The Lowland South American World showcases cutting-edge research on the anthropology of Lowland South America, providing both an in-depth knowledge of Lowland South American life ways and engaging readers in urgent social, environmental and political issues in the contemporary world.
Covering the vast expanse of a region that includes all of South America except for the Andes, its forty chapters engage with questions of what ‘Lowland South America’ means as a geographical designation, both in studies of indigenous Amazonian peoples and other lowland areas of the continent. They emphasize the multiple ways that the practices and cosmologies challenge conventional Western ideas about nature, culture, personhood, sociality, community, and indigenous people.
Some of the region’s well-known contributions to anthropology, such as animism, perspectivism, and novel approaches to the body are updated here with new ethnography and in light of the varying political situations in which the region’s peoples find themselves. With contributions by authors from fifteen different countries, including a number of Indigenous anthropologists and activists, this book will set the agenda for future research in the continent.
The World of Lowland South America is a valuable resource for scholars and students of anthropology, Latin American studies and indigenous studies, as well history, geography and other social sciences.
Introduction
Casey High and Luiz Costa
Part 1: Colonial Legacies, Indigenous Histories
1) The Enigma of Ashaninka Endowarfare: Cultural Dictate or Historical Product?
Fernando Santos-Granero
2) Labor, Resistance, and Politics: Indigenous Agency in the Bolivian Rubber Boom
Lorena Córdoba and Anna Guiteras Mombiola
3) Christianity and Christians in Amazonia
Victor Cova
4) Guianese Maroons in an Amazonian Ethnological Landscape
Olívia Maria Gomes da Cunha
Part 2: Myth, Memory and Storytelling
5) The Origin Myth of a Myth: The ‘Land without Evil’ Revisited
Diego Villar and Isabelle Combès
6) A Matrix of Knowledge: Indigenous Histories and Indigenous Anthropology in Brazil
Marina Vanzolini
7) The Work of Desire: Alterity and Exogamy in a Kotiria Origin Myth from the Northwest Amazon
Janet M. Chernela
8) Storytelling, Textuality and Experience in Lowland South America
Michael A. Uzendoski
9) Eras and Events: Contrasting Amazonian Narratives of the Past
Cédric Yvinec
Part 3: The Substance of Life: Making Real People
10) Birth in Amazonia: Transforming Responsibility in the Care Encounter
Harry Walker and Juana Lucía Cabrera Prieto
11) Detachable Persons, Porous Bodies, and the Art of Love in the Argentinian Chaco
12) The Imports of Uncertainty in the Tragedy of a Man of Substance
Carlos D. Londoño Sulkin
13) A World More Bearable in Which to Live: Three Ethnographic Examples from Lowland South America
George Mentore
14) The ways of food and feathers: Revisiting the Bororo Literature
João Kelmer
Part 4: Land, Territory and Mobility
15) Darawate: Native Amazonian Trail Signals and other Ephemeral Plant Scripts
Philippe Erikson
16) Regenerating Life: Indigenous Landscapes on the Atlantic Coast of Northeast Brazil
Susana de Matos Viegas and Thiago Mota Cardoso
17) Language and Territory in Mapuche Ritual Practices in Chile (Zugun ka mapu mapuche gijañmawün mew Gülu püle)
José Quidel Lincoleo
18) Paths and Networks Beyond the Human in Amazonian Social Worlds
Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen
19) Amazonian Environmental Activism at COP26: A Conversation with Uboye Gaba
Uboye Gaba and Casey High
Part 5: Ownership, Mastery and Exchange
20) Child, Pet, and Prey: Relations of Dependence in Amazonia
Amy Penfield
21) Mastery Without Servitude: On Freedom and Dependence in Amazonia
Carlos Fausto
22) A Politics of Regard: Action and Influence in Lowland South America
José Antonio Kelly & Marcos de Almeida Matos
23) Pets and Domesticated Animals in Lowland South America
Felipe Vander Velden
Part 6: Gender, the Body, and the Senses
24) Darséa Bhasera Numia: Tukana Women, Kumua Women, and their Transformation
João Rivelino Rezende Barreto
25) Neither Witches nor Charlatans: Subverting Stereotypes of Shipibo-Konibo Female Shamans in Western Amazonia
Anne-Marie Colpron
26) Sick of School: Childhood, Gender, and Intergenerational Change in Guyana
Courtney Stafford-Walter
Part 7: Imagery, Materiality and the Visual
27) Indigenous Media as Cultural Outreach: Contextualizing a Longstanding A’uwe (Xavante) Tradition
Laura R. Graham
28) The Metaphysics of An Amazonian Tubology
Jean-Pierre Chaumeil
29) “Assembling” the Xingu Indigenous Territory: A Kawaiwete Shaman and His Collection of Material Culture
Suzanne Oakdale
30) Collecting Amazonia: Beyond Material Culture and Ethnological Museums
Thiago da Costa Oliveira
Part 8: Language, Music, and Ritual Communication
31) Voices of the Spirits: Ritual Discourse, Musicality, and Communicative Ideologies in Amazonia
Jonathan D. Hill
32) Geomythology of Musicological Rites: A Journey with Wild Dialogue
Jaime Diakara
33) Indigenous Language Revival as a Practice of Resistance: The Case of Patxohã Language and Pataxó People in Northeast Brazil
Anari Braz Bomfim
34) Kuambü: The Poetics and Politics of a Xingu Ritual in Brazil
Antonio Guerreiro and Marina Novo
Part 9: Indigenous Politics and Leadership
35) Voting in Lowland South America: changing relations between indigenous people, communities, and nation-states
Olivier Allard
36) Beauty and Strength: Mẽbêngôkre-Kayapó Women’s Leadership and Governance in Brazil
Laura Zanotti and Emily Colón
37) Cultural Duality in Amazonian Ecuador: The Canelos Quichua
Norman E. Whitten Jr.
Part 10: Education, Inequality and the State
38) The Sociocultural Dimensions of Education among River-Dwellers and Other Lowland Communities in Brazil
João Rivelino Rezende Barreto
39) Water, Water Everywhere: Health and Sanitation in Indigenous Communities of the Amazon
Glenn H. Shepard Jr.
40) Indigenous Agency, Isolation and Access to Justice
Eliesio da Silva Marubo and Juliana Oliveira Silva
Index
Biography
Casey High is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His research with Waorani communities Ecuador over the past 25 years has focused on memory, language, collaborative anthropology, and Amazonian environmental activism in response to oil development.
Luiz Costa is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and a member of the Graduate Programme in Social Anthropology at the National Museum. He has carried out research with the Kanamari of southwestern Amazonia since 2002.
"South America, particularly its lowlands, was once considered the least known continent. Fifty years of research have changed that entirely. This is more than evident in this compendium, which not only summarises the current state of the art, especially in Amazonian ethnology, but also includes innovative chapters on the cutting edge of the discipline, some of them written by indigenous authors. A true achievement."
- Aparecida Vilaça, Professor of Social Anthropology at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
"From Guyana to Chile, from Ecuador to Argentina, this groundbreaking volume foregrounds Indigenous voices and Indigenous scholarship in situating the Lowland South American world today. Each one of the forty essays contained within offers a unique perspective, and collectively they address a wide variety of essential themes, from religion to politics, from economy to environment. The volume promises to be required and provocative reading for both students and scholars of the region for many years to come."
- Magnus Course, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at University of Edinburgh
