Neil L. Whitehead

Violent Democracies in Latin America

Despite recent political movements to establish democratic rule in Latin American countries, much of the region still suffers from pervasive violence. From vigilantism, to human rights violations, to police corruption, violence persists. It is perpetrated by state-sanctioned armies, guerillas, gangs, drug traffickers, and local community groups seeking self-protection. The everyday presence of violence contrasts starkly with governmental efforts to extend civil, political, and legal rights to all citizens, and it is invoked as evidence of the failure of Latin American countries to achieve true democracy. The contributors to this collection take the more nuanced view that violence is not a social aberration or the result of institutional failure; instead, it is intimately linked to the institutions and policies of economic liberalization and democratization. The contributors—anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians—explore how individuals and institutions in Latin American democracies, from the rural regions of Colombia and the Dominican Republic to the urban centers of Brazil and Mexico, use violence to impose and contest notions of order, rights, citizenship, and justice. They describe the lived realities of citizens and reveal the historical foundations of the violence that Latin America suffers today. One contributor examines the tightly woven relationship between violent individuals and state officials in Colombia, while another contextualizes violence in Rio de Janeiro within the transnational political economy of drug trafficking. By advancing the discussion of democratic Latin American regimes beyond the usual binary of success and failure, this collection suggests more sophisticated ways of understanding the challenges posed by violence, and of developing new frameworks for guaranteeing human rights in Latin America. Contributors : Enrique Desmond Arias, Javier Auyero, Lilian Bobea, Diane E. Davis, Robert Gay, Daniel M. Goldstein, Mary Roldan, Todd Landman, Ruth Stanley, Maria Clemencia Ramirez

In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia

Introduction: Dark Shamanism / Neil L. Whitehead and Robin Wright 1 The Order of Dark Shamans among the Warao / Johannes Wilbert 21 Dark Shamans and the Shamanic State: Sorcery and Witchcraft as Political Process in Guyana and the Venezuelan Amazon / Silvia Vidal and Neil L. Whitehead 51 The Wicked and the Wise Men: Witches and Prophets in the History of the Northwest Amazon / Robin Wright 82 Sorcery Beliefs, Transmissions of Shamanic Knowledge, and Therapeutic Practice among the Desana of the Upper Rio Negro Region, Brazil / Dominique Buchillet 109 The Glorious Tyranny of Silence and the Resonance of Shamanic Breath / George Mentore 132 A Blend of Blood and Tobacco: Shamans and Jaguars among the Parakana of Eastern Amazonia / Carlos Fausto 157 The Wars Within: Xinguano Witchcraft and Balance of Power / Michael Heckenberger 179 Siblings and Sorcerers: The Paradox of Kinship among the Kulina / Donald Pollock 202 Being Alone amid Others: Sorcery and Morality among the Arara, Carib, Brazil / Marnio Teixeira-Pinto 215 Sorcery and Shamanism in Cashinahua Discourse and Praxis, Purus River, Brazil / Elsje Lagrou 244 The Enemy Within: Child Sorcery, Revolution, and the Evils of Modernization in Eastern Peru / Fernando Santos-Granero 272 Commentary / E. Jean Langdon 306 Afterword: Substances, Powers, Cosmos, and History / Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart 314 Contributors 321 Index 324

Hans Staden and the Cultural Politics of Cannibalism

Hans Staden’s Warhaftige historia und beschreibung eyner landtschafft der wilden, nacketen, grimmigen menschfresser leuthen in der Newenwelt America gelege is a fundamental text in the history of the discovery of Brazil.1 In fact, it is the earliest account we have of the Tupi Indians from an eyewitness who was captive among them for over nine months, and a key reference in the resurgent debate on cannibalism and its discourses—a debate that partly has its origins in the speculations of Michel de Montaigne, who also conversed with Tupi people who were brought as living exhibits to France. Despite this intellectual genealogy, there has not been an English-language edition since 1929, and no translation into modern German since 1942. Neither has there been a critical introduction that brings ethnographic experience of ritual anthropophagy to the task of interpretation, using other anthropological research on anthropophagic discourse, or literary criticism of the cannibal trope. I am currently collaborating with Michael Harbsmeier (University of Roskilde, Denmark) to make good these deficiencies, through the production of a new critical edition of Staden’s 1557 work that will feature a new translation from the sixteenthcentury German, close annotation of the text itself and discussion of the circumstances of its production, its ethnological significance, and subsequent intellectual importance, with particular emphasis on current debate concerning cannibalism. The purpose of this paper is to outline an approach to some of these critical questions, especially the issue of the cultural politics of cannibalism. As a cultural category, cannibalism has always incorporated ethnological judgments of others, albeit usually negative in character, and so regardless of how, when,

In Darkness and Secrecy

In Darkness and Secrecy brings together ethnographic examinations of Amazonian assault sorcery, witchcraft, and injurious magic, or “dark shamanism.” Anthropological reflections on South American shamanism have tended to emphasize shamans’ healing powers and positive influence. This collection challenges that assumption by showing that dark shamans are, in many Amazonian cultures, quite different from shamanic healers and prophets. Assault sorcery, in particular, involves violence resulting in physical harm or even death. While highlighting the distinctiveness of such practices, In Darkness and Secrecy reveals them as no less relevant to the continuation of culture and society than curing and prophecy. The contributors suggest that the persistence of dark shamanism can be understood as a form of engagement with modernity. These essays, by leading anthropologists of South American shamanism, consider assault sorcery as it is practiced in parts of Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, and Peru. They analyze the social and political dynamics of witchcraft and sorcery and their relation to cosmology, mythology, ritual, and other forms of symbolic violence and aggression in each society studied. They also discuss the relations of witchcraft and sorcery to interethnic contact and the ways that shamanic power may be co-opted by the state. In Darkness and Secrecy includes reflections on the ethical and practical implications of ethnographic investigation of violent cultural practices. Contributors. Dominique Buchillet, Carlos Fausto, Michael Heckenberger, Elsje Lagrou, E. Jean Langdon, George Mentore, Donald Pollock, Fernando Santos-Granero, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern, Marnio Teixeira-Pinto, Silvia Vidal, Neil L. Whitehead, Johannes Wilbert, Robin Wright

Amazonian archaeology; searching for paradise? A review of recent literature and fieldwork

Recent research in Amazonia has diverged from the orthodoxy of the last 40 years and provoked a wide-ranging debate over the nature of human ecology and adaptation in this vast region. New evidence stresses both the abundance of the Amazonian environment and the complexity of long-term human adaptation. New frameworks modeling these adaptive processes and reconstructing sociocultural complexity involve the use of both historical and ethnographic data.

POST-HUMAN ANTHROPOLOGY

This article discusses recent performative ethnographic work in the Goth/Industrial music scene as the band “Blood Jewel”—http://www.myspace.com/bloodjewelband—and how through the medium of cyber space this has led to different kinds of engagements with ethnographic “subjects.” This experience is the context for theorizing the basis and forward trajectory of ethnographic fieldwork, especially with regard to topics such as the study of sexuality and violence which have proved resistant to standard ethnographic strategies. The cultural meanings of sexual and violent representation, challenges to normative sexualities, and the emergence of digital subjectivities and ontologies are then examined in relation to this ethnographic approach. It is concluded that an anthropology still stuck in the problematic of the European Enlightenment must urgently consider the disappearance of its traditional “subjects” as meaningful ethnographic categories of research and work to contribute to the emergence of a post-human anthropology in which the post-Enlightenment “subject” is re-configured as a participant observer in research.

Violence & the cultural order

Daedalus Winter 2007 Almost all theoretical and research approaches to violence begin with the assumption that, at its core, violence represents the breakdown of meaning, the advent of the irrational, and the commission of physical harm. Certainly the violence of language, representation, and the structures of everyday life are acknowledged as relevant examples of harm, but these are peripheral phenomena and dependent on the existence of bodily damage and vicious attack as a substrate to these more ethereal examples of violence. A similar ambiguity exists with regard to the way in which natural processes or zoological behaviors exhibit damage of a fleshy kind, but here the supposed reign of instinct and survival invites not only repugnance but also an absence of ethical evaluation. This informal cartography of the idea of violence in modern Western thinking indicates that orthodox solutions or responses to the problem of violence can only envisage its suppression, as a behavior inappropriate or misjudged to its ends. But what if violence is considered ennobling, redeeming, and necessary to the continuance of life itself? In other words, the legitimacy of violent acts is part of how they are constituted in the minds of observers, victims, and the perpetrators of such acts; and matters of legitimacy are not at all separate from the way in which given acts and behaviors are themselves considered violent in the 1⁄2rst place. Consonant with the recognition that violence is not a natural fact but a moral one, current anthropological thinking has moved steadily away from the notion that it is a given category of human behavior, easily identi1⁄2ed through its physical consequences and understood as emerging from the inadequacies of individual moral or social political systems of restraint, or from underlying genetic proclivities. In the light of not only encountering violence more frequently as part of ethnographic 1⁄2eldwork, but also through more properly understanding the historical importance of colonialism and neocolonialism in establishing certain codes of violent practice, anthropology has now moved toward ideas that Neil L. Whitehead

Introduction: Dark Shamanism

Shamanism is a burgeoning obsession for the urban middle classes around the globe. Its presentation in popular books, tv specials, and on the Internet is dominated by the presumed psychic and physical benefits that shamanic techniques can bring. This heightened interest has required a persistent purification of the ritual practices of those who inspire the feverish quest for personal meaning and fulfillment. Ironically, as Fausto points out in his essay in this volume, given the self-improvement motivations that have brought so many into a popular understanding of shamanism, twodefining aspects of shamanism inAmazonia—blood (i.e., violence) and tobacco—have simply been erased from such representations (see also Lagrou, this volume). Such erasure is not only a vain self-deception but, more important, it is a recapitulation of colonial ways of knowing through both thedenial of radical cultural difference and the refusal to think through its consequences. This volume is intended to counteract that temptation. All of the authors whose works are presented herein are keenly aware of the way in which salacious and prurient imagery of native peoples has serviced the purposes of conquest and colonization over the past five hundred years. Inmissionarywritings, for example, ideas about ‘‘native sorcery’’ and the collusion of shamans with ‘‘satanic’’ forces meant that such individuals were ferociously denounced and their ritual equipment and performances were banned from the settlement of the converts. In this context no distinction was made between the forms and purposes of ritual practice: curers as well as killers were equally persecuted. Thus, the rehabilitation of shamanism as a valid spiritual attitude and a culturally important institution that has taken place over the past twenty years through the enthusiastic, if ill-

Absent-Minded Imperialism: Britain and the Expansion of Empire in Nineteenth-Century Brazil.

First stages 1829-1837 the first mission at Pirara 1838 retreat to Urwa 1839 retreat to Waraputa 1840-41 the occupation of Pirara 1842 the withdrawal from Pirara 1842 the closing scenes 1842-43 the aftermath afterthoughts.

The Haberleins and the Political Culture of Scholarship

It is a necessary scholarly duty to inform the readers of HAHR of the inaccurate nature of the Häberlein’s misdirected, and rather petulant, “critique” of my discussion in “Hans Staden and the Cultural Politics of Cannibalism,” published in HAHR 80 (2000), not least since the political culture of their scholarship is clearly quite parochial. They may well be familiar with “Germanlanguage literature on European perceptions of the New World,” but apparently not with the extensive anthropological, literary, or historical materials on Brazil, the Tupi, or even Hans Staden. Thus it is notable that they do not wish to actually engage with the main discussion in the article on the cultural politics of cannibalism. Instead, having no actual substantive argument to make themselves, they feel the need to publicize the work of a German scholar, Annerose Menninger, not because it offers new, original, or compelling information but rather only because I happen not to mention it. Thus the only argument they actually do make, that I have ignored such scholarship, is quite simply misplaced since it was never the purpose of this article to discuss all the secondary literature. After all, Brazilian scholars—had the political culture of their scholarship been as unsophisticated as that of the Häberleins—would have no less reason to show pique at having been “overlooked” in this avowedly introductory article. As is made perfectly clear, the point of the article is to introduce some of this secondary literature and some of the issues that will preoccupy the projected edition that I am preparing with Michael Harbsmeier. The original paper was written for a symposium of the American Historical Association on Brazil (hence the citation of Fouquet’s 1942 São Paulo edition of Staden!), and I deliberately chose to exclusively discuss the French-language sources both to complement the contribution of Tom Conley on Thevet, which was also published in HAHR’s special issue on Brazil, and because this work has had a huge influence within anthropology. For these reasons, and since both symposium papers and journal articles can only address so much, I quite openly and deliberately limited discussion of many matters and chose to