Natural Engagements and Ecological Aesthetics Among the Ávila Runa of Amazonian Ecuador

Natural Engagements and Ecological Aesthetics Among the Ávila Runa of Amazonian Ecuador PDF Author: Eduardo Kohn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Natural Engagements and Ecological Aesthetics Among the Ávila Runa of Amazonian Ecuador

Natural Engagements and Ecological Aesthetics Among the Ávila Runa of Amazonian Ecuador PDF Author: Eduardo Kohn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description


Natural Engagements and Ecological Aesthetics Among the Ávila Runa of Amazonian Ecuador

Natural Engagements and Ecological Aesthetics Among the Ávila Runa of Amazonian Ecuador PDF Author: Eduardo Kohn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description


The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador

The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador PDF Author: Michael Uzendoski
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252092694
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Michael Uzendoski's theoretically informed work analyzes value from the perspective of the Napo Runa people of the Amazonian Ecuador. Based upon historical and archival research, as well as the author's years of fieldwork in indigenous communities, The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuadorpresents theoretical issues of value, poetics, and kinship as linked to the author's intersubjective experiences in Napo Runa culture. Drawing on insights from the theory of gift and value, Uzendoski argues that Napo Runa culture personifies value by transforming things into people through a process of subordinating them to human relationships. While many traditional exchange models treat the production of things as inconsequential, the Napo Runa understand production to involve a relationship with natural beings (plants, animals, and spirits of the forest) that they believe share spiritual substance, or samai. Value is the outcome of a complicated poetics of transformation by which things and persons are woven into kinship forms that define daily social and ritual life.

Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia

Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia PDF Author: Miguel N. Alexiades
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845455637
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Contrary to ingrained academic and public assumptions, wherein indigenous lowland South American societies are viewed as the product of historical emplacement and spatial stasis, there is widespread evidence to suggest that migration and displacement have been the norm, and not the exception. This original and thought-provoking collection of case studies examines some of the ways in which migration, and the concomitant processes of ecological and social change, have shaped and continue to shape human-environment relations in Amazonia. Drawing on a wide range of historical time frames (from pre-conquest times to the present) and ethnographic contexts, different chapters examine the complex and important links between migration and the classification, management, and domestication of plants and landscapes, as well as the incorporation and transformation of environmental knowledge, practices, ideologies and identities.

Puyo Runa

Puyo Runa PDF Author: Norman E. Whitten
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252054199
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The Andean nation of Ecuador derives much of its revenue from petroleum that is extracted from its vast Upper Amazonian rain forest, which is home to ten indigenous nationalities. Norman E. Whitten Jr. and Dorothea Scott Whitten have lived among and studied one such people, the Canelos Quichua, for nearly forty years. In Puyo Runa, they present a trenchant ethnography of history, ecology, imagery, and cosmology to focus on shamans, ceramic artists, myth, ritual, and political engagements. Canelos Quichua are active participants in national politics, including large-scale movements for social justice for Andean and Amazonian people. Puyo Runa offers readers exceptional insight into this cultural world, revealing its intricacies and embedded humanisms.

Animism in Rainforest and Tundra

Animism in Rainforest and Tundra PDF Author: Marc Brightman
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857454684
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Amazonia and Siberia, classic regions of shamanism, have long challenged 'western' understandings of man's place in the world. By exploring the social relations between humans and non-human entities credited with human-like personhood (not only animals and plants, but also 'things' such as artifacts, trade items, or mineral resources) from a comparative perspective, this volume offers valuable insights into the constitutions of humanity and personhood characteristic of the two areas. The contributors conducted their ethnographic fieldwork among peoples undergoing transformative processes of their lived environments, such as the depletion of natural resources and migration to urban centers. They describe here fundamental relational modes that are being tested in the face of change, presenting groundbreaking research on personhood and agency in shamanic societies and contributing to our global understanding of social and cultural change and continuity.

In the Society of Nature

In the Society of Nature PDF Author: Philippe Descola
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Combining a symbolist approach with an ecological analysis, the book contributes a new theory of the social construction of nature.

Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman

Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman PDF Author: Janis B. Nuckolls
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816528586
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Using the intriguing stories and words of a Quechua-speaking woman named Luisa Cadena from the Pastaza Province of Ecuador, Janis B. Nuckolls reveals a complex language system in which ideophony, dialogue, and perspective are all at the core of cultural and grammatical communications among Amazonian Quechua speakers. This book is a fascinating look at ideophones—words that communicate succinctly through imitative sound qualities. They are at the core of Quechua speakers’ discourse—both linguistic and cultural—because they allow agency and reaction to substances and entities as well as beings. Nuckolls shows that Luisa Cadena’s utterances give every individual, major or minor, a voice in her narrative. Sometimes as subtle as a barely felt movement or unintelligible sound, the language supports an amazingly wide variety of voices. Cadena’s narratives and commentaries on everyday events reveal that sound imitation through ideophones, representations of dialogues between humans and nonhumans, and grammatical distinctions between a speaking self and an other are all part of a language system that allows for the possibility of shared affects, intentions, moral values, and meaningful, communicative interactions between humans and nonhumans.

Images of Public Wealth or the Anatomy of Well-Being in Indigenous Amazonia

Images of Public Wealth or the Anatomy of Well-Being in Indigenous Amazonia PDF Author: Fernando Santos-Granero
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816531897
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
What is considered a good life in contemporary societies? Can we measure well-being and happiness? Reflecting a global interest on the topics of well-being, happiness, and the good life in the face of the multiple failures of millennial capitalism, Images of Public Wealth or the Anatomy of Well-Being in Indigenous Amazonia deliberately appropriates a concept developed by classical economists to understand wealth accumulation in capitalist societies in order to denaturalize it and assess its applicability in non-capitalist kin-based societies. Mindful of the widespread discontent generated by the ongoing economic crisis in postindustrial societies as well as the renewed attempts by social scientists to measure more effectively what we consider to be “development” and “economic success,” the contributors to this volume contend that the study of public wealth in indigenous Amazonia provides not only an exceptional opportunity to apprehend native notions of wealth, poverty, and the good life, but also to engage in a critical revision of capitalist constructions of living well. Through ethnographic analysis and thought-provoking new approaches to contemporary and historical cases, the book’s contributors reveal how indigenous views of wealth—based on the abundance of intangibles such as vitality, good health, biopower, and convivial relations—are linked to the creation of strong, productive, and moral individuals and collectivities, differing substantially from those in capitalist societies more inclined toward the avid accumulation and consumption of material goods.

The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador

The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador PDF Author: Michael Uzendoski
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252092694
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
Michael Uzendoski's theoretically informed work analyzes value from the perspective of the Napo Runa people of the Amazonian Ecuador. Based upon historical and archival research, as well as the author's years of fieldwork in indigenous communities, The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuadorpresents theoretical issues of value, poetics, and kinship as linked to the author's intersubjective experiences in Napo Runa culture. Drawing on insights from the theory of gift and value, Uzendoski argues that Napo Runa culture personifies value by transforming things into people through a process of subordinating them to human relationships. While many traditional exchange models treat the production of things as inconsequential, the Napo Runa understand production to involve a relationship with natural beings (plants, animals, and spirits of the forest) that they believe share spiritual substance, or samai. Value is the outcome of a complicated poetics of transformation by which things and persons are woven into kinship forms that define daily social and ritual life.