ABOUT THIS BOOK

Landscapes of Devils is a rich, historically grounded ethnography of the western Toba, an indigenous people in northern Argentina’s Gran Chaco region. In the early twentieth century, the Toba were defeated by the Argentinean army, incorporated into the seasonal labor force of distant sugar plantations, and proselytized by British Anglicans. Gastón R. Gordillo reveals how the Toba’s memory of these processes is embedded in their experience of “the bush” that dominates the Chaco landscape.

As Gordillo explains, the bush is the result of social, cultural, and political processes that intertwine this place with other geographies. Labor exploitation, state violence, encroachment by settlers, and the demands of Anglican missionaries all transformed this land. The Toba’s lives have been torn between alienating work in sugar plantations and relative freedom in the bush, between moments of domination and autonomy, abundance and poverty, terror and healing. Part of this contradictory experience is culturally expressed in devils, evil spirits that acquire different features in different places. The devils are sources of death and disease in the plantations, but in the bush they are entities that connect with humans as providers of bush food and healing power. Enacted through memory, the experiences of the Toba have produced a tense and shifting geography. Combining extensive fieldwork conducted over a decade, historical research, and critical theory, Gordillo offers a nuanced analysis of the Toba’s social memory and a powerful argument that geographic places are not only objective entities but also the subjective outcome of historical forces.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Gastón R. Gordillo is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is coauthor of El río y la frontera: movilizaciones aborígenes, obras públicas y mercosur en el Pilcomayo.

REVIEWS

“Gastón R. Gordillo has written a superb book about the complex, contradictory world of the Toba of the Argentinean Chaco. Especially memorable is the manner in which he demonstrates the contextual, shifting nature of the meaning of the various places and spaces, activities and imaginings, figures and fetishes that have made up the Toba world ever since the time of the ‘ancient ones.’ He unravels the historical experiences and the memories that configure everyday practices in a world beset by devils—and by some of the less enviable effects of an especially avaricious capitalist economy on its contract laborers. While it is situated in a remote part of South America, this is a work of global importance in both its historical and its theoretical reach.”—John Comaroff, University of Chicago

“Gordillo’s analysis is nuanced and engagingly written. The strength of this book lies in its deep, ethnographically grounded, and historically situated research, as well as in its emphasis on the ambiguities, tensions, and social contradictions that construct memory and place.”

-- Silvia Hirsch American Anthropologist

“The author’s methodology—based on extensive data collection, almost twenty years of sincere relationship with the people in the field, solid archival research, and rigorous use of negative dialectic—has produced a unique ethnography of the tensions of places and memories that could inspire similar type of work among other indigenous peoples.”

-- Marcela Mendoza Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

“This book is at once a superb ethnography and a challenging theoretical reflection on the agency of indigenous people faced with profound economic and political change.”

-- Arnd Schneider Latin American Studies

"[I]mpressive. . . . [T]he author's approach (data collection sustained by a long-term sincere relationship with the people in the field, solid archival research, and rigorous use of negative dialectic) have produced a unique ethnography of tensions of places and memories."

-- Marcela Mendoza American Ethnologist

"History, geography, sociology and anthropology come together in this gripping, if depressing, account of the destruction of a people's independence and of their environment. The book throws light on events in a part of the world not so well known as they might be and that should be of wider interest."

-- David Bridgeman-Sutton International Journal of Environmental Studies

"This is a welcome, fresh perspective that emerges from traditional ethnographic research methods. Highly recommended. All levels/libraries."

-- D. B. Heath Choice

TABLE OF CONTENTS

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.