"Indian Illness": The pathogenic principle of alterity and the means of transformation in an Amazonian cosmology

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5380/cam.v7i1.5451

Keywords:

transformações cosmológias na Amazônia, índios Wauja, doença, noções de animalidade e humanidade, cosmological transformations in Amazonia, Wauja Indians, illness, notions of animality and humanity

Abstract

During my fieldwork among the Wauja Indians of the Upper Xingu river I collected several narratives of local people who had suffered animal transformations when severely ill. Most of them returned to their human condition after the interventions of highly specialized shamans and ritual singers and dancers. This article describes the series of transformations between humans and non-humans in the Wauja cosmology and discusses how the attributes of humanity, animality and monstruosity are distributed and set in relation.

Author Biography

Aristóteles Barcelos Neto, Universidade de São Paul

doutor em Antropologia Social pela Universidade de São Paulo e pesquisador de pós-doutorado no Departamento de Antropologia da mesma instituição

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Published

2006-07-14

How to Cite

Barcelos Neto, A. (2006). "Indian Illness": The pathogenic principle of alterity and the means of transformation in an Amazonian cosmology. Campos - Revista De Antropologia, 7(1), 9–34. https://doi.org/10.5380/cam.v7i1.5451

Issue

Vol. 7 (2006)

Section

Artigos

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