Gender and sociality in Amazonia: how real people are made (original) (raw)
Related papers
How Are People Made? Gender, difference and ethnography in an Amazonian indigenous society
VIBRANT, the journal of the Brazilian Anthropology Association , 2010
Taking female homoerotic relations among an Amazonian indigenous people, the Rikbaktsa, as its theme, this article explores the wider context of native knowledge and the diverse perspectives within which these relations may be inserted, advocating an ethnological-identificatory approach to their understanding. Arguing that most of the discussions over models for explaining regimes of sociability among South American Indians have by-passed the “gender” issue, I propose that exploring the question of female homoeroticism enables us to rethink some of the questions and dilemmas relating to the production of ethnography, fundamental to the field of gender among minorities in particular, but also to Anthropology in general.
Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond
2014
This book discusses how Amerindian epistemology and ontology related to certain indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon spread to Western societies, and how indigenous, mestizo, and cosmopolitan cultures have dialogued with and transformed these forest traditions. The collection also focuses on how shamanic rituals have been spreading and developing in post-traditional urban contexts throughout the world. Special attention is given to ayahuasca, a psychoactive drink usually composed of two plants, the vine Banisteriopsis caapi and leaves of the Psychotria viridis bush. Ayahuasca use has spread beyond its Amazonian origin and instigated a variety of legal and cultural responses in the countries it has spread to. The chapters in this book address some of the ways these responses have influenced ritual design and performance in traditional and non-traditional contexts. The book analyzes how displaced indigenous people and rubber tappers are engaged in creative reinvention of rituals, and how these rituals help build ethnic alliances and cultural and political strategies for their marginalized position. It also explores modernity's fascination with "tradition" and the "other." This phenomenon is directly tied to important classic and contemporary issues in anthropology. One of them is the relationship between the expansion of ecotourism and ethnic tourism, recent indigenous cultural revivals, and the emergence of new ethnic identities. Another focus of this book is on trends in the commodification of indigenous cultures in post-colonial contexts, and the combination of shamanism with a network of health and spiritually related services. Finally, the book addresses the topic of identity hybridization in global societies. The previously unpublished ethnographies and analysis collected in these chapters will add to the understanding of the role of ritual in mediating the encounter between indigenous traditions and modern societies.
The Wander Women: some thoughts about gender in Amazonia
2018
Based on my ethnographic research with the Jarawara, speakers of an Arawá language inhabiting the middle course of the Purus River in Brazilian Amazonia, this article explores how a particular notion of the agency of Jarawara women may be linked to dream activity and shamanic knowledge. I examine the festival held when girls emerge from their seclusion at menarche, the mariná 'ritual' and its effects on the composition of a 'takeable' agent. The idea explored here is that 'sleepiness' (nokobisa), 'tiredness' (mama) and 'beauty' (amosa) are forms of ritual action that aim to develop (or better, draw out) the capacity of women's bodies to be 'takeable' (towakama) or 'carriable' (weyena). This capacity is also associated with shamans. Through this exploration of the Jarawara 'female initiation ritual', I also question the public/domestic and man/woman dichotomies.
Ignorant Bodies and the Dangers of Shamanism in Amazonia
2015
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.”
Journal of Latin American Studies, 2009
It isn't possible to discuss shamanism without invoking what David Parkin, in a 2007 article in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, calls ' a semantic cluster ' which here recognises the intentionality of transformative tangible and intangible human and non-human forms as manifest in the healing-harming complex. Perhaps what we need is a new means of talking about harm and affliction in ways that don't reflect dominant language structures. In a 2007 essay in Cultural Anthropology (' Versions of the Dead : Kalunga, Cuuban-Kongo Materiality and ethnography ', vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 473-500), Todd Ramón Ochoa creates such a language, one that is ' for ' the dead and their deeds of sorcery rather than a representation of them (p. 492). He achieves this mostly through the epistemological referents of Marx, Deleuze and Kojieve's re-reading of Hegel, bringing desire and negativity into the forefront. As such, morality is not the issue as much as historical contextualisation and the significance of multi-sensory visceral expressiveness so that no matter how different such realities are from our own they can be discussed coherently without being ring tailed into moral dualisms.
The Internationalization of Ayahuasca, 2011
This paper deals with the question of what happened in the Amazon before the current trends of Globalization of ayahuasca usage. In most studies, some “traditional”, “ancient” (for hundreds or even thousands of years ), and “shamanic” use of the compound is taken for granted, although there is no evidence to support this assumption. The fact that many Western users and researchers legitimate their doings by referring to “millennial indigenous knowledge” instead of the actual powers or effects of ayahuasca provokes the questioning of this assumption. Therefore, the author embarks on a broad comparative approach to ethnohistorical, ethnolinguistical and especially ethnomusicological data from the Peruvian Ucayali valley. The historical sources and etymologies aside, the contextual music plays a most convincing role: While non-ayawaska-related songs usually sound very diverse and highly attached to the respective indigenous group’s aesthetic understandings, only specifically ayahuasca-related ikaro songs show structural similarities, transcending ethnic and geographic boundaries, pointing towards a relatively recent distribution of these songs and their context among these peoples. Thus, the “millennial tradition” of ayahuasca use, at least in the Peruvian lowlands, can not stand up against ethnohistorical analysis.
This chapter presents the construction of the idea of a “Male-Shaman-Who-Heals-With-Ayahuasca” as an emergent myth in societies from the political North – a myth which asserts powerful meaning in a global world. This myth is related to power relationships between people and plants that are commodified and embedded in the context of capitalism and patriarchy. Guided by a reflexive empirical approach, the authors bring together four nodes of the myth (1) the male, 2) the shaman, 3) the one who heals, and 4) the ayahuasca) in order to compare them systematically with key chosen aspects. Within the results of a historical approach and long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Lowland Peruvian Amazon, the aim is to provide tools for the deconstruction of this myth by examining social, cultural, and historical roots of Peruvian curanderismo. Four aspects are considered: the local dynamics of gender, the diversity of the specialist practitioners, the complexity of ideas about healing, and the centrality of plants in a local pharmacopoeia in which ayahuasca is but one plant among many.
Shamanism and indigenous youthhood in the Brazilian Amazon
Amazônica. Revista de Antropologia, 2009
This article deals with contemporary shamanism among young Indians in Brazilian Amazonia. It explores the meaning of shamanic practices for today’s Amazonian young Indians. The article focuses on the ayahuasca ceremonies practiced by young Manchineri living in both the indigenous reserve and urban areas in the State of Acre, Brazil. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out between 2005 and 2007. Shamanic practices produce symbolic capital that may credit in one’s own native community and in interethnic relations. The spiritual and traditional knowledge, trust, values, and instructions on life generate cultural capital, social capital, as well as ethnic capital. Through shamanism young people have an active role in the construction of their agency and personhood, as it also is about youth’s own decision to interact with the spirits and other humans. Shamanic practices have marked a turning point in the lives of many native young people.