Substances, relationships and the omnipresence of the body: an overview of Ashéninka ethnomedicine (Western Amazonia)

Indigenous Amazonian ethnomedicine usually relies on numerous forms of healing, exercised by both specialists and non-specialists. Such is the case among the "Asheninka del Ucayali" (Arawak from the Peru-Brazil border). This paper attempts to elicit the underlying consistencies of their manifold, often contradictory practices and statements. It draws on ethnographic data gathered between 1997 and 2000, and is essentially based on my own interviews and participant observation. Concerning some specific points these data are also compared with ethnobotanical findings, to highlight significant peculiarities of the Asheninka approach. The first question is about the nature of a "good medicine". When the Asheninka borrow botanical knowledge from another ethnic group and comment the fact, the contrast between indigenous self-assessments and objective ethnobotanical measurements points out a crucial difference: While the Western approach focuses essentially on chemical effectiveness of the plants themselves, Asheninka people pay much more attention to relational aspects. The relational dimension also involves the plants themselves, as a sort of person. The point has implications in Asheninka shamanism and herbalism. A shaman does not necessarily need to be a good botanist. His main concern is managing a network of personal relationships involving all kinds of living beings. This network is supposed to be the mainspring of illness – a belief shared by both shamans and ordinary people. However, most ordinary people have detailed herbal knowledge. In fact, this everyday herbalism amounts to an alternative explanatory model. Such a coexistence of two contrasting explanatory systems is frequent in Amazonia. Among the Asheninka, nevertheless, the underlying hierarchy is clear: the herbal, apparently more materialistic, approach is embedded in the shamanic, plainly relational, model

Aparecida Vilaça, Quem somos nós. Os Wari’ encontram os brancos

Aparecida Vilaça présente ici une version remaniée de sa thèse, défendue à Rio en 1996, sur les Indiens Wari’ (plus connus sous le nom de Pakaa-Nova), qui vivent dans l’État brésilien de Rondônia, près de la frontière bolivienne. L’auteur en est, avec Beth Conklin, la grande spécialiste, et les deux femmes ont d’ailleurs souvent travaillé en collaboration. Le fil conducteur de l’ouvrage est le souvenir des premiers contacts pacifiques avec les Blancs, dans les années 1950 – un choix motivé pa..

Ontologie animique, ethnosciences et universalisme cognitif

RésuméLoin d’être un universel de l’esprit humain, les folk taxonomies botaniques et zoologiques classiques, fondées sur la morphologie générale et organisées en arborescence, pourraient bien ne relever que d’un simple choix contextuel, dans l’Amérique des basses terres. Dans leurs discours et leurs pratiques, les Ashéninka de l’Ucayali par exemple (Arawak subandins) ne leur accordent aucune préséance sur d’autres modes de regroupement, habituellement négligés ou relégués au second plan par les ethnosciences traditionnelles. À l’analyse, cette attitude se révèle parfaitement cohérente avec leur ontologie animique, qui s’avère ainsi bien plus fondamentale qu’un simple discours cosmologique : non seulement elle informe toute l’organisation la plus quotidienne du vivant, mais elle semble même modeler des habitudes perceptives irréductibles aux nôtres – à tel point que dans l’hypothèse d’un esprit humain modulaire universel, il faut sans doute s’interroger aussi sur la possibilité d’une réorientation culturelle de certains modules cognitifs.Abstract— Far from being a universal of the human mind, classical botanical and zoological folk taxonomies, which are based on general morphology and organized in a tree diagram, might be nothing more than a simple contextual choice in lowland South America. In words and deeds, the Ucayali Asheninka (Arawak) do not give priority to such taxonomies over other groupings, which the traditional ethnosciences usually over-look or see as being of secondary importance. When analyzed, this attitude turns out to be fully coherent with their animistic ontology, which is a more fundamental value than a mere cosmological discourse. It not only permeates all of the everyday organization of living beings, but it also seems to shape habits of perception, which cannot be reduced to our own. This is so true that, under the hypothesis of the universality of a modular human mind, we must inquire into the possibility of culture reorienting certain cognitive modules

Olivier Maligne, Les Nouveaux Indiens. Une ethnographie du mouvement indianophile

Depuis des siècles, l’Amérindien est l’une des figures les plus emblématiques de l’altérité, et une très abondante littérature a déjà été consacrée aux discours dont il a fait l’objet. Mais les réappropriations et manipulations symboliques dont il s’agit ici présentent une dimension particulière, dont l’étude est bien moins fréquente : elles passent avant tout par une mise en actes, dans laquelle l’expérience physique et l’implication personnelle jouent un rôle primordial. Olivier Maligne con..

Foodborne zoonotic trematode infections in Yen Bai, Vietnam : a situational analysis on knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) and risk behaviors

Publisher Copyright: © Copyright by Pacini Editore Srl, Pisa, Italy.Introduction. Foodborne Zoonotic Trematode Infections (FZTi) are neglected tropical diseases of public health concern in Vietnam. The transmission of FZTi is linked to human behavior patterns. The aims to investigate the knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding FZTi among local people. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted using a mixed method, which included a baseline survey and in-depth interviews. 375 participants were interviewed face-to-face in the survey, and 27 participants had the in-depth interviews. Results. The results showed that 36.3% passed the knowledge assessment, 86.7% passed the attitude assessment, and 24% passed the practical assessment. There were differences in average knowledge scores among gender (men higher than women, p = 0.006), ethnicities (Kinh higher than Dao and Tay, p < 0.001), and educational level (higher education, higher knowledge score, p < 0.001). There were differences in the frequency of eating raw fish between men and women (men higher than women, p < 0.001), and in the average practice score between men and women (women higher than men, p = 0.028). Eating raw fish and/or undercooked fish, raw vegetables, and drinking untreated water from Thac Ba lake in Yen Bai province were identified as FZTi risk behaviors. The occurrence of these risky habits can be explained by the lack of knowledge on FZTi, poor economic conditions and typical social features of local people. Conclusion. The current knowledge of local people in regard to safe eating practices is poor. They keep performing unsafe practices, which lead to infection with FZTi; therefore, an integrated control of FZTi is essential.Peer reviewe

Congenital hydrocephalus : new Mendelian mutations and evidence for oligogenic inheritance

Peer reviewe

A Neuromedin U Receptor Acts with the Sensory System to Modulate Food Type-Dependent Effects on C. elegans Lifespan

Different food types modulate worm lifespan and involve the neuropeptide receptor NMUR-1, which acts with the sensory neurons in a bacterial lipopolysaccaharide structure-dependent manner

Latest Cretaceous climatic and environmental change in the South Atlantic region

Latest Maastrichtian climate change caused by Deccan volcanism has been invoked as a cause of mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary (~66.0 Ma). Yet late Maastrichtian climate and ecological changes are poorly documented, in particular on the Southern Hemisphere. Here we present upper Maastrichtian-lower Danian climate and biotic records from the Bajada del Jagüel (BJ) shelf site (Neuquén Basin, Argentina), employing the TEX86 paleothermometer, marine palynology (dinoflagellate cysts), and micropaleontology (foraminifera). These records are correlated to the astronomically tuned Ocean Drilling Program Site 1262 (Walvis Ridge). Collectively, we use these records to assess climatic and ecological effects of Deccan volcanism in the Southern Atlantic region. Both the TEX86-based sea surface temperature (SST) record at BJ and the bulk carbonate δ18O-based SST record of Site 1262 show a latest Maastrichtian warming of ~2.5-4°C, at 450 to 150 kyr before the K-Pg boundary, coinciding with the a large Deccan outpouring phase. Benthic foraminiferal and dinocyst assemblage changes indicate that this warming resulted in enhanced runoff and stratification of the water column, likely resulting from more humid climate conditions in the Neuquén Basin. These climate conditions could have been caused by an expanding and strengthening thermal low over the South American continent. Biotic changes in response to late Maastrichtian environmental changes are rather limited, when compared to the major turnovers observed at many K-Pg boundary sites worldwide. This suggests that environmental perturbations during the latest Maastrichtian warming event were less severe than those following the K-Pg boundary impact

When Inter-ethnic Botanical Borrowing Does Not Rely on Obvious Efficacy: Some Questions from Western Amazonia

Inter-ethnic botanical borrowing is usually deemed to be based on pragmatic efficiency. However, in the regional system we discovered between several indigenous groups from the Peruvian rainforest, the transfer of ethnomedicinal knowledge relies much more on relational factors than on any kind of strictly therapeutic efficacy. This is clearly substantiated by a detailed comparison between objective ethnobotanical measurements and indigenous self-assessments recorded by anthropologists. Such alternative motivations for ethnobotanical borrowing are probably not so exceptional. They raise some questions about the representation of plant efficiency from an indigenous point of view, and probably in some Western contexts too. They also entail direct implications for development and cooperation policies