The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon

The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon PDF Author: Janet M. Chernela
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292782675
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The Wanano Indians of the northwest Amazon have a social system that differs from those of most tropical forest tribes. Neither stratified by wealth nor strictly egalitarian, Wanano society is "ranked" according to rigidly bound descent groups. In this pioneering ethnographic study, Janet M. Chernela decodes the structure of Wanano society. In Wanano culture, children can be "grandparents," while elders can be "grandchildren." This apparent contradiction springs from the fact that descent from ranked ancestors, rather than age or accumulated wealth, determines one's standing in Wanano society. But ranking's impulse is muted as senior clans, considered to be succulent (referring to both seniority and resource abundance), must be generous gift-givers. In this way, resources are distributed throughout the society. In two poignant chapters aptly entitled "Ordinary Dramas," Chernela shows that rank is a site of contest, resulting in exile, feuding, personal shame, and even death. Thus, Chernela's account is dynamic, placing rank in historic as well as personal context. As the deforestation of the Amazon continues, the Wanano and other indigenous peoples face growing threats of habitat destruction and eventual extinction. If these peoples are to be saved, they must first be known and valued. The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon is an important step in that direction.

The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon

The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon PDF Author: Janet M. Chernela
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292782675
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Wanano Indians of the northwest Amazon have a social system that differs from those of most tropical forest tribes. Neither stratified by wealth nor strictly egalitarian, Wanano society is "ranked" according to rigidly bound descent groups. In this pioneering ethnographic study, Janet M. Chernela decodes the structure of Wanano society. In Wanano culture, children can be "grandparents," while elders can be "grandchildren." This apparent contradiction springs from the fact that descent from ranked ancestors, rather than age or accumulated wealth, determines one's standing in Wanano society. But ranking's impulse is muted as senior clans, considered to be succulent (referring to both seniority and resource abundance), must be generous gift-givers. In this way, resources are distributed throughout the society. In two poignant chapters aptly entitled "Ordinary Dramas," Chernela shows that rank is a site of contest, resulting in exile, feuding, personal shame, and even death. Thus, Chernela's account is dynamic, placing rank in historic as well as personal context. As the deforestation of the Amazon continues, the Wanano and other indigenous peoples face growing threats of habitat destruction and eventual extinction. If these peoples are to be saved, they must first be known and valued. The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon is an important step in that direction.

The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon

The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon PDF Author: Janet M. Chernela
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292782675
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Wanano Indians of the northwest Amazon have a social system that differs from those of most tropical forest tribes. Neither stratified by wealth nor strictly egalitarian, Wanano society is "ranked" according to rigidly bound descent groups. In this pioneering ethnographic study, Janet M. Chernela decodes the structure of Wanano society. In Wanano culture, children can be "grandparents," while elders can be "grandchildren." This apparent contradiction springs from the fact that descent from ranked ancestors, rather than age or accumulated wealth, determines one's standing in Wanano society. But ranking's impulse is muted as senior clans, considered to be succulent (referring to both seniority and resource abundance), must be generous gift-givers. In this way, resources are distributed throughout the society. In two poignant chapters aptly entitled "Ordinary Dramas," Chernela shows that rank is a site of contest, resulting in exile, feuding, personal shame, and even death. Thus, Chernela's account is dynamic, placing rank in historic as well as personal context. As the deforestation of the Amazon continues, the Wanano and other indigenous peoples face growing threats of habitat destruction and eventual extinction. If these peoples are to be saved, they must first be known and valued. The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon is an important step in that direction.

Scoping the Amazon

Scoping the Amazon PDF Author: Stephen Nugent
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315420406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Savage cannibal or utopian proto-environmentalist? Nugent examines both popular images of Amazon peoples in film and general books as well as changing anthropological views of the rainforest and its people.

A Reference Grammar of Kotiria (Wanano)

A Reference Grammar of Kotiria (Wanano) PDF Author: Kristine Stenzel
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803228228
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation This volume is the first descriptive grammar of Kotiria (Wanano), a member of the eastern Tukanoan language family spoken in the Vaupes River basin of Colombia and Brazil in the northwest Amazon rain forest. The Kotirias, who have lived in this remote region for more than seven hundred years, participate in the complex Vaupés social system, characterized by long-standing linguistic and cultural interaction. The Kotirias remained relatively isolated from the dominant societies until the early part of the twentieth century, when increasing outside influence in the region triggered rapid social and linguistic change. Today the Kotirias number only about sixteen hundred people, and their language, though still used in traditional communities, is in risk of becoming endangered. Kristine Stenzel draws on eight years of intensive work with the Kotirias to promote, record, and revitalize their language. Working with dozens of native speakers and drawing on numerous oral narratives and written texts, this book is the first comprehensive study of this endangered language and one of the few reference grammars of this language family.

Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender

Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender PDF Author: Carol R. Ember
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 030647770X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1059

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Book Description
The central aim of this encyclopedia is to give the reader a comparative perspective on issues involving conceptions of gender, gender differences, gender roles, relationships between the genders, and sexuality. The encyclopedia is divided into two volumes: Topics and Cultures. The combination of topical overviews and varying cultural portraits is what makes this encyclopedia a unique reference work for students, researchers and teachers interested in gender studies and cross-cultural variation in sex and gender. It deserves a place in the library of every university and every social science and health department. Contents:- Glossary. Cultural Conceptions of Gender. Gender Roles, Status, and Institutions. Sexuality and Male-Female Interaction. Sex and Gender in the World's Cultures. Culture Name Index. Subject Index.

Cultural Transmission and Material Culture

Cultural Transmission and Material Culture PDF Author: Miriam T. Stark
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 081654929X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
How and why people develop, maintain, and change cultural boundaries through time are central issues in the social and behavioral sciences in generaland anthropological archaeology in particular. What factors influence people to imitate or deviate from the behaviors of other group members? How are social group boundaries produced, perpetuated, and altered by the cumulative outcomeof these decisions? Answering these questions is fundamental to understanding cultural persistence and change. The chapters included in this stimulating, multifaceted book address these questions. Working in several subdisciplines, contributors report on research in the areas of cultural boundaries, cultural transmission, and the socially organized nature of learning. Boundaries are found not only within and between the societies in these studies but also within and between the communities of scholars who study them. To break down these boundaries, this volume includes scholars who use multiple theoretical perspectives, including practice theory and evolutionary traditions, which are sometimes complementary and occasionally clashing. Geographic coverage ranges from the indigenous Americas to Africa, the Near East, and South Asia, and the time frame extends from the prehistoric or precontact to colonial periods and up to the ethnographic present. Contributors include leading scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Together, they employ archaeological, ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological,experimental, and simulation data to link micro-scale processes of cultural transmission to macro-scale processes of social group boundary formation, continuity, and change.

Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River

Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River PDF Author: Mary-Elizabeth Reeve
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496229606
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River is an exploration of the dynamics of regional societies and the ways in which kinship relationships define the scale of these societies. It details social relations across Kichwa-speaking indigenous communities and among neighboring members of other ethnolinguistic groups to explore the multiple ways in which the regional society is conceptualized among Amazonian Kichwa. Drawing on recent studies in kinship, landscape from an indigenous perspective, and social scaling, Mary-Elizabeth Reeve presents a view of Amazonian Kichwa as embedded in a multiethnic regional society of great historic depth. This book is a fine-grained ethnography of the Kichwa of the Curaray River region (Curaray Runa) in which Reeve focuses on ideas of social landscape, as well as residence, extended kin groups, historical memory, and collective ritual celebration, to show the many ways in which Curaray Runa express their placement within a regional society. The final chapter examines social scaling as it is currently unfolding in indigenous societies in Amazonian Ecuador through increasing multisited residence and political mobilization. Based on intensive fieldwork, Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River breaks new ground in Amazonian studies by focusing on extended kinship networks at a larger scale and by utilizing both ethnographic and archival research of Amazonian regional systems.

Beyond the Visible and the Material

Beyond the Visible and the Material PDF Author: Laura M. Rival
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199244768
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Focusing on the anthropological development of Amazonia, this volume explores the legacy of Peter Rivière, a recently retired Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford. An international group of leading specialists contributes to the substantial and growing body of Amazonian ethnography, discussing topics that include kinship and genealogy, the village as a unit of ethnographic observation, the human body in political and social processes, and gender relationships as aspects of political cosmological thinking.

The Anthropology of Love and Anger

The Anthropology of Love and Anger PDF Author: Joanna Overing
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134592302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The Anthropology of Love and Anger questions the very foundations of western sociological thought. In their examination of indigenous peoples from across the South American continent, the contributors to this volume have come to realise that western thought does not possess the vocabulary to define even the fundamentals of indigenous thought and practice. The dualisms of public and private, political and domestic, individual and collective, even male and female, in which western anthropology was founded cannot legitimately be applied to peoples whose 'sociality' is based on an 'aesthetics of community'. For indigenous people success is measured by the extent to which conviviality, (all that is peaceful, harmonious and sociable) has been attained. Yet conviviality is not just reliant on love and good but instead on an even balance between all that is constructive, love, and all that is destructive, anger. With case studies from across the South American region, ranging from the (so-called) fierce Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil to the Enxet of Paraguay, and with discussions on topics from the efficacy of laughter, the role of language, anger as a marker of love and even homesickness, The Anthropology of Love and Anger is a seminal, fascinating work which should be read by all students and academics in the post-colonial world.

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology PDF Author: William L. Balée
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231135629
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
An important contribution to the emerging field of historical ecology, this volume illuminates the ways in which the landscape reflects human history and culture. The book combines cutting-edge research with new perspectives on the effects of human societies on the neotropical lowlands of South and Central America.