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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.
Explores our complex relationships with pets.
Ruins and remnants of the past are endowed with life, rather than mere relics handed down from previous generations. Living Ruins explores some of the ways Indigenous people relate to the material remains of human activity and provides an informed and critical stance that nuances and contests institutionalized patrimonialization discourse on vestiges of the past in present landscapes. Ten case studies from the Maya region, Amazonia, and the Andes detail and contextualize narratives, rituals, and a range of practices and attitudes toward different kinds of vestiges. The chapters engage with recently debated issues such as regimes of historicity and knowledge, cultural landscapes, conceptions ...
Combining linguistic, ethnological, and historical perspectives, the contributors to this volume draw on a wealth of information gathered from ten Amerindian peoples belonging to seven different linguistic families to identify the basic tenets of what might be called a native Amazonian theory of materiality and personhood.
What purpose, if any, do pets really serve? Are they simply an outlet for misplaced love? Or four-legged friends who help us to satisfy vital emotional needs? Whatever they are, when we elevate pets to the status of social companions, we undermine the distinction between human and non-human. In other words, pets force us to confront the moral contradictions inherent in our treatment of animals in general. Pursuing this idea to its logical conclusion, the author uncovers a fascinating and disturbing trail of myths, evasions and double standards which humans have used since earliest times to justify their subjugation of nature and other life forms. Through an exploration of the phenomenon of pet-keeping across history and between cultures, this thought-provoking study reassesses our relationships with animals and the natural world. This new edition of In the Company of Animals has been substantially revised and updated to take into account developments in research since the first edition was published in 1986.
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...
Featuring analysis from historical, ethnological, and philosophical perspectives, this volume dissects Indigenous Amazonians' beliefs about urban imaginaries and their ties to power, alterity, domination, and defiance. Contributors analyze how ambiguous urban imaginaries express a singular view of cosmopolitical relations, how they inform and shape forest-city interactions, and the history of how they came into existence, as well as their influence in present-day migration and urbanization.
The expression of knowledge in language (i.e. epistemicity) consists of a number of distinct notions and proposed categories that are only partly related to a well explored forms like epistemic modals. The aim of the volume is therefore to contribute to the ongoing exploration of epistemic marking systems in lesser-documented languages from the Americas, Papua New Guinea, and Central Asia from the perspective of language description and cross-linguistic comparison. As the title of the volume suggests, part of this exploration consists of situating already established notions (such as evidentiality) with the diversity of systems found in individual languages. Epistemic forms that feature in the present volume include ones that signal how speakers claim knowledge based on perceptual-cognitive access (evidentials); the speaker’s involvement as a basis for claiming epistemic authority (egophorics); the distribution of knowledge between the speech-participants where the speaker signals assumptions about the addressee’s knowledge of an event as either shared, or non-shared with the speaker (engagement marking).
The problem of lexical categories and root class determination is fundamental in linguistic description and theory. Research on this topic has been particularly stimulated by studies of Amerindian languages. The essays in this collection, written by specialists in languages from South, Middle and North America, provide new insights into processes, levels, functions, and the aquisition of lexical categories, from various recent theoretical perspectives. The volume also addresses recent debates about root indeterminacy. Focusing on morphosyntax, phonology, and semantics, the contributions offer invaluable material for typological generalizations and for comprehension of the nature of the mental lexicon.
How do Amazonian native young people perceive, question, and negotiate the new kinds of social and cultural situations in which they find themselves? Virtanen looks at how current power relations constituted by ethnic recognition, new social contacts, and cooperation with different institutions have shaped the current native youth in Amazonia.