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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 senio...
In The Quest Mircea Eliade stresses the cultural function that a study of the history of religions can play in a secularized society. He writes for the intelligent general reader in the hope that what he calls a new humanism "will be engendered by a confrontation of modern Western man with unknown or less familiar worlds of meaning." "Each of these essays contains insights which will be fruitful and challenging for professional students of religion, but at the same time they all retain the kind of cultural relevance and clarity of style which makes them accessible to anyone seriously concerned with man and his religious possibilities."—Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religious Education
Around the year 1800, independent Native groups still effectively controlled about half the territory of the Americas. How did they maintain their political autonomy and territorial sovereignty, hundreds of years after the arrival of Europeans? In a study that spans the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and ranges across the vast interior of South America, Heather F. Roller examines this history of power and persistence from the vantage point of autonomous Native peoples in Brazil. The central argument of the book is that Indigenous groups took the initiative in their contacts with Brazilian society. Rather than fleeing or evading contact, Native peoples actively sought to appropriate what w...
This new edition of Jerry D. Moore's Visions of Culture presents introductory anthropology students with a brief, readable, and balanced treatment of theoretical developments in the field. New to this edition are pieces on Sherry Ortner, Pierre Bourdieu, and Eric Wolf, an Epilogue that describes key current debates over theory. This is an ideal text for classes on the theory or the history of anthropology.
Changels Nemesis Part One
Although Daniel Everett was a missionary, far from converting the Pirahãs, they converted him. He shows the slow, meticulous steps by which he gradually mastered their language and his gradual realisation that its unusual nature closely reflected its speakers' startlingly original perceptions of the world. Everett describes how he began to realise that his discoveries about the Pirahã language opened up a new way of understanding how language works in our minds and in our lives, and that this way was utterly at odds with Noam Chomsky's universally accepted linguistic theories. The perils of passionate academic opposition were then swiftly conjoined to those of the Amazon in a debate whose outcome has yet to be won. Everett's views are most recently discussed in Tom Wolfe's bestselling The Kingdom of Speech. Adventure, personal enlightenment and the makings of a scientific revolution proceed together in this vivid, funny and moving book.
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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 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 local practices and cosmologies challenge conventional Western ideas about natur...