Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
November 30, 2024
Isabel Santana de Rose
This text reviews some of Jean Langdon’s most important classical and contemporary writings about shamanism, highlighting her key contributions to the area, as well as her relevance to the anthropology of health and Indigenous health policies. The paper also reflects on Langdon’s influence in the discussions surrounding gender and female agency in ethnographies of lowland South America. Jean...
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
December 15, 2017
William H. Crocker
In this article I recount the stories of various shamans I have worked with throughout many decades of fieldwork among the Ramkokamekra-Canela (Eastern Timbira) of central Maranhão state, Brazil. Along with their narratives, I provide ethnographic context in order to address the following questions: (1) Who is a shaman? (2) What is shamanism? Is shamanism better understood (3) as a process or a...
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
December 26, 2016
Kathleen Lowrey
In this essay I describe what I have seen elapse over twenty years in the lives (and sometimes deaths) of two shamans and their respective wives in Isoso, an indigenous community of Guarani-speaking people in the Bolivian Chaco. These shamans’ two different kinds of shamanic practice, their two different sorts of marriage, and the two different life-trajectories of their wives resonate with the...
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
2012
James Andrew Whitaker
7 citations
Book review of Warfare and Shamanism in Amazonia. Carlos Fausto. Translated by David Rodgers. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012. xv + 347 pp., maps, illustrations, footnotes, bibliography, annex, index. USD $99.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-1-107-02006-1
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
May 1, 2006
Joanna Overing
12 citations
The Piaroa are people, living along tributaries of the middle Orinoco, who recognize that the dance of every bodily process participates in a poisonous, primordial design of things. This paper explores the relation of sensory processes and the cosmic to Piaroa ways of knowing and doing their arts of the culinary. In so doing it is an expedition into ethnopoetics. My focus is upon the interplay...
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
May 1, 2006
Dan Rosengren
11 citations
Departing from the specific case of Matsigenka people in the Montaña of southeastern Peru, this article challenges some of the assumptions associated with predominant conceptions of Amazonian perspectivism. Examining different cultural registers such as birth rituals and mythology, Matsigenka peoples’ notions about being, soul, and self are discussed in relation to the importance that often is...
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
May 1, 2006
Robert Storrie
3 citations
The Hoti are a small group of hunter-horticulturalists living in the highlands of central Venezuelan Guiana. In this article I examine Hoti understandings of equality, hierarchy and power and the coercive use of fear by individuals who cultivate a reputation as “Light Ones”—that is people especially skilled in their interaction with the powerful beings of the shamanic environment—a role that is...
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
December 1, 2003
Fernando Santos-Granero
Taking as a point of departure the recurring nightmares of a Yanesha boy, the author examines the dream theories and practices of Yanesha people of Peruvian Amazonia. Particular emphasis is placed on the conscious manipulation of actions taking place in nightmares. This practice, common to many indigenous peoples throughout the world, has become known in Western tradition as “lucid dreaming.”...
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America
June 1, 2003
Laura Perez Gil
20 citations
Book review of O uso ritual da ayahuasca. Beatriz Caiuby Labate & Wladimyr Sena Araújo (editors). Campinas (São Paulo, Brazil): Mercado das Letras / FAPESP, 2002. 686 pp. ISBN 85 85725-91-5.