A Walk to the River in Amazonia

Carla Stang received her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney and was awarded the Frank Bell Memorial Prize for Anthropology for her studies there. In 2005, she earned her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Since then she held the position of Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, and is now an Associate Researcher at the University of Sydney. Thus far most of her ethnographic fieldwork has been in the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon.

List of Figures

List of Plates

Preface

Acknowledgements

Pronouncing Mehinaku Words

Glossary



Introduction

I. The Question

II. Writing about Lived Experience

III. Writing about Ordinary Reality: from My Walk, through Her World, to Her Walk

IV. Some Methodological Issues to Do with My Approach

V. Contributions and Limitations of This Book

VI. Some Background



Chapter 1. My Walk



Chapter 2. Configurations in Mehinaku Experience

I. Substance

II. Who Are the Apapanye?: the Substantiality of Spirits

III. The Deception of Substance: All about ‘Skins’

IV. Eternal Archetypes and the Generation of Skins

V. The Lake of Butterflies: an Amazonian Metaphysics

VI. Mirroring and Parallel Configurations of Different Soul-worlds



Chapter 3. Dynamic Aspects in Mehinaku Experience

I. The Constant Movement of Mehinaku Existence

II. ‘Star Birds’: Movement between Different Dimensions of Reality

III. The Impetus of Movement: the Dynamic of Desire

IV. The Boundaries for the Flow of Desire: Concentric Circles and Paths

V. The Ever Present Threat of the Collapse of Form: Dangerous Desire Let Loose

VI. Holding up the Form of the Worlds: Maintaining Good Relationships (the ‘Uwekehë Complex’) and Integrity of Person (the Issue of Yerekyuki)

VII. The Dynamic of Daring: to Create, Maintain and Improve Form, One Must Risk Form

VIII. The Awëshëpai Ideal: a Life of Anxious Joy, in Tension between Integrity and Risk



Chapter 4. Experience of Mehinaku Experience

I. The Concept of a Concept: Mehinaku ‘Thingness’ and the Blending of Entities

II. How Things Are Associated: at the Most Basic Level; in a ‘Story Logic’; in a Certain Understanding of Ritual

III. ‘Awitsiri’: the Principle of ‘Care/Grace’; Living with the Right Consciousness in a World Made Manifest by Consciousness



Chapter 5. Experience of the Mehinaku Social World

I. In the House of the Jaguar: Shamans and Sorcerers in Mehinaku Experience

II. Paths through the Akãi Groves: Some Ideas about Mehinaku Experiences of Gender

III. The Owl and the Toucan: General Tendencies of Mehinaku Sociality



Chapter 6. Some Conclusions



Chapter 7. Her Walk



Cross References from the Description to Chapters 2–5

Bibliography

Index