2008abstractsSALSA Conference
2008abstractsSALSA Conference
2008abstractsSALSA Conference
Yanesha people, like many other Native Amazonians, conceive of plants and
trees as having been primordial humans transformed into their present form at
the end of the mythic times of indifferentiation. The events that led to their
transformation differ, however, substantially. Following Joanna Overing’s
categorization of Piaroa narrative genres, these events can be described as
‘sublime’ and ‘grotesque’ modes of transformation. Plants that underwent a
sublime process of transformation include manioc, the Yanesha staple, as well
as tobacco and the hallucinogenic Virola, both of great importance in shamanic
practices. These plants assumed their present form as the result of the self-
transformation of powerful demiurges; a luminous, contained transformation that
privileged the sensual capacities of the upper body, especially those attributed
to the heart. In contrast, the process of transformation of most other plants,
such as barbasco, coca, hot peppers and yam, falls on the side of the grotesque
and involves the baser activities of the lower body. Because of their immoral
way of life –expressed in extreme forms of genital, oral and anal incontinence-
these primordial humans were separated from humanity and transformed into
the plants they are nowadays. This latter kind of transformation was always
violent; a form of ‘alterization’ that appears as the dark side of the process of
‘ontological predation.’ In consonance with the ‘constructivist’ character of
Amerindian ontologies, the coming into existence of plants –as well as that of
humans, animals, and objects- involved important processes of bodily
constitution and de-constitution; processes that will be discussed through the
analysis of Yanesha myths.
Brightman, Marc
Ownership and trade of persons and plants in Guianese Amazonia.
Zanotti, Lia
Gendered perspectives on landscapes in the Central Brazilian Amazon.
One of the most obvious yet subtly elusive features of Amazonian social worlds
is the extent to which human technologies rely on fashioning plants into a variety
of artefacts: tools, weapons, traps, flutes, trumpets, baskets, manioc presses,
and so on. This paper will focus on different wild plant species in the Upper Rio
Negro region of Venezuela as the key materials allowing indigenous Wakuénai
(Curripaco) people to effect three kinds of social transformations. “The Gift”
explores the uses of máwi (Astrostudium schomburgkii) palms to make
blowguns, fish weirs, and ceremonial flutes into cultural tools for transforming
wild animal nature into products that are fit for social consumption and
exchange. “The Secret” looks at púpa (macanilla; Socretea eschorrhiza Spp.)
and other plant (hardwood bark and vine) species used for making sacred flutes
and trumpets that capture the sounds of animal and bird species as part of a
broader process of creating secrecy through privileging hearing and ‘speaking’
over seeing and being seen. “The Meal” surveys the many uses of pwápwaa
(tirita; Ischnosiphon spp.) in making baskets, manioc presses, guapas, and other
artifacts in which plant foods – primarily manioc flour and breads but also wild
palm fruits – are contained, sifted, transported, or otherwise processed into
foods for domestic production and consumption. Finally, an overview of
ceremonial trumpets called kulirrína (or surubí, a species of large catfish with
large black stripes) will demonstrate how all three kinds of plants come together
into the fashioning of a single artefact that encompasses “The Gift,” “The
Secret,” and “The Meal.”
Carlos Fausto
The animist’s mask: complexity and transformation in indigenous America
Zilberg, Jonathan
Petroglyphs and the extension of Amazonian cosmology and ritual in the Pre-
Columbian Diquis chiefdoms of Southwestern Costa Rica
This paper (or alternatively poster) would consider how the iconography of the
petroglyphs of the Diquis region can be interpreted as records of the
northernmost extension of a pan-Amazonian cosmological system. Through
discussing the similarities in petroglyph iconography and cosmological imagery
and through bringing into relation archaeological data of the PreColombian
Diquis chiefdoms with the mythology of the Cabecar and Bribri peoples of the
Talamancan region, this paper will describe the salience of Reichel Dolmatoff’s
work on petroglyphs in lowland South America to the interpretation of
petroglyphs in this region. It will discuss the evolution of research on
petroglyphs in this part of Costa Rica over the last sixty years and present a
structural and semiotic analysis of the representational rather than abstract
geometric imagery in the Diquis petroglyphs, the petroglpyhs composed of
spirals and curvo-linear lines which in contrast remain out of the bounds of our
interpretive reach.
Rosengren, Dan
Religious conversion and cosmological consistency: on Matsigenka Christianity.
This essay introduces women's agency among the Nambikwara. It begins with
the scene of Tuirá, the Kayapó woman who brandished her machete on the face
of the Eletronorte entrepreneur during the Altamira summit against the
construction of the Xingu River dam in 1989. In anthropology, Amerindian
women’s participation in political life is more often seen as merely accessory, as
in Timothy Ash's The Axe Fight, in which women are shown to move men to
action. But instances when women may seize control of political agency or
assume the reigns of leadership are rare in the literature. I argue that while
women may vent their grievances in public, they more often wield their political
power by relying on a social domain that I term the publicly and politically
unspoken: a sphere of action that lies halfway between the public and the so-
called domestic arenas or what is usually construed as the political. This
concept differs from Taussig’s “public secret”, since the emphasis is not on the
information being withheld, but on the subversion of power itself by the use of
undisclosed channels of action. In light of this, women are not seen as acting
from the backstage, as Gregor has portrayed them, as dwellers of the trash-
yards or belonging to the periphery or to the domestic arena. Instead, women
are thought to occupy or fill the blind spots of the political scenario. From this
undisclosed, yet public domain, women manage to direct, guide, or influence
community affairs, often in secrecy, but with an adroit ability to negotiate social
dynamics and critical political processes that might outdo male leaders, even
the most persuasive.
I review two cases histories that illustrate how Nambikwara women orchestrated
decisive political actions: in the first, a wife decides to quit having sexual
relations with her husband because of two previous breach births. She also
does not take contraceptives. She then retaliates against her incestuous
husband, who makes her own daughter pregnant, by sleeping with his worst
enemy and then compelling him to raise the child born from her adulterous
relationship. She thereby regains her power in her marriage as well as socially.
In the second case, two women plot to seduce and poison a man instrumental
in the killing of two of their family members almost ten years earlier, not only
assuage their emotional and personal loss or aid the family head in his revenge,
but also, in the case of one of them, to affect changes in political life that may
ultimately lead to the fulfillment of her inmost desire for ridding herself of her
own present husband. My purpose is to contribute toward a re-evaluation of
women's social position and the potential expressions of their agency in
egalitarian societies, to avoid the tendency to relegate women to secondary
roles, as actors merely responsible for moving men to action or capable solely of
instigating events, rather than proactively engineering their outcome, direction,
and affecting the chain of consequences due to emerge from them.
Gutierrez-Choquevilca, A.-L.
To imitate or to "perceive as"? Couvade misfortunes among lowland Quechua of
the Peruvian Amazon (rio Pastaza).
The paper discuss the implications of the rites associated to child birth among
the Quechua of the peruvian Amazon (Pastaza river). Among the rites described
under the term of “couvade”, the most salient ones are associated to the
constant necessity of dealing with infantile illnesses, trying to avoid the baby’s
death. The analysis of baby’s illnesses requires the understanding of the
relationship with animals-spirits, which are in most of the cases identified with
pathogenic agents causing somatic troubles. Starting from ethnographic data
about the treatment of illness, we discuss the importance of the pragmatic
structures of “imitation” in the process of representing invisible spirits as
intentional agents. Our special interest lies on sounds and acoustic aspects
described in the aetiological discourse relating to the physical transformation of
the baby. Sounds give in the Quechua case an insight of the symbolical efficacy
of these representations. The frequent use of sound symbolism is compared
with other enunciation contexts, in particular within a context of initiation and
learning of hunting skills (imitation of the game’s voice, ritual songs addressed
to the game master), showing the close relationship between the hunting
practices and the rites associated to child birth.
Bathurst, L.
On the border’s of indigeneity in Northern Bolivia’s Amazonia.
Swierk, K.
Who are the kogapakori for the Matisgenka users of this term?
Manioc (Manihot esculenta Crantz), one of the most important staple crops of
the humid tropics, is famed for its ability to grow in the nutrient-poor acid
Oxisols and Ultisols characteristic of these regions. A corollary of this is that
manioc is often conceived of as a crop suitable for cultivation only in infertile
soils and does not yield well in fertile ones. While various commentators have
shown that some manioc landraces perform poorly in rich soils, this is certainly
not true of all landraces. Much of the genetic diversity of manioc was probably
lost during the centuries following European conquest, especially the part
maintained by the chiefdoms along the floodplains. Therefore many of the
landraces cultivated on the terra firme in Amazonia and those which have
spread across the tropical world are adapted to growth in nutrient-poor
environments.
I would like to present the theme of the transcendent yet intervening state of the
divine when, as grace or disgrace, such an invisible spiritual virtuosity makes its
presence or absence felt and understood through human embodiment.
Indigenous Amerindian ideas and experiences about such sentiments have been
shown to take the form and to be the source of an appropriation by their
particular polities. Within the research of some, in the Oxford School of Lowland
South American scholars, this tactic has been identified as the force of an
expressive power to fracture village community relations and to be the
ingredient for new politico-religious formations. My presentation will attempt to
foreground the ethnographic findings on these issues among the Akawaio, Trio,
and Waiwai. My principal argument will be that, despite what appears to be the
obvious evidence to the contrary; such an immaterial element like grace is
variously utilized by Amerindian peoples to orchestrate their social and political
lives.
As there are many and specific yesamarî (ways, paths, or detours) connecting
one household to another building the so called Waiwai communities, there are
also many and specific ways and detours to shed light on the so called
Guianese societies. In this paper, my aim is to follow Waiwai ways of knowing,
with special attention to their understandings of forms of translation between
many beings who live close or far to them, permanently or temporarily, humans
and non-humans. In Waiwai translations, a direct and immediate relation, if it still
can be called a relation, constitutes a minimal form, a kind of level zero of
relatedness and not much more than the instance from which knowledge only
starts to develop. There is no knowledge without translation – this is the maxim
that seems to prevail among the Waiwai. It builds the core subject to be
discussed in this communication, in which also the main presuppositions of the
concept of "appropriation" will be reviewed. Since, far from being a pour of
possessions, Waiwai translations renounce to the logic of property – and its
compromises with substantial forms of identity – to expose themselves to
"transformation" (Derrida) and to achieve modes of "afterlife" (Benjamin).
Supplementary, through this Waiwai way of translating a third instance is
introduced in the complex net of relations between different forms of
memberships and collectivities in the Amerindian context of the Guiana shield.
After a short introduction pointing out that the present opposition between
Capitalism and Socialism is not the crux of the matter (which we define), we
propose moving beyond European “Enlightenment Institutions” in order to
search for institutional arrangements that could be adapted to help us in our
present search for solutions in defining an “Alternative Modernity.” We describe
two institutional configurations present among the traditional morichalero Warao
of the Central Orinoco Delta. First, regarding the difficulties of gender relations,
we point to a solution found through an indigenous marriage system. Of more
theoretical interest is the indigenous institution of regarding work as a “public
good.” We discuss the advantages and some possible difficulties in the present
socio-economic situation.
This paper will be focused on the relation of the self to the collective. It will
analyze the idea of belonging to a whole through the conceptions of the person
and other aspects of ritual and political organisation. In common with many
indigenous societies of the Guiana shield, the Yanomami place a high value on
personal autonomy and non-coercive forms of authority. This is achieved
through belonging to a community or local group that gives the means to
reduce, in a way, the use of social constraints in an intimate social environment,
with people who like each other, share the same aims and have a mutual
interest in living peacefully together. The fact that Yanomami communities
frequently split and recompose themselves is the sign of their autonomy to
choose a harmonious social environment as often as necessary. In this context,
individual autonomy is encompassed in a wider collective autonomy of
communal houses, which are the basic economic and political units among the
Yanomami. Moreover it is particularly striking to see how the ritual system and
conception of the person correspond to a degree of encompassment, both of
individuals and groups, to a superior level. This matter will lead us to examine in
more detail the Yanomami conception of the individual and the construction of
the person. This paper will analyze ideas on collectivity through conceptions of
ritual, political organization, and personhood.
Renato Athias (NEPE/UFPE)
Territoriality and identity among the Hupdah and Arawak groups in the Uaupés
basin.
This study is exploratory in character. The questions raised here arose from the
field work carried out amongst the Hupdah-Maku that live in the region between
the rivers Tiquié and Papuri, tributaries of the left bank of the Uaupés in the
Upper Rio Negro, in the State of Amazonas. The idea of this exercise is to
indicate elements for a possible analysis of the concept of territoriality used by
the Indians that live in this region. The discussion and analysis developed in this
paper are exclusively restricted to the River Uaupés Basin (Amazonas, Brazil), in
the Northeastern Amazon, on the Colombian border. It should be said that in the
traditional areas of other Maku' speaking groups, like the Dow, the Nadöb and
the Nukak, for example, there is not the presence of the Tukano or the Arawak
groups, since these are not inhabitants of the hydrographical basin of the River
Uaupés. The Hupdah model is closely associated to the forms of mobility and
relations maintained with Tukano and Arawak groups, there being potential for a
great variety of forms of territorial occupation. What I am interested present in
this paper is to state that the notion of ownership and the use of a specific
territory depends almost exclusively on the relations maintained with their
neighbor and debate the case of the Hupdah of Iauareté that have been in
contact many years with the Tariano and their relation with the Arawak groups.
Rogalski, P.
Construction of Arabela society through joking interactions.
Krokoszynski, Lukasz
What happened to the Remo tribe? Identifications and identities in the Sierra del
Divisor (Eastern Peru).
Hornborg, Alf
An attempt to understand the history of Panoan identity in relation to long-term
pattern and transformation of regional exchange.
Killick, E.
Debt-Peonage and subprime mortgages: A consideration of debt and bondage
in Amazonia and beyond.
Ribeiro, Fabio.
The political economy of green market in indigenous Amazonia: The Asuriní, the
Amazoncoop and the Body Shop in the Middle Xingu.
Forline, L.
Rational fools and practical players: The dynamics of reciprocity and exchange
between Brazil’s Indian Service (FUNAI) and the Guajá Indians.
Pimenta, J.
From traditional trade to ‘sustainable development economy.’ The notion of
‘project’ among the Ashaninka of high Juruá.
Freire, Germán
Indigenous market strategies in context: Amazonian 'capitalism' in the
Venezuelan frontier.
This paper explores the articulation between indigenous and western economies
in peripheral market situations. Drawing from a Venezuelan example of forest
cultivators, the Piaroa, the paper suggests that many indigenous market
attitudes are consistent with the socio-economic context indigenous peoples
encounter as they move close to national society. However, by focusing on
indigenous peoples’ “folk” responses to external –and somehow imposed–
market forces, studies of market integration tend to underestimate the relevance
of their particular experience of the state and the market in the construction of
indigenous peoples’ views and strategies. The paper thus aims to move away
from classic representations of market and state penetration, which have
traditionally revolved around hard distinctions between indigenous and western
economic rationales, focusing instead on the historic articulation between the
two in the formation and practice of “the state,” “the market,” and “monetary
economy” at the local level.
Lowrey, K.
Turning ways of life into means of livelihood: Observations from the South
American Chaco.
The importance of artifacts such as rattles and cigars has long been recognized
in a variety of lowland shamanic traditions. Using autobiographical and
biographical material about one relatively famous and well documented Kayabi
shaman from Brazil, I focus on the role of artifacts within one Tupian shamanic
tradition as this man has interpreted it during the period from the 1950s to the
1990s in the Xingu Indigenous Park. Objects played an important role in this
man's version of the Kayabi shamanic project of making the invisible aspects of
the cosmos visible for the unempowered. They were, however, also a key means
by which this shaman participated in a state sponsored project of reservation
building and ethnic group construction. The disparate logics of Kayabi
shamanism and museum display of ethnicity intersect in this man's lifelong
intrest in artifact collection. As such, this material points to the possible
significance of objects which do not have local provenance and may even be
industrially manufactured in the contemporary reworking of lowland shamanic
traditions.
Margiotti, M.
Visualising relationships: eesthetic and kinship in Kuna women’s clothing.
Lagrou, E.
The invisible net made visible: Images and artefacts among the Kaxinawa.
Augustat, C.
Material culture and cultural memory: Jan Assmann in the Amazon.
High, C.
‘Like the ancient ones’: material worlds and political engagement in Amazonian
Ecuador.
In the early 1960’s, an Amahuaca man from Varadero in the headwaters of the
Inuya, a tributary of the Urubamba, made a canoe as a gift for his father-in-law.
The Amahuaca did not make or use canoes, and the technique was almost
certainly learned from the neighbouring Piro people, a classic riverine people.
The paper explores the general sociologics of the canoe in the region as an
‘operator’ in Lévi-Strauss’s sense, and as a ‘material symbolic form’ in Munn’s
sense, and gives renewed analytic vigour to Father Cooper’s classic distinction
between “foot Indians” and “canoe Indians”.
Cesarino, Pedro
Between the verbal and the visual: a study of Marubo poetical formulae.
Course, M.
Amerindian power and the metalinguistic imagination.
The wave of conversion to evangelical Protestantism that has swept through the
Wari’ population over the past decade and a half is heavily tied to access to new
technologies and the mastery of relations with specific foreign material things.
Within communities, electronic music-making (keyboards, synthesizers,
amplifiers, electric guitars, and microphones) has opened into a plethora of
experimentation with new forms of individuality and communalism that reflect,
cut across, and disrupt prior gender, age, and authority relations. Between
Wari’ communities, and in relations with foreigners indigenous and non-
indigenous, intensified infrastructures for travel and long-distance
communication are feeding a heady whirl of conferences, meetings, collective
worship services. and forms of socializing that plunge individual Wari’ into
radically new contexts for their presentations of self and group identity. The
technopraxis of conservative Christianity, Wari’-style, overlaps in disconcertingly
unpredictable ways with the discourses of indigenous self-determination and
possibilities for indigenous empowerment introduced by progressive NGOs
since the 1990s. Out of this convergence come spurts of indigenous critique of
missionary evangelicalism. This paper explores these forays into new
indigenous modernities that coalesce around the meanings, motivations, and
personal Wari’ experiences associated with these two poles of material practice,
Christian electronic music and travel to Christian gatherings. It examines how
these forays into self-making through engagement with new technologies and
the alternative identities and forms of indigenous modernity they posit–still
nascent, unstable, and indeterminate–relate to older Wari’ patterns of sociality,
performativity, and bodily, spiritual, and social relations with material objects.
And it asks why, for many of the most committed and articulate Christian
converts, new technologies and material practices are central to their visions of
desirable futures for themselves and their kin and communities.
Bilhaut, A.-G.
Produire ses archives, rêver la tradition chez les Zápara d’Amazonie
équatorienne.
I show how spiritual kinship ties and relationships of mastery between Mapuche
shamans (machi), their horses and spirits reflect historical ethnic and national
relationships, social and gender dynamics, and complex understandings of
personhood. Machi’s spiritual relationships with horses are shaped by the
gendered power dynamics of colonial mastery and domination, possession and
ecstasy, and hierarchical kinship systems. These relationships reflect a complex
understanding of personal consciousness in which shamans are agents of their
actions but at the same time share self with horses and spirits. Machi gain
varied forms of knowledge and power through the exchange of bodily
substances with horses as well as through spiritual means. In doing so, they
offer a new perspective to current discussions among anthropologists about
embodiment, ensoulment, and personhood.
Virtanen, Pirjo
Embodied indigenous traditions and indigenous youth.
Along the Pacific coast of Ecuador, Chachi people are renown as expert canoe
crafters and as virtuoso musicians. Handling an axe and playing the marimba
are particularly highly valued skills. However, these respective activities take
place in very different circumstances. While men use their axe almost every day,
the marimba only appears at very specific occasions such as funerals or
weddings. Moreover, crafting canoes is actively discouraged whenever marimba
music is performed. The paper seeks to elucidate why axes and marimbas are
‘mutually exclusive’. It is suggested that this particular case teaches us a great
deal about how people like the Chachi envisage the human and the non-human,
the visible and the invisible. The findings will be discussed comparatively,
especially with regards to recent insights from Amazonian anthropology.
Bacchiddu, Giovanna
Changing values: mobile phones and soft drinks in Apiao, Chiloe, Southern Chile
Galli, E.
Spirits and pots: Runa’s ceramic production in urban context.
Mader, Elke
The art of giving birth: female mythscape and generativity among the Shuar
Although vision quest rituals are performed by Shuar men and women, and are
related to diverse social contexts, they have been primarily associated with
masculinity and warfare. Shuar female mythscape and visionary experiences,
however, provide insight into a set of values and skills vital for Shuar lifeworlds.
The paper will look at two genres of narratives referring to female visionary
experiences. It will present a group of myths that tell us about various events
related to the creation of female power and agency in mythical time. In the
following, these stories will be compared to accounts of arútam vision
experiences by Shuar women. Focusing on the story of katip (mouse-woman)
who instructed Shuar women in the skill of giving birth I will explore the
relationship between visible and invisible domains in the framework of female
generativity, and discuss them in the context of gender relations and
conviviality.
Cohn, C.
Adornments and toys: Mebengokré-Xikrin children and their objects
This paper is based on my field research with the Trio and Wayana in southern
Suriname and French Guiana, who in the past generation or two have
concentrated in sedentary settlements around health and education providers.
Within this relatively recent context of sedentarisation, I will analyse relationships
between bodies and across social spheres by taking the viewpoint of the
interplay between the seen and the unseen, and by focusing on the circulation
of different bodies, their flow and accumulation, their interaction and decoration,
and the way in which some bodies manage this circulation in a way which
allows them to be more ‘social’ than others. I will focus on personal histories in
terms of nurturing relationships between affines and trading partners, and how
these can tell us about the Trio and Wayana relation to the bodies that surround
them in their everyday environment. I will argue that by controlling the
movement, or flow, of this wealth, a person visibly manifests the extent of his or
her socialisation and therefore his or her innermost humanity. This becomes
salient if valued and meaningful objects such as body parts, memories, woven
artefacts, money, processed and manufactured foods, or people’s names were
all to be considered as wealth, measured according to the kind of flows they
allow and the potential connections to ever-widening relations they signify. This
means that personhood can be distributed through objects, and the
accumulation of things contributes to the socialisation of the individual who
thereby gains control of their movement. This paper will ultimately argue for a
re-evaluation of the importance of objects and their use in the making of social
life and personhood in northeastern Amazonia.
Based on a recent film about Wauja masks (Apapaatai), this paper discusses the
meanings that emerge when ritual objects are intentionally situated at the
crossroads between native therapeutic endeavours and commercial
transactions. It also analyses the material properties of some Wauja masks and
the defacements inflicted to them as a way to include them within a wide system
of objects, such as museum and art collections.
Viegas, S.
Materiality and sociality: Non-archivist memory among the Tupinamba of
Olivença
McLachlan, Amy
Monkey in the middle: deep play in an Amazonian market place.