Exchanging Words
eBook - PDF
Available until 31 Dec |Learn more

Exchanging Words

Language, Ritual, and Relationality in Brazil's Xingu Indigenous Park

  1. 256 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
Available until 31 Dec |Learn more

Exchanging Words

Language, Ritual, and Relationality in Brazil's Xingu Indigenous Park

About this book

Like human groups everywhere, Wauja people construct their identity in relation to others. This book tells the story of the Wauja group from the Xingu Indigenous Park in central Brazil and its relation to powerful new interlocutors. Tracing Wauja interactions with others, Ball depicts expanding scales of social action from the village to the wider field of the park and finally abroad. Throughout, the author analyzes language use in ritual settings to show how Wauja people construct relationships with powerful spirit-monsters, ancestors, and ethnic trading partners. Ball's use of ritual as an analytic category helps show how Wauja interactions with spirits and Indian neighbors, for example, are connected to interactions with the Brazilian government, international NGOs, and museums in projects of development. Showing ritual as a contributing factor to relationships of development and the politics of indigeneity, Exchanging Words asks how discourse, ritual, and exchange come together to mediate social relations close to home and on a global scale.

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Yes, you can access Exchanging Words by Christopher Ball in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Latin American & Caribbean History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Book Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Series Page
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright
  6. Table of Contents
  7. Preface
  8. Acknowledgments
  9. Chapter One. Introduction
  10. Part One. In the Village
  11. Chapter Two. Chief’s Speech: Wauja Ancestors, Political Authority, and Belonging
  12. Chapter Three. Bringing Spirits: Ritual Curing and Wauja Relations with Spirits
  13. Part Two. In the Park
  14. Chapter Four. Kuri Sings: Intergroup Rivalry and Alter-Centricity
  15. Chapter Five. Inalienability: Possession and Exchange in Intergroup Relations
  16. Part Three. Out of the Park
  17. Chapter Six. Interdiscursive Rivers: Protesting the Paranatinga II Dam
  18. Chapter Seven. Pragmatics of Development: Asymmetries in Interethnic Exchange
  19. Chapter Eight. Taking Spirits to France: Wauja Identity on a World Stage
  20. Chapter Nine. Conclusion: What We Owe
  21. Appendix. Wauja Inalienable Nouns
  22. Notes
  23. References
  24. Index