The Imbalance of Power: Leadership, Masculinity and Wealth in the Amazon - Hardcover

Brightman, Marc

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1785333097 ISBN 13: 9781785333095

Publisher: Berghahn Books, 2016

Synopsis

Amerindian societies have an iconic status in classical political thought. For Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau, the native American ‘state of nature’ operates as a foil for the European polity. Challenging this tradition, The Imbalance of Power demonstrates ethnographically that the Carib speaking indigenous societies of the Guiana region of Amazonia do not fit conventional characterizations of ‘simple’ political units with ‘egalitarian’ political ideologies and ‘harmonious’ relationships with nature. Marc Brightman builds a persuasive and original theory of Amerindian politics: far from balanced and egalitarian, Carib societies are rife with tension and difference; but this imbalance conditions social dynamism and a distinctive mode of cohesion. The Imbalance of Power is based on the author’s fieldwork in partnership with Vanessa Grotti, who is working on a companion volume entitled Living with the Enemy: First Contacts and the Making of Christian Bodies in Amazonia.

About this title

About the Author:

Marc Brightman is Lecturer in Social and Environmental Sustainability at University College London. He has published on a variety of topics including ownership, indigenous movements, animism and forest governance.

Review:

“This book makes a crucial contribution to Amazonian anthropology, bringing to the forefront a topic that has remained under-thematized in the last decades.” · Carlos Fausto, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

About this edition

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1785333097
• ISBN 13: 9781785333095
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 206