Power, Ideology, and Production Rituals in Amazonian Indigenous Societies

Authors

  • Fernando Santos Granero Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute de Panamá

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52980/revistaamazonaperuana.vi19.150

Keywords:

shamanic social configurations, political power, ritual knowledge

Abstract

This article is a comparative study that seeks to demonstrate that, in shamanic social configurations in the Amazon, the political sphere is not always separate from the economic sphere. It suggests that in societies where shamans are simultaneously political leaders, their power is economic in nature. Their ritual knowledge is considered necessary for reproductive processes. When this is not the case, the political role is performed by priests or warrior chiefs who, in some way, are connected to the symbolic aspects of social and natural reproductive processes.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Århem, K. 1981. Makuna social organization: a study in descent, alliance and the formation of corporate groups in the northwestern Amazon (Upps. Stud.cult. Anthrop. 4) Estocolmo: Libertryck.

Baechler, J. 1980. "Pouvoir et idéologie". En: Ideologie et politique (eds) M. Cranston & P. Mair. European Univ. Institute.

Clastres, P. 1974. La société contre l'état. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.

Dumont, J.P. 1978. The headman and I: ambiguity and ambivalence in the fielworking experience. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.

Foucault, M. 1979. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Godelier, M. 1978. "La part idéelle du réel: essai sur l'ideologique" En Homme 18, 3-4.

Harner, M.J. 1973. The Jivaro: people of the sacred waterfalls. New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday.

Henley, P. 1982. The Panare: tradition and change in the Amazonian frontier. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

Hocart, A.M. 1970 (1936). Kings and councillors: an essay in the comparative anatomy of human society. Chicago: Univ. Press

Hugh-Jones, A. 1979. The palm and the Pleiades: initiation and cosmology in northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Univ. Press.

Lévi-Strauss, C. 1963. Totemism. Boston: Beacon Press

-1967 (1944). "The social and psychological aspects of chief-tainship in a primitive tribe: the Nambikuara of northwestern Mato Grosso". En: Comparative political systems (eds) R.E. Cohen & J. Middleton. New York: Natural History Press.

Maybury-Lewis, D. 1974. Akwẽ-Shavante society. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Overing (Kaplan), J. 1974. "I saw the sound of the waterfall: shamanism, gods and leadership in Piaroa society". Ponencia presentada en el simposio sobre 'Political leadership in Lowland South America' en el encuentro anual de la American Anthropological Association.

-1975. The Piaroa: a people of the Orinoco basin. Oxford: Clarendon.

-1982. "The paths of the sacred words: shamanism and the domestication of the asocial in Piaroa society". Ponencia presentada ante el 44 Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Manchester.

-1985. "There is no end of evil: the guilty innocents and their fallible god". En The Anthropology of evil (ed) D. Parkin Oxford: Blackwell.

-& M.R. Kaplan in press. "Los Wotuha". En: Los Aborígenes de Venezuela (vol 3). Caracas: Fundación La Salle de Ciencias Naturales.

Rivière, P. 1984. Individual and society in Guiana. Cambridge: Univ. Press.

Santos Granero, F. 1982. "Guardians of the sacred lore: shamans, priests and the question of morality". Ponencia presentada ante el 44 Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Manchester.

-1987. The power of love: the moral use of knowledge amongst the Amuesha of Central Peru. Tesis doctoral. London School of Economics and Political Science.

Sheridan, A. 1980. Michel Foucault: the will to truth. London: Tavistock.

Smith, R.C. 1977. Deliverance from chaos for a song: a social and religious interpretation of the ritual performance of Amuesha music. Tesis doctoral. Cornell University.

Steward, J. H. (ed) 1963. The tropical forest tribes (Handbook of South American Indians Vol. 3). New York: Cooper Square.

Downloads

Published

1990-06-14

Issue

Section

THEME

How to Cite

Power, Ideology, and Production Rituals in Amazonian Indigenous Societies. (1990). Peruvian Amazon, 19, 27-61. https://doi.org/10.52980/revistaamazonaperuana.vi19.150

Similar Articles

1-10 of 68

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.

Most read articles by the same author(s)