Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813030609 ISBN 13: 9780813030609

Publisher: University Press of Florida, 2007

Synopsis

These groundbreaking essays by internationally renowned anthropologists advance a simple argument--that native Amazonian societies are highly dynamic. Change and transformation define the indigenous history of the Amazon from before European conquest to the present.

 

Based on recent ethnographic fieldwork and firsthand analysis of indigenous history, this collection examines the concepts of time and change as they played out in areas ranging from religion, cosmology, and mortuary practices to attitudes toward ethnic difference and the treatment of animals. Without imposing traditionally Western notions of what "time" and "change" mean, the collection looks at how native Amazonians experienced forms of cultural memory and at how their narratives of the past helped construct their sense of the present and, inevitably, their own identity.

 

The volume offers some of the most interesting and nuanced discussions to date on Amazonian conceptualizations of temporality and change .

About this title

About the Author

Carlos Fausto, associate professor of anthropology at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Museu Nacional, is the author of Os Índios Antes do Brasil and the award-winning Inimigos Fiéis. Michael Heckenberger, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, is the author of The Ecology of Power and coeditor of Povos Indígenas do Alto Xingu.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Florida
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813030609
• ISBN 13: 9780813030609
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Fausto Carlos, Heckenberger Michael