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6 books match the query 'Amazonian Society'

cover of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society

Consuming Grief

Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society

By Beth A. Conklin

University of Texas Press, 2001

Mourning the death of loved ones and recovering from their loss are universal human experiences, yet the grieving process is as different between cultures as it is among individuals. As late as the 1960s, the Wari' Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest ate the roasted flesh of their dead as an expression of compassion for the deceased and for his or her close relatives. By removing and transforming the corpse, which embodied ties between the living and the dead and was a focus of grief for the family of the deceased, Wari' death rites helped the bereaved kin accept their loss and go on with their lives.

Drawing on the recollections of Wari' elders who participated in consuming the dead, this book presents one of the richest, most authoritative ethnographic accounts of funerary cannibalism ever recorded. Beth Conklin explores Wari' conceptions of person, body, and spirit, as well as indigenous understandings of memory and emotion, to explain why the Wari' felt that corpses must be destroyed and why they preferred cannibalism over cremation. Her findings challenge many commonly held beliefs about cannibalism and show why, in Wari' terms, it was considered the most honorable and compassionate way of treating the dead.

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cover of From the Enemy's Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society

From the Enemy's Point of View

Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

University of Chicago Press, 1992

The Araweté are one of the few Amazonian peoples who have maintained their cultural integrity in the face of the destructive forces of European imperialism. In this landmark study, anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro explains this phenomenon in terms of Araweté social cosmology and ritual order. His analysis of the social and religious life of the Araweté—a Tupi-Guarani people of Eastern Amazonia—focuses on their concepts of personhood, death, and divinity.

Building upon ethnographic description and interpretation, Viveiros de Castro addresses the central aspect of the Arawete's concept of divinity—consumption—showing how its cannibalistic expression differs radically from traditional representations of other Amazonian societies. He situates the Araweté in contemporary anthropology as a people whose vision of the world is complex, tragic, and dynamic, and whose society commands our attention for its extraordinary openness to exteriority and transformation. For the Araweté the person is always in transition, an outlook expressed in the mythology of their gods, whose cannibalistic ways they imitate. From the Enemy's Point of View argues that current concepts of society as a discrete, bounded entity which maintains a difference between "interior" and "exterior" are wholly inappropriate in this and in many other Amazonian societies.
 
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cover of In Favor of Deceit: A Study of Tricksters in an Amazonian Society

In Favor of Deceit

A Study of Tricksters in an Amazonian Society

Ellen B. Basso

University of Arizona Press, 1988

In stories ranging from subtle creation myths to derisive, off-color tales, the Kalapalo Indians of central Brazil demonstrate a fascination with deception and its many functions. In myths about tricksters and dupes, they explore the ambiguity of human experience, showing how important to human understanding is a sense of illusion, paradox, and contradiction.

Ellen Basso's new study of these stories considers their relationship to other kinds of Kalapalo activities involving deception and features a unique collection of South American Indian narratives translated directly from performances by master storytellers in their original Carib language. Combining an ethnopoetic, performance-focused approach to storytelling with an action-oriented psychology, Basso arrives at an ethnographic understanding of Kalapalo trickster myths and Kalapalo ideas about deception.

The commentary on the translations considers matters of theme, discourse, narrative progression, and performance context. The dialogical, interactive nature of Kalapalo storytelling, the development of characters through their conversations with one another, and the many ways storytelling and ordinary life enrich one another are examined to reveal the complex psychology of trickster myths and the special tricksterish quality of day-to-day Kalapalo behavior.
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cover of Keepers of the Sacred Chants: The Poetics of Ritual Power in an Amazonian Society

Keepers of the Sacred Chants

The Poetics of Ritual Power in an Amazonian Society

Jonathan D. Hill

University of Arizona Press, 1993

The Wakuenai of the upper Rio Negro region in southern Venezuela employ a form of singing called malikai for ceremonies of childbirth, initiation, and healing. This ritual chanting is a rich amalgam of myth and music, and serves as a means of integrating individuals into a vertical hierarchy of power relations between mythic ancestors and human descendants. Jonathan Hill here shows how the musical and semantic transformations of everyday discourse in malikai integrate the everyday world into a poetic process of empowerment.
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cover of Memorable Singularity: Crafting Unique Individuals in an Amazonian Society

Memorable Singularity

Crafting Unique Individuals in an Amazonian Society

Anne-Christine Taylor

HAU, 2018

Individual sovereignty is a central value among Amazonian groups, in keeping with a cosmology premised on the production of people rather than material property. The Jivaroan Indians of Western Amazonia exemplify these ideals to an unusual degree. Jivaroean have long been notorious for a reputed addiction to warfare, their custom of shrinking enemies’ heads, and their fierce resistance to colonial and post-colonial attempts to convert them to Christianity and to deprive them of their land, identity, and lifeways. Becoming and remaining an accomplished Jivaroan person is a taxing and risk-fraught achievement: it requires living and imagining in the heroic mode and mastering the art of making one’s self memorable.
 
In Memorable Singularity, anthropologist Anne-Christine Taylor describes how Jivaroans strive for uniqueness of being and destiny, unconstrained by the claims of any institutionalized form authority beyond the individual. Taylor covers a wide range of subjects: feuding and intertribal warfare, Jivaroan notions of personhood, corporeality, reflexive consciousness, thought and affect, memory, and visual culture. An essential collection of one of the foremost Amazonian specialists, Memorable Singularity is at once a richly literary work and an illuminating meditation on the process of crafting and imagining the human self.
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cover of Tsewa's Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society

Tsewa's Gift

Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society

Michael F. Brown

University of Alabama Press, 1986

Discover the spiritual threads that bind Amazonian life and culture.

Tsewa’s Gift is a profound exploration of the cultural and spiritual life of the indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. Anthropologist Michael F. Brown delves into the concept of tsewa, a spiritual force central to the worldview of the Aguaruna people, revealing how this belief system shapes social relationships, moral obligations, and the exchange of gifts. Through vivid ethnographic detail and thoughtful analysis, Brown examines the intersection of ritual, reciprocity, and cosmology, offering readers a nuanced understanding of how indigenous communities navigate identity, power, and meaning in a rapidly changing world. This book is an essential resource for scholars of anthropology, religion, and Latin American studies, as well as anyone seeking insight into the complexities of cultural resilience and adaptation.

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