A Walk to the River in Amazonia

Our lives are mostly composed of ordinary reality — the flow of moment-to-moment existence — and yet it has been largely overlooked as a subject in itself for anthropological study. In this work, the author achieves an understanding of this part of reality for the Mehinaku Indians, an Amazonian people, in two stages: first by observing various aspects of their experience and second by relating how these different facets come to play in a stream of ordinary consciousness, a walk to the river. In this way, abstract schemata such as ‘cosmology,’ ‘sociality,’ ‘gender,’ and the ‘everyday’ are understood as they are actually lived. This book contributes to the ethnography of the Amazon, specifically the Upper Xingu, with an approach that crosses disciplinary boundaries between anthropology, philosophy, and psychology. In doing so it attempts to comprehend what Malinowski called the ‘imponderabilia of actual life.’

Our lives are mostly composed of ordinary reality — the flow of moment-to-moment existence — and yet it has been largely overlooked as a subject in itself for anthropological study. In this work, the author achieves an understanding of this part of reality for the Mehinaku Indians, an Amazonian people, in two stages: first by observing various aspects of their experience and second by relating how these different facets come to play in a stream of ordinary consciousness, a walk to the river. In this way, abstract schemata such as ‘cosmology,’ ‘sociality,’ ‘gender,’ and the ‘everyday’ are understood as they are actually lived. This book contributes to the ethnography of the Amazon, specifically the Upper Xingu, with an approach that crosses disciplinary boundaries between anthropology, philosophy, and psychology. In doing so it attempts to comprehend what Malinowski called the ‘imponderabilia of actual life.’

List of Figures
List of Plates
Preface
Acknowledgements
Pronouncing Mehinaku Words
Glossary

Introduction
I. The Question
II. Writing about Lived Experience
III. Writing about Ordinary Reality: from My Walk, through Her World, to Her Walk
IV. Some Methodological Issues to Do with My Approach
V. Contributions and Limitations of This Book
VI. Some Background

Chapter 1. My Walk

Chapter 2. Configurations in Mehinaku Experience
I. Substance
II. Who Are the Apapanye?: the Substantiality of Spirits
III. The Deception of Substance: All about ‘Skins’
IV. Eternal Archetypes and the Generation of Skins
V. The Lake of Butterflies: an Amazonian Metaphysics
VI. Mirroring and Parallel Configurations of Different Soul-worlds

Chapter 3. Dynamic Aspects in Mehinaku Experience
I. The Constant Movement of Mehinaku Existence
II. ‘Star Birds’: Movement between Different Dimensions of Reality
III. The Impetus of Movement: the Dynamic of Desire
IV. The Boundaries for the Flow of Desire: Concentric Circles and Paths
V. The Ever Present Threat of the Collapse of Form: Dangerous Desire Let Loose
VI. Holding up the Form of the Worlds: Maintaining Good Relationships (the ‘Uwekehë Complex’) and Integrity of Person (the Issue of Yerekyuki)
VII. The Dynamic of Daring: to Create, Maintain and Improve Form, One Must Risk Form
VIII. The Awëshëpai Ideal: a Life of Anxious Joy, in Tension between Integrity and Risk

Chapter 4. Experience of Mehinaku Experience
I. The Concept of a Concept: Mehinaku ‘Thingness’ and the Blending of Entities
II. How Things Are Associated: at the Most Basic Level; in a ‘Story Logic’; in a Certain Understanding of Ritual
III. ‘Awitsiri’: the Principle of ‘Care/Grace’; Living with the Right Consciousness in a World Made Manifest by Consciousness

Chapter 5. Experience of the Mehinaku Social World
I. In the House of the Jaguar: Shamans and Sorcerers in Mehinaku Experience
II. Paths through the Akãi Groves: Some Ideas about Mehinaku Experiences of Gender
III. The Owl and the Toucan: General Tendencies of Mehinaku Sociality

Chapter 6. Some Conclusions

Chapter 7. Her Walk

Cross References from the Description to Chapters 2–5
Bibliography
Index