Of Passionate Curves and Desirable Cadences Themes on Waiwai Social Being / George Mentore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mentore, George P.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnoecology--Guyana.

Ethnoecology.

Waiwai philosophy.

Waiwai Indians--Rites and ceremonies.

Waiwai Indians.

Waiwai Indians--Social life and customs.

Guyana--Social life and customs.

Guyana.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 375 p. ) ill., maps ;

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2012

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Compelling and evocative, Of Passionate Curves and Desirable Cadences reveals the vital cultural interconnections at the heart of a rain-forest Amerindian society. The Waiwai, who live in the remote interior of Guyana and in neighboring Brazil, follow a customary subsistence lifestyle built around swidden agriculture and hunting. How do the Waiwai experience and think about themselves and their place in the so-called modern world around them? The anthropologist George Mentore draws on years of living with the Waiwai, a compelling theoretical perspective grounded in ethnographic subjectivity, and his own Guyanese heritage to depict the social and cultural world of the Waiwai. Mentore describes the relationship between the Waiwai cultural construction of the body, settlement, houses, fields, wildlife, power, knowledge, and gift giving in a variety of contexts and roles. This web of relationships, as well as the various spaces discovered and illuminated between Mentore's social being and theirs, point to a complex organization of culture that is distinctively Waiwai. When considering the Waiwai people's "plaited" design of passion and intimacy in the way it relates to humans, plants, and animals, Mentore promises the reader that through his text you will encounter a community of truth that tames logic and desire, where well being, beauty, morality, and care encircle the transcendent self.

Contents:

Prologue

Shepariymo

From the sutured wound of being

To the mutability of embodiment

And toward the body encompassed

The hidden hazard of generosity

Grief and shamanic breath

The archer and his bow

When the cicadas first sing

The plaited design of human life

The Wayamnu sentiment.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [347]-361) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9786610374427

9781280374425

128037442X

9780803205062

0803205066

OCLC:

60712568