Description
Book SynopsisUses an ethnographic example of ritual violence to illuminate cultural expression more widely and thereby reformulate anthropological and historical approaches to warfare and violence.
Trade Review“An exceptionally fine ethnography of the kanaimà,
Dark Shamans will fill a large gap. As an ethnography located in ethnohistory and processes of modernization, this book is an outstanding example of new anthropological work at the leading edge of the discipline.”—Donald Pollock, State University of New York, Buffalo
“Ethnographer Neil L. Whitehead enters this realm of reality and mythology, of storytelling and firsthand experience by accident, and his opening tale sustains the horror-filled storytelling power characteristic of such authors as Bram Stoker and Stephen King. As such, the kanaimà, long known to explorers, poets, and ordinary people of northeastern South America, take their place in the history of modernity along with Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolf Man.”—Norman Whitten, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Ethnographer's Tale 11
2. Tales of the Kanaima: Observers 41
3. Tales of the Kanaima: Participants 88
4. Shamanic Warfare 128
5. Modernity, Development, and Kanaima Violence 174
6. Ritual Violence and Magical Death in Amazonia 202
Conclusion: Anthropologies of Violence 245
Notes 253
Works Cited 285
Index 299
