Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica

This book offers a new anthropological understanding of the socio-cosmological and ontological characteristics of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, beyond established theories for Amazonia, the Andes and Mesoamerica. It focuses on a core region that has been largely neglected by comparative anthropology in recent decades.

Autorentext

Ernst Halbmayer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute for Comparative Cultural Research, University of Marburg, Germany.

Inhalt

PART I The IsthmoColombian Area in context 1 Introduction: toward an anthropological understanding of the area between the Andes, Mesoamerica, and the Amazon PART II Conceptualizing the IsthmoColombian Area from a regional comparative perspective 2 An Amerindian humanism: order and transformation in Chibchan universes 3 Languages of the IsthmoColombian Area and its southeastern borderland: Chibchan, Chocoan, Yukpa, and Wayuunaiki 4 Kinship, clanship, and hierarchy in the IsthmoColombian Area 5 Between Mesoamerica, the Central Andes, and Amazonia: area conceptions, chronologies, and history 6 The golden ones: the human body as reflective metallic surface in the IsthmoColombian Area PART III Case studies: change and continuity in shamanic and priestly practices and the conception of things, humans, plants, and animals 7 Parents who own lives: relations and persons among the I'ku, a Chibchan group in Colombia 8 Tuwancha, "the One Who Knows": specialists and specialized knowledge in transhuman communication among the Sokorpa Yukpa of the Serranía del Perijá, Colombia 9 The Wounaan haaihí jëeu nm ritual with the k'ugwiu: reinforcing benevolence and preventing calamity 10 Things, life, and humans in Guna Yala (Panama): talking about molagana and nudsugana inside and outside Guna society 11 Plant ontologies among the Bribri of Talamanca, Costa Rica 12 The place of livestock in human-non-human relationship among the Wayuu 13 Murderous spirits: shamanic interpretation of armed violence, suicide, and exhumation in the economy of death of the Emberá (Chocó, Antioquia, Colombia)