Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America
Creation and Creativity in Indigenous Lowland South America

Author: Ernst Halbmayer

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2023-06-09

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1805390074

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Investigating local Indigenous processes of creation and creativity, this book uses ethnographic and comparative anthropological perspectives to enquire about creative transformative practices in lowland South America. The volume shows how people create and reinforce their conditions of being by employing different genres of transgression and by creatively shifting contexts of significance. Local socio-cosmic orders, the interrelation of creative genres (myth, verbal art, song, ritual, and handicrafts), and their changing frames of reference (from communal celebrations to wider political and commercial realms) demonstrate the relational, generative, and processual quality of Amerindian creativity.

Climate Change Epistemologies in Southern Africa
Climate Change Epistemologies in Southern Africa

Author: Jörn Ahrens

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-07-04

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1000902366

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This book investigates the social and cultural dimensions of climate change in Southern Africa, focusing on how knowledge about climate change is conceived and conveyed. Despite contributing very little to the global production of emissions, the African continent looks set to be the hardest hit by climate change. Adopting a decolonial perspective, this book argues that knowledge and discourse about climate change has largely disregarded African epistemologies, leading to inequalities in knowledge systems. Only by considering regionally specific forms of conceptualizing, perceiving, and responding to climate change can these global problems be tackled. First exploring African epistemologies of climate change, the book then goes on to the social impacts of climate change, matters of climate justice, and finally institutional change and adaptation. Providing important insights into the social and cultural perception and communication of climate change in Africa, this book will be of interest to researchers from across the fields of African studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, climate change, and geography.

Risible
Risible

Author: Delia Casadei

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024-02-06

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0520391349

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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.​ Risible explores the forgotten history of laughter, from ancient Greece to the sitcom stages of Hollywood. Delia Casadei approaches laughter not as a phenomenon that can be accounted for by studies of humor and theories of comedy but rather as a technique of the human body, knowable by its repetitive, clipped, and proliferating sound and its enduring links to the capacity for language and reproduction. This buried genealogy of laughter re-emerges with explosive force thanks to the binding of laughter to sound reproduction technology in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing case studies ranging from the early global market for phonographic laughing songs to the McCarthy-era rise of prerecorded laugh tracks, Casadei convincingly demonstrates how laughter was central to the twentieth century’s development of the very category of sound as not-quite-human, unintelligible, reproductive, reproducible, and contagious.

The Lowland South American World
The Lowland South American World

Author: Casey High

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-12-12

Total Pages: 908

ISBN-13: 1040150527

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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 nature, culture, personhood, sociality, community, and Indigenous people. Some of the region’s well-known contributions to anthropology, such as animism, perspectivism, and novel approaches to the body are updated here with new ethnography and in light of the varying political situations in which the region’s peoples find themselves. With contributions by authors from 15 different countries, including a number of Indigenous anthropologists and activists, this book will set the agenda for future research in the continent. The Lowland South American World is a valuable resource for scholars and students of anthropology, Latin American studies and Indigenous studies, as well as history, geography and other social sciences.

Indigenous Churches
Indigenous Churches

Author: Élise Capredon

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 3031144945

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This book raises the question of what an Indigenous church is and how its members define their ties of affiliation or separation. Establishing a pioneering dialogue between Amazonian and Gran Chaco studies on Indigenous Christianity, the contributions address historical processes, cosmological conceptions, ritual practices, leadership dynamics, and material formations involved in the creation and diversification of Indigenous churches. Instead of focusing on the study of missionary ideologies and praxis, the book explores Indigenous peoples' interpretations of Christianity and the institutional arrangements they make to create, expand, or dismantle their churches. In doing so, the volume offers a South American contribution to the theoretical project of the anthropology of Christianity, especially as it relates to the issue of denominationalism and inter-denominational relations.

Love and its Entanglements among the Enxet of Paraguay
Love and its Entanglements among the Enxet of Paraguay

Author: Stephen Kidd

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1793634696

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In Love and its Entanglements among the Enxet of Paraguay: Social and Kinship Relations within a Market Economy, Stephen Kidd examines the affective discourse and value systems of the indigenous Enxet people. Kidd’s analysis focuses on how the Enxet navigate the market economy in Paraguay and the tensions it exerts on their commitment to egalitarianism, generosity, and personal autonomy.

The Master Plant
The Master Plant

Author: Andrew Russell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-03

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1000183114

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Described as a ‘master plant’ by many indigenous groups in lowland South America, tobacco is an essential part of shamanic ritual, as well as a source of everyday health, wellbeing and community. In sharp contrast to the condemnation of the tobacco industry and its place in contemporary public health discourse, the book considers tobacco in a more nuanced light, as an agent both of enlightenment and destruction.Exploring the role of tobacco in the lives of indigenous peoples, The Master Plant offers an important and unique contribution to this field of study through its focus on lowland South America: the historical source region of this controversial plant, yet rarely discussed in recent scholarship. The ten chapters in this collection bring together ethnographic accounts, key developments in anthropological theory and emergent public health responses to indigenous tobacco use. Moving from a historical study of tobacco usage – covering the initial domestication of wild varieties and its value as a commodity in colonial times – to an examination of the transcendent properties of tobacco, and the magic, symbolism and healing properties associated with it, the authors present wide-ranging perspectives on the history and cultural significance of this important plant. The final part of the book examines the changing landscape of tobacco use in these communities today, set against the backdrop of the increasing power of the national and transnational tobacco industry.The first critical overview of tobacco and its uses across lowland South America, this book encourages new ways of thinking about the problems of commercially exploited tobacco both within and beyond this source region.

Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II
Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II

Author: Jennifer C. Post

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-20

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 131543914X

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Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II provides an overview of developments in the study of ethnomusicology in the twenty-first century, offering an introduction to contemporary issues relevant to the field. Nineteen essays, written by an international array of scholars, highlight the relationship between current issues in the discipline and ethnomusicologists’ engagement with issues such as advocacy, poverty and social participation, maintaining intangible cultural heritages, and ecological concerns. It provides a forum for rethinking the discipline’s identity in terms of major themes and issues to which ethnomusicologists have turned their attention since Volume I published in 2005. The collection of essays is organized into six sections: Property and Rights Applied Practice Knowledge and Agency Community and Social Space Embodiment and Cognition Curating Sound Volume II serves as a basic introduction to the best writing in the field for students, professors, and music professionals, perfect for both introductory and upper level courses in world music. Together with the first volume, Ethnomusicology: A Contemporary Reader, Volume II provides a comprehensive survey of current research directions.

Burst of Breath
Burst of Breath

Author: Jonathan David Hill

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2011-12-01

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 0803220928

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The first in-depth, comparative, and interdisciplinary study of indigenous Amazonian musical cultures, Burst of Breath showcases new research on the dynamic range of ritual power and social significance of various wind instrumentsãincluding flutes, trumpets, clarinets, and whistlesãplayed in sacred rituals and ceremonies in Lowland South America. The editors provide a detailed overview of the historical significance, scientific classification, shamanic and cosmological associations, and changing social meanings of ritual wind instruments within Amazonian cultures. These essays present a wide perspective that goes beyond better-documented areas such as the Upper Xingu and northwest Amazon. Some of the authors explore the ways ritual wind instruments are used to introduce natural sounds into social contexts and to cross boundaries between verbal and nonverbal communication. Others look at how ritual wind instruments and their music enter into local definitions and negotiations of relations between men, women, kin, insiders, and outsiders. Closely considering these instruments in their many roles and contextsãin curing and purification, negotiating relations, connecting mythic ancestors and humans todayãthis volume reveals the power and complexity of the music at the heart of collective rituals across lowland South America.