1st Edition

The Lowland South American World

Edited By Casey High, Luiz Costa Copyright 2025
756 Pages 47 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

756 Pages 47 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

756 Pages 47 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

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 40... Read more

Re-imagining Lowland South America: An 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

Florência Tola

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 Women 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 in the context of Cultural Outreach: Reflections on A’uwẽ (Xavante) innovation within longstanding 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 Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. His research with Waorani communities in 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