piro Man I Knew Well’: A Brief Commentary On An Amazonian Myth And Its History, Leif Grunewald

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

This is a book review for An Amazonian myth and History, to the special volume to honor Peter Gow.

Civilized Elders And Isolated Ancestors: The Multiple Histories Of Contemporary Amazonia, Casey High

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

In this article I consider the impact of Peter Gow’s writing on indigenous histories as a key area of research on Amazonia. Building on his study of kinship as history on the Bajo Urubamba (1991) he presented a regional perspective on the dynamic social categories by which Amazonian people understand their relations with various “others.” Focusing on indigenous agency and modes of thought, Gow challenged certain lines of historical thinking that dominated anthropology at the time. I explore how his ethnographic approach to history has influenced a generation of regional scholarship, including my own work on memory and social transformation …