In Darkness and Secrecy

In Darkness and Secrecy
Author: Neil L. Whitehead
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2004-06-03
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 082238583X

In Darkness and Secrecy brings together ethnographic examinations of Amazonian assault sorcery, witchcraft, and injurious magic, or “dark shamanism.” Anthropological reflections on South American shamanism have tended to emphasize shamans’ healing powers and positive influence. This collection challenges that assumption by showing that dark shamans are, in many Amazonian cultures, quite different from shamanic healers and prophets. Assault sorcery, in particular, involves violence resulting in physical harm or even death. While highlighting the distinctiveness of such practices, In Darkness and Secrecy reveals them as no less relevant to the continuation of culture and society than curing and prophecy. The contributors suggest that the persistence of dark shamanism can be understood as a form of engagement with modernity. These essays, by leading anthropologists of South American shamanism, consider assault sorcery as it is practiced in parts of Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, and Peru. They analyze the social and political dynamics of witchcraft and sorcery and their relation to cosmology, mythology, ritual, and other forms of symbolic violence and aggression in each society studied. They also discuss the relations of witchcraft and sorcery to interethnic contact and the ways that shamanic power may be co-opted by the state. In Darkness and Secrecy includes reflections on the ethical and practical implications of ethnographic investigation of violent cultural practices. Contributors. Dominique Buchillet, Carlos Fausto, Michael Heckenberger, Elsje Lagrou, E. Jean Langdon, George Mentore, Donald Pollock, Fernando Santos-Granero, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern, Márnio Teixeira-Pinto, Silvia Vidal, Neil L. Whitehead, Johannes Wilbert, Robin Wright

Indigenism

Indigenism
Author: Alcida Rita Ramos
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780299160449

Indigenous people comprise only 0.2% of Brazil's population, yet occupy a prominent role in the nation's consciousness. In her important and passionate new book, anthropologist Alcida Ramos explains this irony, exploring Indian and non-Indian attitudes about interethnic relations. Ramos contends that imagery about indigenous people reflects an ambivalence Brazil has about itself as a nation, for Indians reveal Brazilians' contradiction between their pride in ethnic pluralism and desire for national homogeneity. Based on her more than thirty years of fieldwork and activism on behalf of the Yanomami Indians, Ramos explains the complex ideology called indigenism. She evaluates its meaning through the relations of Brazilian Indians with religious and lay institutions, non-governmental organizations, official agencies such as the National Indian Foundation as well as the very discipline of anthropology. Ramos not only examines the imagery created by Brazilians of European descent--members of the Catholic church, government officials, the army and the state agency for Indian affairs--she also scrutinizes Indians' own self portrayals used in defending their ethnic rights against the Brazilian state. Ramos' thoughtful and complete analysis of the relation between indigenous people of Brazil and the state will be of great interest to lawmakers and political theorists, environmental and civil rights activists, developmental specialists and policymakers, and those concerned with human rights in Latin America.

The Xavante in Transition

The Xavante in Transition
Author: Carlos E. A. Coimbra
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2004-03-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780472030033

DIVIlluminates the experience of a small-scale culture with large-scale change /div

Capitalism and Environmental Collapse

Capitalism and Environmental Collapse
Author: Luiz Marques
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 463
Release: 2020-08-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030475271

This book intends to be an alert to the fact that the curve measuring environmental costs against the economic benefits of capitalism has irreversibly entered into a negative phase. The prospect of an environmental collapse has been evidenced by the sciences and the humanities since the 1960s. Today, it imposes its urgency. This collapse differs from past civilizations in that it is neither local nor just civilizational. It is global and occurs at the broadest level of the biosphere, accelerated by the convergence of different socio-environmental crises, such as: Earth energy imbalance, climate change and global warming Sea-level rise Decrease and degradation of forests Collapse of terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity Floods, droughts, wildfires, and extreme weather events Degradation of soils and water resources Increase in pollution caused by fossil fuels and coal Increase in waste production and industrial intoxication The book is divided in two parts. In the first part it presents a comprehensive review of scientific data to show the already visible effects of each of the different environmental crises and its consequences to human life on Earth. In the second part, Luiz Marques critically discusses what he calls the three concentric illusions that prevent us from realizing the gravity of the current socio-environmental crises: the illusion of a sustainable capitalism, the illusion that economic growth is still capable of providing more well-being and the anthropocentric illusion. Finally, Marques argues that "fitting" back into the biosphere will only be possible if we dismantle the expansive socioeconomic gear that has shaped our societies since the 16th century by moving from a Social Contract to a Natural Contract, which takes into account the whole biosphere. According to him, the future society will be post-capitalist or it will not be a complex society, and even perhaps, we must fear, no society at all. “This book is backed up with the latest and best science and has made the complexities understandable for the average reader, all in a context of hope for the future.” - William J. Ripple, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Ecology, Director of the Alliance of World Scientists, Oregon State University

Audible Geographies in Latin America

Audible Geographies in Latin America
Author: Dylon Lamar Robbins
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2019-09-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 303010558X

Audible Geographies in Latin America examines the audibility of place as a racialized phenomenon. It argues that place is not just a geographical or political notion, but also a sensorial one, shaped by the specific profile of the senses engaged through different media. Through a series of cases, the book examines racialized listening criteria and practices in the formation of ideas about place at exemplary moments between the 1890s and the 1960s. Through a discussion of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s last concerts in Rio de Janeiro, and a contemporary sound installation involving telegraphs by Otávio Schipper and Sérgio Krakowski, Chapter 1 proposes a link between a sensorial economy and a political economy for which the racialized and commodified body serves as an essential feature of its operation. Chapter 2 analyzes resonance as a racialized concept through an examination of phonograph demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro and research on dancing manias and hypnosis in Salvador da Bahia in the 1890s. Chapter 3 studies voice and speech as racialized movements, informed by criminology and the proscriptive norms defining “white” Spanish in Cuba. Chapter 4 unpacks conflicting listening criteria for an optics of blackness in “national” sounds, developed according to a gendered set of premises that moved freely between diaspora and empire, national territory and the fraught politics of recorded versus performed music in the early 1930s. Chapter 5, in the context of Cuban Revolutionary cinema of the 1960s, explores the different facets of noise—both as a racialized and socially relevant sense of sound and as a feature and consequence of different reproduction and transmission technologies. Overall, the book argues that these and related instances reveal how sound and listening have played more prominent roles than previously acknowledged in place-making in the specific multi-ethnic, colonial contexts characterized by diasporic populations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The African Roots of Marijuana

The African Roots of Marijuana
Author: Chris S. Duvall
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2019-05-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1478004533

After arriving from South Asia approximately a thousand years ago, cannabis quickly spread throughout the African continent. European accounts of cannabis in Africa—often fictionalized and reliant upon racial stereotypes—shaped widespread myths about the plant and were used to depict the continent as a cultural backwater and Africans as predisposed to drug use. These myths continue to influence contemporary thinking about cannabis. In The African Roots of Marijuana, Chris S. Duvall corrects common misconceptions while providing an authoritative history of cannabis as it flowed into, throughout, and out of Africa. Duvall shows how preexisting smoking cultures in Africa transformed the plant into a fast-acting and easily dosed drug and how it later became linked with global capitalism and the slave trade. People often used cannabis to cope with oppressive working conditions under colonialism, as a recreational drug, and in religious and political movements. This expansive look at Africa's importance to the development of human knowledge about marijuana will challenge everything readers thought they knew about one of the world's most ubiquitous plants.

Angola Em Movimento

Angola Em Movimento
Author: Beatrix Heintze
Publisher: Verlag Otto Lembeck
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2008
Genre: Aeronautics, Commercial
ISBN: 3874765539

"This book aims to provide a better understanding of the significance and dynamics of communication and transport routes in Angola and its hinterland."--Back cover.

Books in Brazil

Books in Brazil
Author: Laurence Hallewell
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 550
Release: 1982
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780810815919

No descriptive material is available for this title.

A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese

A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
Author: Mark Davies
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 950
Release: 2007-11-29
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 113411091X

An invaluable tool for learners of Portuguese, this Frequency Dictionary provides a list of the 5000 most commonly used words in the language. Based on a twenty-million-word collection of Portuguese (taken from both Portuguese and Brazilian sources), which includes both written and spoken material, this dictionary provides detailed information for each of the 5000 entries, including the English equivalent, a sample sentence, and an indication of register and dialect variation. Users can access the top 5000 words either through the main frequency listing or through an alphabetical index. Throughout the frequency listing there are also thrity thematically-organized ‘boxed’ lists of the top words from a variety of key topics such as sports, weather, clothing and relations. An engaging and highly useful resource, A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese will enable students of all levels to get the most out of their study of Portuguese vocabulary. Former CD content is now available to access at www.routledge.com/9780415419970 as support material. Designed for use by corpus and computational linguists it provides the full text in a format that researchers can process and turn into suitable lists for their own research work.