This open access book applies insights from the anthropology of hospitality to illuminate ethnographic accounts of migrant reception in various parts of the Mediterranean. The contributors ground the ...idea and practice of hospitality in concrete ethnographic settings and challenge how the casual usage of Derridean or Kantian notions of hospitality can blur the boundaries between social scales and between metaphor and practice. Host-guest relations are multiplied through pregnancy and childbirth, and new forms of hospitality emerge with the need to offer mortuary practices for dead strangers, helping to illuminate the spatial and scalar dimensions of morality and politics in Mediterranean migrant reception.
Animism in rainforest and tundra Brightman, Marc; Grotti, Vanessa Elisa; Ulturgasheva, Olga
2012, 2014., 20120815, 2012-08-15, 20120101
eBook, Book
Amazonia and Siberia, classic regions of shamanism, have long challenged 'western' understandings of man's place in the world. By exploring the social relations between humans and non-human entities ...credited with human-like personhood (not only animals and plants, but also 'things' such as artifacts, trade items, or mineral resources) from a comparative perspective, this volume offers valuable insights into the constitutions of humanity and personhood characteristic of the two areas. The contributors conducted their ethnographic fieldwork among peoples undergoing transformative processes of their lived environments, such as the depletion of natural resources and migration to urban centers. They describe here fundamental relational modes that are being tested in the face of change, presenting groundbreaking research on personhood and agency in shamanic societies and contributing to our global understanding of social and cultural change and continuity.
The first book to address the classic anthropological theme of property through the ethnography of Amazonia, Ownership and Nurture sets new and challenging terms for anthropological debates about the ...region and about property in general. Property and ownership have special significance and carry specific meanings in Amazonia, which has been portrayed as the antithesis of Western, property-based, civilization. Through carefully constructed studies of land ownership, slavery, shamanism, spirit mastery, aesthetics, and intellectual property, this volume demonstrates that property relations are of central importance in Amazonia, and that the ownership of persons plays an especially significant role in native cosmology.
Narratives of the Invisible Grotti, Vanessa Elisa; Brightman, Marc
Social analysis,
03/2016, Volume:
60, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Shamanic knowledge is based on an ambiguous commensality with invisible others. As a result, shamans oscillate constantly between spheres of intimacy, both visible and invisible. A place of power and ...transformation, the spirit world is rarely described by native interlocutors in an objective, detached way; rather, they depict it in terms of events and experiences. Instead of examining the formal qualities of accounts of the spirit world through analyses of ritual performance and shamanic quests, we focus on life histories as autobiographical accounts in order to explore what they reveal about the relationship between personal history (and indigenous historicity) and the spirit world. We introduce the term ‘double reflexivity’ to refer to processes by which narratives about the self are produced through relationships with alterity.
The first book to address the classic anthropological theme of property through the ethnography of Amazonia, Ownership and Nurture sets new and challenging terms for anthropological debates about the ...region and about property in general. Property and ownership have special significance and carry specific meanings in Amazonia, which has been portrayed as the antithesis of Western, property-based, civilization. Through carefully constructed studies of land ownership, slavery, shamanism, spirit mastery, aesthetics, and intellectual property, this volume demonstrates that property relations are of central importance in Amazonia, and that the ownership of persons plays an especially significant role in native cosmology.
Summary
This article is based on fieldwork among a Central Carib people known as the Trio, who have for the past 40 years lived alongside their former enemies in large sedentary villages in southern ...Suriname. The article analyses the relations that have been established and nurtured between people, particularly those of distant affines, at times of communal celebrations such as beer feasts, with a particular focus on intersubjectivity. As the frequency and magnitude of these beer‐drinking feasts seems to be on the rise in the whole region, I examine the relationship that exists between sedentarization, conversion to Christianity, and the long‐term process of peaceful engagement with enemies, which together make for contemporary Trio sociality, particularly at the times of communal feasts.
How might we envision animism through the lens of the 'anthropology of anthropology'? The contributors to this volume offer compelling case studies that demonstrate how indigenous animistic ...practices, concepts, traditions, and ontologies are co-authored in highly reflexive ways by anthropologists and their interlocutors. They explore how native epistemologies, which inform anthropological notions during fieldwork, underpin the dialogues between researchers and their participants. In doing so, the contributors reveal ways in which indigenous thinkers might be influenced by anthropological concepts of the soul and, equally, how they might subtly or dramatically then transform those same concepts within anthropological theory.
Animism beyond the soul Swancutt, Katherine; Mazard, Mireille; Holbraad, Martin
2018., 2018, 2018-05-14, Volume:
6
eBook
How might we envision animism through the lens of the ‘anthropology of anthropology’? The contributors to this volume offer compelling case studies that demonstrate how indigenous animistic ...practices, concepts, traditions, and ontologies are co-authored in highly reflexive ways by anthropologists and their interlocutors. They explore how native epistemologies, which inform anthropological notions during fieldwork, underpin the dialogues between researchers and their participants. In doing so, the contributors reveal ways in which indigenous thinkers might be influenced by anthropological concepts of the soul and, equally, how they might subtly or dramatically then transform those same concepts within anthropological theory.
A moving body: kinship, « diffusion of influence » and corporeal transformations in Trio beer feasts, northeastern Amazonia. This article is an analysis of the social relations established and ...nurtured between bodies during Trio communal feasts in southern Suriname. The villages in which they live are characterised by growing sedentary and increased population concentration, which, from a Trio point of view, means an increased physical and social interaction with unrelated affines and potential enemies. These communal feasts are referred to as beer feasts due to the central importance of manioc beer in the articulation of collective sociability typical of these occasions which bring together coresident and geographically distant affines, and their repercussions on the specific and temporary form of kinship which is generated among commensals. The concepts of nurture and diffusion of influence will be introduced to analyse these social relations and to place them in the contemporary context of Northeastern Amazonia.
Un corps en mouvement : parenté, « diffusion de l’influence » et transformations corporelles dans les fêtes de bière tirio, Amazonie du Nord-Est. Cet article est une analyse des relations sociales ...établies entre les corps lors des célébrations collectives que les Tirio organisent régulièrement dans leurs villages du Sud du Surinam. Les villages auxquels on se réfère sont des structures relativement récentes et sont caractérisés par la sédentarité grandissante des résidents et leur plus grande concentration, ce qui, du point de vue tirio, signifie un rapprochement physique et social avec des personnes non apparentées et potentiellement ennemies. On nomme ces célébrations étudiées « fêtes de bière » pour le rôle central que cette boisson joue dans l’articulation de la sociabilité collective, typique de ces grands rassemblements entre affins co-résidents et éloignés, et leurs répercussions sur la parenté spécifique et temporaire qui se crée alors entre commensaux. On introduira notamment les concepts de nurture et de « diffusion de l’influence » pour analyser ces relations sociales et les placer dans le contexte contemporain propre à l’Amazonie du Nord-Est.
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