Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Whitehead does a superb job at showing the complex relationships among history, coloniality, border-transformation, culture, and local knowledge."--Michael A. Uzendoski, Florida State University
Table of Contents
1. Forty Years of Amazonian Anthropology: The Contribution of Peter Riviere,
Laura Rival and Neil Whitehead2. Gut Feelings about Amazonia: Potential Affinity and the Construction of Sociality, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
3. Wives, Pets, and Affines: Marriage among the Jivaro, Anne-Christine Taylor
4. Seed and Clone: The Symbolic and Social Signification of Bitter Manioc Cultivation, Laura Rival
5. The Blowpipe Indians: Variations on the Theme of Blowpipe and Tube among the Yagua Indians of the Peruvian Amazon, Jean-Pierre Chaumeil
6. Myth and Material Culture: Matis Blowguns, Palm Trees, and Ancestors, Philippe Erikson
7. From Longhouse to Village: Structure and Change in the Colombian Amazon, Kaj Arhem
8. The Composition of Me bengokre (Kayapo) Households in Central Brazil, Vanessa Lea
9. Piercing Distinctions: The Making (and Remaking) of Social Contract in the North West Amazon, Janet Chernela
10. Inside and Out: Alterity and the Ceremonial Construction of the Person in the Guianas, Paul Henley
11. Itoto (Kanaima) as Death and Anti-Structure, Audrey Butt-Colson
12. Kanaima: Shamanism and Ritual Death in the Pakaraima Mountains, Guyana, Neil Whitehead
13. Finding One's Body: Relationships between Cosmology and Work in North West Amazonia, Thomas Griffiths
14. The hierarchy Bias and the Equality Bias: Epistemological Considerations on the Analysis of Gender, Claire Lorrain