Bartholomew Dean

The Forest Within: The World-View of the Tukano Amazonian Indians.

Gives a detailed portrait of how an aboriginal tribe of the remote Amazonian region understands the cosmic dimensions of its partnership with the rainforest.

THE AMAZONIAN PEOPLES' RESOURCES INITIATIVE: Promoting Reproductive Rights and Community Development in the Peruvian Amazon

[R]eproductive rights ... rest on the recognition of the basic right of couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health . .. [taking] into account the needs of their living and future children and their responsibilities towards the community. The promotion of the responsible exercise of these rights for all people should be the fundamental basis for ... community-supported policies and programmes in the area of reproductive health.... Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 1994, Paragraph 7.3

Narratives, resilience and violence in Peruvian Amazonia: the Huallaga Valley, 1980-2015

Taking as its geographical frame of reference the war-torn Huallaga Valley of the Peruvian Amazon - an epicenter for leftist rebels Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA), and Sendero Luminoso (SL) and a booming shadow economy based on the extraction and circulation of cocaine, oil and ne timbers--my current research is dedicated to broaden- ing the postcolonial theoretical frameworks for contemporary understandings of indigenous narratives and legal pluralism in the wake of con ict. I provide novel insight into the complex relationships with the affective dispositions of those caught up in civil war, and post-con ict violence. In this respect, my research illuminates recent efforts at decolonizing hegemonic forms of Occidental jurisprudence, while generating novel ways to destabilize anthropological iterations of Amazonia, and the regnant theoretical dominance of perspectivism that silences indigenous voice, political economy and history. Violent events trigger distinctive narrative modes, allowing people to re-cast chaotic experiences into causal stories in order to make them sensible, render them safe, or in some cases, imprint memories that traumatize, and in so doing restrain human well-being. By map- ping the role narratives play in the affective dispositions of those individuals drawn into the low-intensity warfare in Perus Huallaga Valley (1980-present), my work explores the dual impulses of engagement and disruptive interruptions underwriting the indeterminacy and emo- tional volatility associated with violent encounters characterizing the postcolonial expansions of the neoliberal Peruvian state apparatuses. Emphasizing emotional dispositions through study of the speech acts of the narratives elucidates how the mobilization of violence blurs and com- plicates the formal lines ostensibly dividing state and non-state actors, regulates temporality, instantiates law, and underscores the mutually constitutive nature of postcolonial violence. During the height of the bloodshed, communal well being suffered, malnutrition in- tensi ed, and ultimately the sense of caring and communitas became restricted. Thick narrative descriptions I have collected from the war-ravaged Huallaga Valley transmit the seemingly in- effable tragedies deeply embodied in the lives of those who suffered. Some ed to illicit forest encampments located deep in the jungle, or to the culturally inhospitable environs of coastal cities like Trujillo, or Lima. Flight and insecurity punctuate the narrative accounts of many, such as Eduardo, a 57-year-old coca-grower (cocalero) caught up in the throes of the conflict. Language: en

Identity and Indigenous Education in Peruvian Amazonia

Throughout Peruvian Amazonia, state-backed educational institutions and pedagogical strategies have seldom emphasized the retention of indigenous knowledge. This in turn has historically undermined the cultural survival of the region’s culturally diverse indigenous peoples. Indeed, the story of formal “modern” indigenous education in the Peruvian Amazon is intimately related to state-driven introductions of Occidental concepts of “progressive” development, eventually anchored to incorporation into global markets. While it is clear that prospects for indigenous peoples’ cultural survival may be analyzed in general sweeping terms, it is also evident that a close analysis of each local or regional case reveals significant differences in approaches to contextualizing inter-cultural education and indigenous identity politics. Taking my cue from Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition, which provides a basis for understanding and critiquing neo-liberal commoditization of education, I explore some of these contradictions as they find expression “on the ground” among indigenous peoples from Alto Amazonas, (Loreto, Peru). The chapter concludes by asserting that the intercultural educational environment in Peru must be formulated to include systems of Indigenous Knowledge that synergize both the school and the community’s well-being.

Book Reviews : Nathan Wachtel Gods and Vampires: Return to Chipaya, trans. Carol Volk. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, 153pp. Maps. Glossary. Index. ISBN: 0-22686764-1

’commonplaces’, compendia of wise sayings, citations, sentences and examples. Both, Chartier suggests ’imply a readership that cuts up, fragments, decontextualizes, and invests an absolute authority in the literal meaning of the written word’ (p. 95). Finally, Chartier’s account of the uses of books at the ’couches’, the putting-to-bed ceremony of the Sun King, Louis XIV, gives a whole new meaning to the now common concept of the bed-time story.