Download or read book Indigenous Agency in the Amazon written by Gary Van Valen and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indigenous Agency in the Amazon explores the underexamined story of indigenous people who accepted Jesuit mission life and then, nearly two centuries later, withstood the challenges of the rubber boom and the imposition of European liberalism.
Download or read book Indigenous Agency in the Amazon written by Gary Van Valen and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The largest group of indigenous people in the Bolivian Amazon, the Mojos, has coexisted with non-Natives since the late 1600s, when they accepted Jesuit missionaries into their homeland, converted to Catholicism, and adapted their traditional lifestyle to the conventions of mission life. Nearly two hundred years later they faced two new challenges: liberalism and the rubber boom. White authorities promoted liberalism as a way of modernizing the region and ordered the dismantling of much of the social structure of the missions. The rubber boom created a demand for labor, which took the Mojos away from their savanna towns and into the northern rain forests. Gary Van Valen postulates that as ex-mission Indians who lived on a frontier, the Mojos had an expanded capacity to adapt that helped them meet these challenges. Their frontier life provided them with the space and mind-set to move their agricultural plots and cattle herds, join independent indigenous groups, or move to Brazil. Their mission history gave them the experience they needed to participate in the rubber export economy and the politics of white society. Van Valen argues that the indigenous Mojos also learned how to manipulate liberal discourse to their advantage. He demonstrates that the Mojos were able to survive the rubber boom, claim the right of equality promised by the liberal state, and preserve important elements of the culture they inherited from the missions.
Download or read book Dreams Coming True written by Søren Hvalkof and published by IWGIA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an unusual book about an unusual project in the Peruvian Amazon. It focuses on the extraordinary achievement the indigenous movement in the Upper Amazon has accomplished in establishing its own alternative health service. The work exposes a kaleidoscopic view of this fascinating process and presents the voices of the indigenous shamans, herbalists, midwives, and healers. It also gives an account of the experiences of the nurses, doctors, promoters and patients, and the aspirations of the indigenous leaders. Addressing a range of issues in rural health care, and proposing a model for successful implementation, this volume is important for international development and rural health planners, health workers, NGO staff, researchers, doctors, and indigenous leaders. Filled with a plethora of good stories and interesting photographs, in color and black and white, this book will also be of interest to a general readership interested in indigenous affairs and ethnic studies.
Download or read book Using Tactical Power written by Ian Sitton and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Creating Dialogues written by Hanne Veber and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2017-07-21 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creating Dialogues discusses contemporary forms of leadership in a variety of Amazonian indigenous groups. Examining the creation of indigenous leaders as political subjects in the context of contemporary state policies of democratization and exploitation of natural resources, the book addresses issues of resilience and adaptation at the level of local community politics in lowland South America. Contributors investigate how indigenous peoples perceive themselves as incorporated into the structures of states and how they tend to see the states as accomplices of the private companies and non-indigenous settlers who colonize or devastate indigenous lands. Adapting to the impacts of changing political and economic environments, leaders adopt new organizational forms, participate in electoral processes, become adept in the use of social media, experiment with cultural revitalization and new forms of performance designed to reach non-indigenous publics, and find allies in support of indigenous and human rights claims to secure indigenous territories and conditions for survival. Through these multiple transformations, the new styles and manners of leadership are embedded in indigenous notions of power and authority whose shifting trajectories predate contemporary political conjunctures. Despite the democratization of many Latin American countries and international attention to human rights efforts, indigenous participation in political arenas is still peripheral. Creating Dialogues sheds light on dramatic, ongoing social and political changes within Amazonian indigenous groups. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, ethnology, Latin American studies, and indigenous studies, as well as governmental and nongovernmental organizations working with Amazonian groups. Contributors: Jean-Pierre Chaumeil, Gérard Collomb, Luiz Costa, Oscar Espinosa, Esther López, Valéria Macedo, José Pimenta, Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti, Terence Turner, Hanne Veber, Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen
Download or read book Landscapes of Inequity written by Nicholas A. Robins and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-07 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The natural wealth of the Amazon and Andes has long attracted fortune seekers, from explorers, farmers, and gold panners to multimillion-dollar mining, oil and gas, and timber operations. Modern demands for commodities have given rise to new development schemes, including hydroelectric dams, open cast mines, and industrial agricultural operations. The history of human habitation in this region is intimately tied to its rich biodiversity, and the Amazon basin is home to scores of indigenous groups, many of whom have populations so small that their cultural and physical survival is endangered. Landscapes of Inequity explores the debate over rights to and use of resources and addresses fundamental questions that inform the debate in the western Amazon basin, from the Andes Mountains to the tropical lowlands. Beginning with an examination of the divergent conceptual interpretations of environmental justice, the volume explores the issue from two interlocking perspectives: of indigenous peoples and of economic development in a global economy. The volume concludes by examining the efficacy of laws and policies concerning the environment in the region, the viability and range of judicial recourse, and future directions in the field of environmental justice.
Download or read book Amazind Bulletin written by Documentation and Information Center for Indigenous Affairs in the Amazon Region and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Indigenous Youth in Brazilian Amazonia written by Pirjo K. Virtanen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-11-09 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Violence and Indigenous Communities written by Susan Sleeper-Smith and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to past studies that focus narrowly on war and massacre, treat Native peoples as victims, and consign violence safely to the past, this interdisciplinary collection of essays opens up important new perspectives. While recognizing the long history of genocidal violence against Indigenous peoples, the contributors emphasize the agency of individuals and communities in genocide’s aftermath and provide historical and contemporary examples of activism, resistance, identity formation, historical memory, resilience, and healing. The collection also expands the scope of violence by examining the eyewitness testimony of women and children who survived violence, the role of Indigenous self-determination and governance in inciting violence against women, and settler colonialism’s promotion of cultural erasure and environmental destruction. By including contributions on Indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada, the Pacific, Greenland, Sápmi, and Latin America, the volume breaks down nation-state and European imperial boundaries to show the value of global Indigenous frameworks. Connecting the past to the present, this book confronts violence as an ongoing problem and identifies projects that mitigate and push back against it.
Download or read book Mapping the Amazon written by Amanda M. Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the political and ecological consequences of charting the Amazon River basin in narrative fiction, Mapping the Amazon examines how widely read novels from twentieth-century South America attempted to map the region for readers. Authors such as Jos� Eustasio Rivera, R�mulo Gallegos, Mario Vargas Llosa, C�sar Calvo, M�rcio Souza, and M�rio de Andrade traveled to the Amazonian regions of their respective countries and encountered firsthand a forest divided and despoiled by the spatial logic of extractivism. Writing against that logic, they fill their novels with geographic, human, and ecological realities omitted from official accounts of the region. Though the plots unfold after the height of the Amazonian rubber boom (1850-1920), the authors construct landscapes marked by that first large-scale exploitation of Amazonian biodiversity. The material practices of rubber extraction repeat in the stories told about the removal of other plants, seeds, and mineral from the forest as well as its conversion into farmland. The counter-discursive impulse of each novel comes into dialogue with various modernizing projects that carve Amazonia into cultural and economic spaces: border commissions, extractive infrastructure, school geography manuals, Indigenous education programs, and touristic propaganda. Even the novel maps studied have blind spots, though, and Mapping the Amazon considers the legacy of such unintentional omissions today.
Download or read book Art Effects written by Carlos Fausto and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-08 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Art Effects Brazilian anthropologist Carlos Fausto explores the agency of indigenous artifacts and images in order to offer a new understanding of the pragmatics and ontology of ritual contexts.
Download or read book Histories and Historicities in Amazonia written by Neil L. Whitehead and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropologist Neil L. Whitehead presents a collection of recent fieldwork and the latest theoretical perspectives that illuminate how a range of Native communities in the Amazon River basin, and those they encounter, use the past to make sense of their world and themselves. In recent decades, scholars have become increasingly aware of the role the past plays in the construction of culture and identity. Not only can the past be represented and codified overtly in various ways and media as a history, it also operates more fundamentally and pervasively in cultures as a mode of consciousness or way of thinking about the world, a historicity. ø In addition to examining the particular foundations and significance of history and historicity in such communities as the Guaj¾, Wapishana, Dekuana, and Patamuna, the contributors to this volume consider more broadly how different natural and cultural features can help shape historical consciousness: landscape and territory; rituals such as feasting; genealogy and kinship; and even the practice of archaeology. Also of interest are activist uses of historicity to promote and legitimize the cultural integrity and political agendas of Native communities, especially in contact situations past and present where multiple and often competing forms of history and historicity play important political roles in articulating relations between colonizers and the colonized. ø As this volume makes clear, understanding the powerful cultural role of the past helps scholars better appreciate the inherent dynamic quality of all cultures and recognize a rich resource of agency that can be used both to comprehend and to transform the present
Download or read book Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond written by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-21 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar offer an in-depth exploration of how Amerindian epistemology and ontology concerning indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon have spread to Western societies, and of how indigenous, mestizo, and cosmopolitan cultures have engaged with and transformed these forest traditions. The volume focuses on the use of ayahuasca, a psychoactive drink essential in many indigenous shamanic rituals of the Amazon. Ayahuasca use has spread to countries far beyond its Amazonian origin, spurring a wide variety of legal and cultural responses. The essays in this volume look at how these responses have influenced ritual design and performance in traditional and non-traditional contexts, how displaced indigenous people and rubber tappers are engaged in the creative reinvention of rituals, and how these rituals help build ethnic alliances and cultural and political strategies. These essays explore important classic and contemporary issues in anthropology, including the relationship between the expansion of ecotourism and ethnic tourism and recent indigenous cultural revival and the emergence of new ethnic identities. The volume also examines trends in the commodification of indigenous cultures in post-colonial contexts, the combination of shamanism with a network of health and spiritually related services, and identity hybridization in global societies. The rich ethnographies and extensive analysis of these essays will allow deeper understanding of the role of ritual in mediating the encounter between indigenous traditions and modern societies.
Download or read book Journeys into Terror written by Cynthia J. Miller and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since ancient times, explorers and adventurers have captured popular imagination with their frightening narratives of travels gone wrong. Usually, these stories heavily feature the exotic or unknown, and can transform any journey into a nightmare. Stories of such horrific happenings have a long and rich history that stretches from folktales to contemporary media narratives.This work presents eighteen essays that explore the ways in which these texts reflect and shape our fear and fascination surrounding travel, posing new questions about the "geographies of evil" and how our notions of "terrible places" and their inhabitants change over time. The volume's five thematic sections offer new insights into how power, privilege, uncanny landscapes, misbegotten quests, hellish commutes and deadly vacations can turn our travels into terror.
Download or read book Amazonian Routes written by Heather F. Roller and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-18 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reconstructs the world of eighteenth-century Amazonia to argue that indigenous mobility did not undermine settlement or community. In doing so, it revises longstanding views of native Amazonians as perpetual wanderers, lacking attachment to place and likely to flee at the slightest provocation. Instead, native Amazonians used traditional as well as new, colonial forms of spatial mobility to build enduring communities under the constraints of Portuguese colonialism. Canoeing and trekking through the interior to collect forest products or to contact independent native groups, Indians expanded their social networks, found economic opportunities, and brought new people and resources back to the colonial villages. When they were not participating in these state-sponsored expeditions, many Indians migrated between colonial settlements, seeking to be incorporated as productive members of their chosen communities. Drawing on largely untapped village-level sources, the book shows that mobile people remained attached to their home communities and committed to the preservation of their lands and assets. This argument still matters today, and not just to scholars, as rural communities in the Brazilian Amazon find themselves threatened by powerful outsiders who argue that their mobility invalidates their claims to territory.
Download or read book Amazonian Kichwa of the Curaray River written by Mary-Elizabeth Reeve and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ethnography explores ways in which Amazonian Kichwa narrative, ritual, and concepts of place link extended kin groups into a regional society within Amazonian Ecuador.
Download or read book The Struggle for Natural Resources written by Carmen Soliz and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2024-03-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Struggle for Natural Resources traces the troubled history of Bolivia's land and commodity disputes across five centuries, combining local, regional, national, and transnational scales. Enriched by the extractivism and commodity frontiers approaches to world history, the book treats Bolivia's political struggles over natural resources as long-term processes that outlast immediate political events. Exploration of the Bolivian case invites dialogue and comparison with other parts of the world, particularly regions and countries of the so-called Global South. The book begins by examining three Bolivian resources at the center of political dispute since the early colonial period, namely land, water, and minerals. Carmen Soliz, Rossana Barragán, and Sarah Hines show that, as in the colonial and early republican past, these resources have remained the focus of political contention to the present day. Until the end of the nineteenth century, Bolivia's battle over natural resources was primarily concentrated in the highlands and inter-Andean valleys. Beginning in the 1860s, the bicycle and soon the automobile industries triggered demand for natural rubber found in the heart of the Amazon. José Orsag analyzes the impact of this extractive economy at the turn of the twentieth century. The book concludes by examining two resources that are central to understanding the last century of Bolivia's history. Kevin Young examines the fraught business of hydrocarbons, and Thomas Grisaffi analyzes the coca/cocaine circuit. Each chapter studies the social dynamics and political conflicts that shaped the processes of extraction, exchange, and ownership of each of these resources
