Casey High | University of Edinburgh (original) (raw)
Papers by Casey High
Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Dec 1, 2009
In Amazonian Ecuador and beyond, indigenous Huaorani people have received much attention for thei... more In Amazonian Ecuador and beyond, indigenous Huaorani people have received much attention for their history of revenge killings during much of the twentieth century. In pointing to the heterogeneous forms of social memory assigned to specific generations, the article describes how oral histories and public performances of past violence mediate changing forms of sociality. While the victim's perspective in oral histories is fundamental to Huaorani notions of personhood and ethnic identity, young men acquire the symbolic role of 'wild' Amazonian killers in public performances of the past. Rather than contradictory or competing historical representations, these multiple forms of social memory become specific generational roles in local villages and in regional inter-ethnic relations. The article suggests that, beyond the transmission of a fixed package of historical knowledge, memory is expressed in the multiple and often contrasting roles of historical representation assigned to particular kinds of people.
Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022
Ecological Nostalgias, 2020
Ateliers d'anthropologie, 2013
... High, Casey (2008) End of the spear: Re-imagining Amazonian anthropology and history throug... more ... High, Casey (2008) End of the spear: Re-imagining Amazonian anthropology and history through film, in L. Chua, C. High and T. Lau (eds.), How do we know? Evidence, ethnography, and the making of anthropological knowledge ...
Ethnohistory, 2012
This article examines the shifting nature of interethnic relations between two indigenous groups ... more This article examines the shifting nature of interethnic relations between two indigenous groups in Amazonian Ecuador, the Curaray River group of lowland Kichwa and the neighboring Waorani of the Curaray region. Waorani and Curaray Kichwa interaction from the 1930s to the present reveals a pattern marked by oscillations between hostilities and cautious friendship. These shifts are expressed in varied social relations described in the anthropological and historical scholarship on Amazonia, ranging from shamanic attack to marriage alliances. The paper explores this history and its linkage to wider social changes in the region brought about by Protestant evangelization and international economic interests. Our ethnographic analysis points to the maintenance of extended family linkages between Kichwa and Waorani in the Curaray River region as nodal relationships that potentiate shifts from hostilities to friendship between the two indigenous groups. These shifts occur within a regional interaction sphere that is bound together by extended family ties between speci c household groups. By examining these relations through the lenses of both Waorani and Curaray Kichwa ethnography and of historical processes extending back almost a century, the article provides insights into a complex sociality involving distinct indigenous peoples across a multiethnic region of the Western Amazon.
The Book Series of the Society for Psychological Anthropology The Society for Psychological Anthr... more The Book Series of the Society for Psychological Anthropology The Society for Psychological Anthropology-a section of the American Anthropology Association-and Palgrave Macmillan are dedicated to publishing innovative research in culture and psychology that illuminates the workings of the human mind within the social, cultural, and political contexts that shape thought, emotion, and experience. As anthropologists seek to bridge gaps between ideation and emotion or agency and structure and as psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical anthropologists search for ways to engage with cultural meaning and difference, this interdisciplinary terrain is more active than ever.
Since its inception, modern anthropology has stood at the confluence of two mutually constitutive... more Since its inception, modern anthropology has stood at the confluence of two mutually constitutive modes of knowledge production: participant-observation and theoretical analysis. This unique combination of practice and theory has been the subject of recurrent intellectual and methodological debate, raising questions that strike at the very heart of the discipline. How Do We Know? is a timely contribution to emerging debates that seek to understand this relationship through the theme of evidence. Incorporating a diverse selection of case studies ranging from the Tibetan emotion of shame to films of Caribbean musicians, it critically addresses such questions as: What constitutes viable "anthropological evidence"? How does evidence generated through small-scale, intensive periods of participant-observation challenge or engender abstract theoretical models? Are certain types of evidence inherently "better" than others? How have recent interdisciplinary collaborations...
Introduction: Making Ignorance an Ethnographic Object J. Mair, A. Kelly & C .High Sarax and the C... more Introduction: Making Ignorance an Ethnographic Object J. Mair, A. Kelly & C .High Sarax and the City: Almsgiving and Anonymous Objects in Dakar, Senegal G. Pfeil Discourses of the Coming: Ignorance, Forgetting, and Prolepsis in Japanese Life-Historiography S. Nozawa Evoking Ignorance: Abstraction and Anonymity in Social Networking's Ideals of Reciprocity D. Leitner Between Knowing and Being: Ignorance in Anthropology and Amazonian Shamanism C. High 'I Don't Know Why He Did It. It Happened by Itself': Causality and Suicide in Northwest Greenland J. Flora Inhabiting the Temporary: Patience and Uncertainty among Urban Squatters in Buenos Aires V. Procupez 'Fertility. Freedom. Finally.': Cultivating Hope in the Face of Uncertain Futures among Egg-Freezing Women T. Romain
Publisher Rights Statement: This chapter appears in a larger collection published by Berghahn Boo... more Publisher Rights Statement: This chapter appears in a larger collection published by Berghahn Books http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/DilleyRegimes. High, Casey. 2015. “Ignorant Bodies and the Dangers of Knowledge in Amazonia” In Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge., eds. Roy Dilley and Thomas G. Kirsch. New York: Berghahn Books.”
In April 2019, Waorani people in Amazonian Ecuador won a key legal battle against plans to sell o... more In April 2019, Waorani people in Amazonian Ecuador won a key legal battle against plans to sell oil concessions on their indigenous territory. I analyze their engagements with oil as part of an emerging eco-political “middle ground” characterized by Waorani men working for oil companies and new alliances against oil extraction.Waorani activists lament not the violation of a pristine natural environment separate from themselves and in need of conservation, but instead threats to the qualities of Waorani land (wao öme) that allow people and other beings to “live well.” In the context of generational changes, their engagement in environmental politics involves translating and moving between different conceptions of indigenous land. While becoming environmental citizens evokes discourses of nature, culture, and stereotypes of Amazonian people as natural conservationists, current eco-political alliances are based as much on close working relationships with outsiders as symbolic politics....
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
Language & Communication
In this article I consider the metaphysical underpinnings of a specific language ideology in Amaz... more In this article I consider the metaphysical underpinnings of a specific language ideology in Amazonian Ecuador by comparing Waorani ideas about the agency of speech in shamanism and funerary practices to their engagements in language documentation. I relate the notion of language as a force inseparable from the bodies of speakers to concepts of language as "culture" in research to document their language. By considering how Waorani consultants have come to see certain features of their language in video recordings, such as sound symbolism, I examine the differences and interconnections between Waorani language ideology and multiculturalist understandings. These interactions suggest divergent ontologies at the same time as they demonstrate how indigenous people operate simultaneously within contrasting imaginings of differentiation.
University of Illinois Press
This chapter examines the themes of shamanism and witchcraft in the context of Waorani–Quichua re... more This chapter examines the themes of shamanism and witchcraft in the context of Waorani–Quichua relations in Toñampari. Even as a growing number of kowori have come to live in Waorani villages, Quichua people continue to have a prominent place in local discussions of enmity and violence. This sense of alterity can be seen in Waorani ideas about shamanism, a practice that is associated closely with Quichuas. This chapter describes indigenous understandings of shamanism and the historical role of shamans in mediating intercultural relations in Amazonia. It considers how Quichuas have become the primary source of both shamanic curing and witchcraft accusations, a seemingly paradoxical situation that reflects indigenous understandings of shamanism and Waorani efforts to “live well” in contemporary villages in the aftermath of violence. The chapter shows that Waorani in Toñampari object to shamanism not because of a lack of belief in its efficacy but because shamanic power presents a thre...
University of Illinois Press
This chapter examines the gendered dimensions of alterity and Waorani understandings of what it m... more This chapter examines the gendered dimensions of alterity and Waorani understandings of what it means to be “like the ancient ones” (durani bai). It analyzes the place of violence and memory in contemporary Waorani gender dynamics by elucidating the meanings of the expression durani bai by which young people describe their public warrior performances. Despite a strongly egalitarian ethos, the chapter shows that Waorani women and men experience the generational changes that have come with oil work, urban migration, and other social transformations in different ways. It explains how young men struggling to demonstrate the abilities for which male elders and ancestors are remembered embrace the Amazonian warrior of colonial imagination and violent imagery in popular cinema in expressing a form of masculinity they associate with durani bai. Rather than leading to pronounced gender antagonisms between women and men, these generational changes reflect Waorani understandings of gendered ag...
Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Dec 1, 2009
In Amazonian Ecuador and beyond, indigenous Huaorani people have received much attention for thei... more In Amazonian Ecuador and beyond, indigenous Huaorani people have received much attention for their history of revenge killings during much of the twentieth century. In pointing to the heterogeneous forms of social memory assigned to specific generations, the article describes how oral histories and public performances of past violence mediate changing forms of sociality. While the victim's perspective in oral histories is fundamental to Huaorani notions of personhood and ethnic identity, young men acquire the symbolic role of 'wild' Amazonian killers in public performances of the past. Rather than contradictory or competing historical representations, these multiple forms of social memory become specific generational roles in local villages and in regional inter-ethnic relations. The article suggests that, beyond the transmission of a fixed package of historical knowledge, memory is expressed in the multiple and often contrasting roles of historical representation assigned to particular kinds of people.
Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022
Ecological Nostalgias, 2020
Ateliers d'anthropologie, 2013
... High, Casey (2008) End of the spear: Re-imagining Amazonian anthropology and history throug... more ... High, Casey (2008) End of the spear: Re-imagining Amazonian anthropology and history through film, in L. Chua, C. High and T. Lau (eds.), How do we know? Evidence, ethnography, and the making of anthropological knowledge ...
Ethnohistory, 2012
This article examines the shifting nature of interethnic relations between two indigenous groups ... more This article examines the shifting nature of interethnic relations between two indigenous groups in Amazonian Ecuador, the Curaray River group of lowland Kichwa and the neighboring Waorani of the Curaray region. Waorani and Curaray Kichwa interaction from the 1930s to the present reveals a pattern marked by oscillations between hostilities and cautious friendship. These shifts are expressed in varied social relations described in the anthropological and historical scholarship on Amazonia, ranging from shamanic attack to marriage alliances. The paper explores this history and its linkage to wider social changes in the region brought about by Protestant evangelization and international economic interests. Our ethnographic analysis points to the maintenance of extended family linkages between Kichwa and Waorani in the Curaray River region as nodal relationships that potentiate shifts from hostilities to friendship between the two indigenous groups. These shifts occur within a regional interaction sphere that is bound together by extended family ties between speci c household groups. By examining these relations through the lenses of both Waorani and Curaray Kichwa ethnography and of historical processes extending back almost a century, the article provides insights into a complex sociality involving distinct indigenous peoples across a multiethnic region of the Western Amazon.
The Book Series of the Society for Psychological Anthropology The Society for Psychological Anthr... more The Book Series of the Society for Psychological Anthropology The Society for Psychological Anthropology-a section of the American Anthropology Association-and Palgrave Macmillan are dedicated to publishing innovative research in culture and psychology that illuminates the workings of the human mind within the social, cultural, and political contexts that shape thought, emotion, and experience. As anthropologists seek to bridge gaps between ideation and emotion or agency and structure and as psychologists, psychiatrists, and medical anthropologists search for ways to engage with cultural meaning and difference, this interdisciplinary terrain is more active than ever.
Since its inception, modern anthropology has stood at the confluence of two mutually constitutive... more Since its inception, modern anthropology has stood at the confluence of two mutually constitutive modes of knowledge production: participant-observation and theoretical analysis. This unique combination of practice and theory has been the subject of recurrent intellectual and methodological debate, raising questions that strike at the very heart of the discipline. How Do We Know? is a timely contribution to emerging debates that seek to understand this relationship through the theme of evidence. Incorporating a diverse selection of case studies ranging from the Tibetan emotion of shame to films of Caribbean musicians, it critically addresses such questions as: What constitutes viable "anthropological evidence"? How does evidence generated through small-scale, intensive periods of participant-observation challenge or engender abstract theoretical models? Are certain types of evidence inherently "better" than others? How have recent interdisciplinary collaborations...
Introduction: Making Ignorance an Ethnographic Object J. Mair, A. Kelly & C .High Sarax and the C... more Introduction: Making Ignorance an Ethnographic Object J. Mair, A. Kelly & C .High Sarax and the City: Almsgiving and Anonymous Objects in Dakar, Senegal G. Pfeil Discourses of the Coming: Ignorance, Forgetting, and Prolepsis in Japanese Life-Historiography S. Nozawa Evoking Ignorance: Abstraction and Anonymity in Social Networking's Ideals of Reciprocity D. Leitner Between Knowing and Being: Ignorance in Anthropology and Amazonian Shamanism C. High 'I Don't Know Why He Did It. It Happened by Itself': Causality and Suicide in Northwest Greenland J. Flora Inhabiting the Temporary: Patience and Uncertainty among Urban Squatters in Buenos Aires V. Procupez 'Fertility. Freedom. Finally.': Cultivating Hope in the Face of Uncertain Futures among Egg-Freezing Women T. Romain
Publisher Rights Statement: This chapter appears in a larger collection published by Berghahn Boo... more Publisher Rights Statement: This chapter appears in a larger collection published by Berghahn Books http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/DilleyRegimes. High, Casey. 2015. “Ignorant Bodies and the Dangers of Knowledge in Amazonia” In Regimes of Ignorance: Anthropological Perspectives on the Production and Reproduction of Non-Knowledge., eds. Roy Dilley and Thomas G. Kirsch. New York: Berghahn Books.”
In April 2019, Waorani people in Amazonian Ecuador won a key legal battle against plans to sell o... more In April 2019, Waorani people in Amazonian Ecuador won a key legal battle against plans to sell oil concessions on their indigenous territory. I analyze their engagements with oil as part of an emerging eco-political “middle ground” characterized by Waorani men working for oil companies and new alliances against oil extraction.Waorani activists lament not the violation of a pristine natural environment separate from themselves and in need of conservation, but instead threats to the qualities of Waorani land (wao öme) that allow people and other beings to “live well.” In the context of generational changes, their engagement in environmental politics involves translating and moving between different conceptions of indigenous land. While becoming environmental citizens evokes discourses of nature, culture, and stereotypes of Amazonian people as natural conservationists, current eco-political alliances are based as much on close working relationships with outsiders as symbolic politics....
The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
Language & Communication
In this article I consider the metaphysical underpinnings of a specific language ideology in Amaz... more In this article I consider the metaphysical underpinnings of a specific language ideology in Amazonian Ecuador by comparing Waorani ideas about the agency of speech in shamanism and funerary practices to their engagements in language documentation. I relate the notion of language as a force inseparable from the bodies of speakers to concepts of language as "culture" in research to document their language. By considering how Waorani consultants have come to see certain features of their language in video recordings, such as sound symbolism, I examine the differences and interconnections between Waorani language ideology and multiculturalist understandings. These interactions suggest divergent ontologies at the same time as they demonstrate how indigenous people operate simultaneously within contrasting imaginings of differentiation.
University of Illinois Press
This chapter examines the themes of shamanism and witchcraft in the context of Waorani–Quichua re... more This chapter examines the themes of shamanism and witchcraft in the context of Waorani–Quichua relations in Toñampari. Even as a growing number of kowori have come to live in Waorani villages, Quichua people continue to have a prominent place in local discussions of enmity and violence. This sense of alterity can be seen in Waorani ideas about shamanism, a practice that is associated closely with Quichuas. This chapter describes indigenous understandings of shamanism and the historical role of shamans in mediating intercultural relations in Amazonia. It considers how Quichuas have become the primary source of both shamanic curing and witchcraft accusations, a seemingly paradoxical situation that reflects indigenous understandings of shamanism and Waorani efforts to “live well” in contemporary villages in the aftermath of violence. The chapter shows that Waorani in Toñampari object to shamanism not because of a lack of belief in its efficacy but because shamanic power presents a thre...
University of Illinois Press
This chapter examines the gendered dimensions of alterity and Waorani understandings of what it m... more This chapter examines the gendered dimensions of alterity and Waorani understandings of what it means to be “like the ancient ones” (durani bai). It analyzes the place of violence and memory in contemporary Waorani gender dynamics by elucidating the meanings of the expression durani bai by which young people describe their public warrior performances. Despite a strongly egalitarian ethos, the chapter shows that Waorani women and men experience the generational changes that have come with oil work, urban migration, and other social transformations in different ways. It explains how young men struggling to demonstrate the abilities for which male elders and ancestors are remembered embrace the Amazonian warrior of colonial imagination and violent imagery in popular cinema in expressing a form of masculinity they associate with durani bai. Rather than leading to pronounced gender antagonisms between women and men, these generational changes reflect Waorani understandings of gendered ag...