From the Enemy's Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

ISBN 10: 0226858022 / ISBN 13: 9780226858029

Published by University Of Chicago Press, 1992

About this Item

1992. 1st Edition. Paperback. Num Pages: 428 pages, 4 line drawings, 6 maps, 24 photos, 5 tables. BIC Classification: 1KLC; 1KLS; HRK; HRQ; JHM. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly; (UU) Undergraduate. Dimension: 235 x 158 x 26. Weight in Grams: 652. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780226858029

Bibliographic Details

• Title: From the Enemy's Point of View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226858022
• ISBN 13: 9780226858029
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The Araweté are one of the few Amazonian peoples who have maintained their cultural integrity in the face of the destructive forces of European imperialism. In this landmark study, anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro explains this phenomenon in terms of Araweté social cosmology and ritual order. His analysis of the social and religious life of the Araweté—a Tupi-Guarani people of Eastern Amazonia—focuses on their concepts of personhood, death, and divinity.

Building upon ethnographic description and interpretation, Viveiros de Castro addresses the central aspect of the Arawete's concept of divinity—consumption—showing how its cannibalistic expression differs radically from traditional representations of other Amazonian societies. He situates the Araweté in contemporary anthropology as a people whose vision of the world is complex, tragic, and dynamic, and whose society commands our attention for its extraordinary openness to exteriority and transformation. For the Araweté the person is always in transition, an outlook expressed in the mythology of their gods, whose cannibalistic ways they imitate. From the Enemy's Point of View argues that current concepts of society as a discrete, bounded entity which maintains a difference between "interior" and "exterior" are wholly inappropriate in this and in many other Amazonian societies.
 

About the Authors

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro teaches anthropology at the Museu Nacional of Rio de Janeiro. Flávio Gordon and Francisco Araújo are PhD students at the Museu Nacional of Rio de Janeiro.

Catherine V. Howard is an anthropology translator from French, Portuguese, and Spanish into English. She conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Waiwai in the Amazon and earned her PhD from the University of Chicago.