Drawing on fieldwork from diverse Amerindian societies whose lives and worlds are undergoing processes of transformation, adaptation, and deterioration, this volume offers new insights into the indigenous constitutions of humanity, personhood, and environment characteristic of the South American highlands and lowlands. The resulting ethnographies depicting non-human entities emerging in ritual, oral tradition, cosmology, shamanism and music explore the conditions and effects of unequally ranked life forms, increased extraction of resources, continuous migration to urban centers, and the (usually) forced incorporation of current expressions of modernity into indigenous societies.
After reading and rereading the [authors] contributions I think it is a wonderful collection. They succeed remarkably well in being mutually
enlightening
Each of them brings individually different theoretical resources and intellectual trajectories to bear on the issues they deal with that add up to a fascinating multifarious whole. To cap it all, the editor
has written a very valuable and extended introduction. He is an excellent guide in what he calls a rather bewildering intellectual landscape.
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale
This book brings together empirically rich, ethnographically grounded case studies of ritual and musical interactions with non-humans from
lowland and highland regions of the continent. This wealth of new material gives Rivera Andía ample justification for a thorough reappraisal of current debates on nonhumans and animism. The book will remain an essential reference for some time to come. Marc Brightman, University College London
This book is a major contribution to todays most important anthropological debates. Framed by a masterful introduction that positions the book in relation to attempts to bring non-humans into
anthropological analysis, the chapters do what anthropology does best: put philosophical concerns into conversation with the complexities of finegrained ethnographic analysis. Especially welcome are the books inclusion of diverse anthropological voices, its troubling of divides between South America's lowlands and highlands, and its consideration of
indigenous life in shifting historical contexts. For anyone interested in the latest thinking on animism and multi-species ethnography, this book is a
must-read. Michael Cepek, author of Life in Oil: Cofán Survival in the Petroleum Fields of Amazonia.
