AUFFASSUNG DER PERSON, „INAU’KÉ“ UND DES „PENSAMIENTO“ BEI DEN YUKUNA-MATAPÍ(MIRITÍ-PARANÁ, AMAZONAS – KOLUMBIEN)
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Abstract
This anthropological work investigates the traditional foundations and the present conditions of acquisition and maintenance of the cultural identity between the Yukuna-Matapí Indians of the Colombian Amazonian lowlands. The theoretical concepts at play are “social person” and “self”, proposed for the first time by the French ethnologist M. Mauss (1938), illustrated in the works of C. Geertz (1973, 1982) and recently questioned by M. Sökefeld (1999). Taking into account the exploration of these topics in Amazonian cultures by C. y S. Hugh-Jones (1979, 1979), K. Ahrem (1993), A. C. Taylor (1996) and E. Viveiros de Castro (1998), an analysis is proposed of the representations, practices and categories involved in the construction, exercise and lost of the collective and individual identity inside this group. The power strategies behind this model of the person are questioned from the critical perspective of Talal Asad (1983, 1993). This research offers a contribution to the debate of the western bias in the anthropological concept of the person, it also illustrates a unified natural-cultural conception of mankind and it questions the essentialist models of identity. The ethnographic experience and the data for this research were gathered during about 36 months of field research scattered along ten years. This work is restricted to the ideological perspective of men.
In the representations about the person for this people, the following factors are taken into account: the integration of affine und consanguine corresponding legacies, the nurturing and raising of the body, the assignment of a ritual or labour specialist role, the delivery of a traditional body of knowledge and behavioural rules. Those who follow the model are recognized as real persons: inau´ké. Body and behaviour are articulated through knowledge. The women contribute in the formation of the flesh whereas the shaman connects babies and children to the wisdom and special abilities of their role ancestors. The shamans manipulate and administrate this wisdom through the objectification of ripechu, a concept rendered in Spanish as “pensamiento”, “thought”, but in fact with reference to mental images, emotions, functional properties from objects or crucial parts of living species and diverse expressions from powerful creatures. If the affinities between individual and a specialist’s ancestor role identity are correct, the body and the knowledge will grow up, when not, it will cause disease and risk of dead. Through semantic association, consistence is evidenced between polarity of social values, the relation between the specialist-ordinary people hierarchy, their corresponding duties and the lexical field of emotions and mental states. As final considerations, the reconstructed mental models are confronted with life stories, to gain insight into individual experiences and into the ways the Selves are constructed.
Chapter one presents the subject matter, the theoretical perspective and an introduction to the ethnography of the group. The second chapter deals with a discussion between representatives of the different settlements about the loosing or maintenance of their collective identity. The point is settled with a statement about the core of culture, which lies on shamanistic practices and rituals. In chapter three some chants and rituals for healing babies and children are analyzed. Chapter four presents and discusses three myths in order to understand the sense of life and introduces the adult initiation ritual as critical to reach the status of person: inau´ké. In chapter five, a chronicle of a Yukuna chief and a life event of a Matapí individual are analysed. Both characters loose their quality of inau´ké, persons; due to the cultural change and undue behavior of the one, and to the stealing of the ripechu “pensamiento”,”thought” to the second. The tropes, meaning and sense extensions of the concept of ripechu, central to the shamanistic way of thinking, are studied in chapter six. The last chapter confronts the reconstructed cultural schemata of the Yukuna-Matapí person with life stories of actual individuals. The stories show the options and negotiations of traditional models of identity, also the conscious escape from it.
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Created: 2007Issued: 2009-03-25Updated: 2011-08-10
Faculty
Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften und Philosophie
Publisher
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Language
ger
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DoctoralThesis
Keywords
KolumbienIdentitySoziale PersonSelfamazonian IndiansSelfPersonAmazonas Indianer
DFG-subjects
Animistisches Denken, IdentitätAmerikanistik , Indianersprachen, Ethnische Identität
DDC-Numbers
390
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Robayo Romero, Camilo Alberto: AUFFASSUNG DER PERSON, „INAU’KÉ“ UND DES „PENSAMIENTO“ BEI DEN YUKUNA-MATAPÍ(MIRITÍ-PARANÁ, AMAZONAS – KOLUMBIEN). : Philipps-Universität Marburg 2009-03-25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17192/z2009.0081.
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This item has been published with the following license: In Copyright