Society Culture and Environmental Adaptability in Central and South America

This paper constitutes an in-depth and comparative review of three recent anthropological studies of environmental adaptability in Central and South America. In an attempt to overcome the dualism of former ecological anthropology, Arizpe, Paz and Velßzquez (1996), Wilbert (1998), and Santos-Graneros and Barclay (1998) bring nature and society into a common framework aimed at understanding human adaptation, as well as the changing relations of human societies to natural environments. The paper discusses the ideas and arguments contained in these three books by focusing on the cultural dimensions of human adaptation to the environment. It then examines the local and global patterns of resource management. The paper concludes with a few remarks on how to link anthropological research on indigenous survival in the context of deforestation and modernization with policy recommendations.

Las relaciones interétnicas entre los Warao de la frontera noroccidental del Delta del Orinoco durate la época colonial

This paper is a reconstruction and analysis of the interethnic relationships articulated around the Northwestern Warao Orinoco Delta frontier during the colonial times. The first part of the paper shows colonial expansion process over the Northeastern Venezuela and over the Orinoco Delta. The second part exposes frontier areas configuration, through the missionary political action. At the third part, the conquest strategies and the ways of Warao responses along the XVIII century are reconstructed. Finally, the discussion about the political articulation between the Warao and their Paria, Kari’ña and Chaima neighbors, in the context of the colonial frontiers tensions and contradictions, is opened

La construcción discursiva de la otredad del "indio" en Ciudad Guayana : estudio de creencias y sentido común sobre los Warao indigentes urbanos

Desde hace cuatro años, en los semáforos de Puerto Ordaz, se produce un fenómeno inédito en esta ciudad: mujeres cargando sus bebés, ancianas, niños y niñas Warao, se ubican allí para pedir limosna a los conductores que paran sus vehículos, esperando su turno de paso. En estos "no lugares" (Augé 1993), se elabora una visibilidad negativa del "indio", que antes no tenía. Este estudio propone conocer, interpretar y comparar creencias, configuraciones ideológicas y mitológicas del sentido común de los habitantes de Ciudad Guayana sobre los indígenas que mendigan en los semáforos y viven hacinados, detrás del mercadito de Puerto Ordaz. Algunos supuestos teóricos asumidos: a) territorio, lugares, ciudad, no son datos a-priori independientes de quien los percibe-piensa, sino construcciones culturales; b) la identidad subjetiva y trans-subjetiva es un proceso-producto discursivo, complejo, contradictorio, de Otredad y Nostredad; c) el discurso es una práctica psicosocial fundacional: funda la realidad de la cual habla; d) el sentido común es una dimensión transdiscursiva: permite a la gente generar "verdades" y conocimientos dándole sentido a la vida. Triangulación metodológica: grupos focales; entrevistas y análisis de artículos; empleando análisis del discurso aplicado a: "discurso vivo" (de la gente), "discurso oficial" (Alcaldía-Gobernación) y "discurso público" (prensa local).Since 2002, something unusual has been happening at the traffic lights in Puerto Ordaz: young Warao children and Warao women - whether older women or those cradling babies in their arms - are begging money from drivers. These "non-places" (Augé, 1993), are the social scene where "Indians" are being constructed in a negative image they have never had before. The main goal of this study is to look into urban "common sense" to identify and interpret what it says about Warao Indians. Among our theoretical principles are the following: a), territory, place and city are not realities independent of the perceiver, but cultural constructions; b) common sense is both a trans-discursive dimension and and a process-product of social hermeneutics, which allows people to elaborate "truths" that make sense of reality; c) territory and places are cultural, historical-political constructions, which allow people to construct social identifications; d) subjective and trans-subjective identity is a complex, contradictory discursive process-product construction of Otherness and Ourness. Our methodological approach is exploratory-descriptive and interpretative, through a triangulation among focus-groups, interviews and non-participant observation. The basic technique used was discourse analysis, applied to three discourse categories: "living discourse" (from members of the public), "official discourse" (from local government) and "public discourse" (in local newspapers)

Subjective and Objective Relative Clauses in Warao

Warao is a basically O-initial, solidly V-final language, which does not case-mark nominal constituents (Romero-Figueroa 1985a, 1985b)* As a result of such typological characteristics, this language offers complex syntactic constructions very difficult to process. However, Warao has developed mechanisms intended for alleviating the burden in message encoding and decoding tasks. Its relative clauses provide an example of sophisticated, yet clear-cut, disambiguating operations. They involve a network of morphophonological and syntactic clues that leads to unequivocal semantic interpretations, and that allows the speaker of the language to know which particular language item is taking part in relativization within any string of discourse. Part of this paper is devoted to the description and explanation of these phenomena. Further, the strategy of relativization used by the language, and the noun phrase accessibility to relative clause formation are discussed. Finally, a brief analysis of free relative nouns (or relative clause-based nominalizations), constructions that seem peculiar to this language, is presented

Assembling things: Warao crafts, trade and tourists

We tend to give less attention to the process of assembling things when analysing their social life or biography. There is a preconception of things being relatively stable, fixed and inert entities. In this paper, I suggest exploring the ordinary life of things, accounting for the interweaving of the human life with nonhuman materials. The mutual becomings of various entities, both humans and nonhumans, create assemblages that emerge from the interaction between their parts. Assembling things works to conceptualize how mutual entanglements create new possible worldings among a contemporary indigenous group in low land Latin-America. Ethnographically I trace the production process of hammocks and other types of items among the Warao of the Orinoco Delta, Venezuela, and how it entangles different ‘others’ like traders, tourists, missionaries and anthropologists and how these encounters affect the process of assembling things. Assembling things draws attention to how heterogenic component parts construe temporary but stable configurations that partake in people's worldmaking efforts. I use ethnography from the Warao and how their crafts, especially hammocks, become differently as they entangle various assemblages. I investigate three fields of assemblages in order to discern how the human/nonhuman entanglements unfold, namely household, market and museum.publishedVersio

Confessing the Secrets of Others: Pascale Petit’s Poetic Employment of Latin American Cultures and the Mexican Artist, Frida Kahlo

This essay works to review the poetry of the Welsh-French writer Pascale Petit through the lens of recent theoretical scholarship relating to women, violence, and confession. More specifically, through a detailed analysis of two of her collections, The Zoo Father (2001) and The Wounded Deer (2005), I examine the ways in which Petit attempts to extricate confessional poetry from the stereotype of self-indulgent, ‘awful’ femininity outlined by Deryn Rees-Jones in Consorting with Angels (2005). It is my view that by recapitulating stories of women and violence in a variety of new contexts, Petit is able to reconfigure the politics of sexual violence, radically reconceptualizing the traditional meaning of victimhood, the relationship between victims and perpetrators, and the stubbornly gendered notions of activity and passivity. This, I argue, is demonstrated most explicitly in the mythological poems of The Zoo Father, and in Petit’s poems about Frida Kahlo in The Wounded Deer. Locating the poetry of Petit alongside the painting of Frida Kahlo, I analyze the extent to which these artists are identified as ‘confessional,’ and interrogate the validity, as well as the usefulness, of this problematic (and gendered) descriptor

El sistema de numeración y algunas de sus aplicaciones entre los aborígenes de Venezuela

La investigación está referida al sistema de numeración y la forma como cuentan las etnias aborígenes de Venezuela. Se trata de un resumen general de sus conocimientos matemáticos y los nombres en sus respectivos idiomas, incluyendo algunas referencias a instrumentos, aún utilizados, para medir los días de viaje o eventos transcurridos en determinadas circunstancias, así como la aplicación que hacen de sus conocimientos matemáticos y geométricos en una de las construcciones más elaboradas y complejas, como es el caso de la churuata o “atta” de los Ye’kuana

Worlds in Miniature

Miniaturisation is the creation of small objects that resemble larger ones, usually, but not always, for purposes different to those of the larger original object. Worlds in Miniature brings together researchers working across various regions, time periods and disciplines to explore the subject of miniaturisation as a material culture technique. It offers original contribution to the field of miniaturisation through its broad geographical scope, interdisciplinary approach, and deep understanding of miniatures and their diverse contexts. Beginning with an introduction by the editors, which offers one possible guide to studying and comparing miniatures, the following chapters include studies of miniature Neolithic stone circles on Exmoor, Ancient Egyptian miniature assemblages, miniaturisation under colonialism as practiced by the Makah People of Washington State, miniature surf boats from India, miniaturised contemporary tourist art of the Warao people of Venezuela, and dioramas on display in the Science Museum. Interspersing the chapters are interviews with miniature-makers, including two miniature boat-builders at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall and a freelance architectural model-maker. Professor Susanne Küchler concludes the volume with a theoretical study summarising the current state of miniaturisation as a research discipline. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume makes it suitable reading for anthropologists, archaeologists, historians and artists, and for researchers in related fields across the social sciences

A grammatical description of Warao imperatives: Formal brevity and morphological complexity

Warao is a morphologically complex language isolate, spoken in Guyana and Venezuela. This paper focuses on the critically endangered Guyanese dialect. First-hand data are used to provide a descriptive analysis of Warao imperative constructions, identify their grammatical features and illocutionary forces, and clarify relevant distinctions concerning telicity. The Warao imperative mood is composed of canonical (2nd singular and 2nd plural) and non-canonical (1st person and 3rd person) imperatives, which are expressed by a set of person-specific verbal suffixes. Both canonical and non-canonical imperatives are negated by the same standard negator. These imperatives commonly express instructions, requests, invitations, warnings, prohibitions, and optatives. As compared to verb forms in other moods, Warao imperatives are syntactically and formally simple; however, the imperative suffixes attach to the morphologically complex Warao verb, thus adding complexity to the compositional meaning of the imperative. In addition to bearing numerous other affixes, the Warao imperatives are often marked as telic. The common marking of telicity in the imperative has led to the reassessment of previous analyses by Osborn (1959) and Romero-Figueroa (2003). The ways in which Warao imperatives adhere to and differ from cross-linguistic trends are also explored. This paper draws on Speech Act Theory, as well as Dixon’s Basic Linguistic Theory more broadly.Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic