Description
The Anthropology of Love and Anger questions the very foundations of western sociological thought. In their examination of indigenous peoples from across the South American continent, the contributors to this volume have come to realise that western thought does not possess the vocabulary to define even the fundamentals of indigenous thought and practice. The dualisms of public and private, political and domestic, individual and collective, even male and female, in which western anthropology was founded cannot legitimately be applied to peoples whose 'sociality' is based on an 'aesthetics of community'.
For indigenous people success is measured by the extent to which conviviality, (all that is peaceful, harmonious and sociable) has been attained. Yet conviviality is not just reliant on love and good but instead on an even balance between all that is constructive, love, and all that is destructive, anger.
With case studies from across the South American region, ranging from the (so-called) fierce Yanomami of Venezuela and Brazil to the Enxet of Paraguay, and with discussions on topics from the efficacy of laughter, the role of language, anger as a marker of love and even homesickness, The Anthropology of Love and Anger is a seminal, fascinating work which should be read by all students and academics in the post-colonial world.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Joanna Overing, Alan Passes; Part 1 Conviviality as a creative process; Chapter 1 The first love of a young man Salt and sexual education among the Uitoto Indians of Lowland Colombia, Juan Alvaro Echeverri; Chapter 2 Helpless - the affective preconditions of Piro social life, Peter Gow; Chapter 3 The efficacy of laughter, Joanna Overing; Chapter 4 Compassion, anger and broken hearts, Mark Jamieson; Chapter 5 The value of working and speaking together, Alan Passes; Chapter 6 Knowledge and the practice of love and hate among the Enxet of Paraguay, Stephen W. Kidd; Chapter 7 Anger as a marker of love, Catherine Alès; Chapter 8 Homesickness and the Cashinahua self, Elsje Maria Lagrou; Chapter 9 'Though it comes as evil, I embrace it as good', Carlos David Londoño-Sulkin; Part 2 Conquest and contact; Chapter 10 Pretty vacant, Peter Mason; Part 3 The delicacy of Amazonian sociality; Chapter 11 The convivial self and the fear of anger amongst the Airo-Pai of Amazonian Peru, Luisa Elvira Belaunde; Chapter 12 The delicacy of community, Dan Rosengren; Chapter 13 A woman between two men and a man between two women, Marco Antonio Gonçalves; Chapter 14 'The more we are together . . .', Peter Rivière; Chapter 15 The Sisyphus Syndrome, or the struggle for conviviality in Native Amazonia, Fernando Santos-Granero;
