Analysis Of Viveiros De Castro 's Perspectivism And The Potential Value

The Huichol Indians are an indigenous group that lives “in the Sierra Madre Mountains of northwestern Mexico” (Woolcott). The Huichol religion is an animistic religion. According to Dr. Pamela Lindell, animistic religions are “religions that believe that all of nature – humans, animals, plants, rocks, the ocean, etc. - is animated by spirits and souls” (“Professor’s Notes 2” 3). To better understand the Huichol Indians and their religion, this paper examines Huichol myth, symbolism, rituals, religious specialists, and deities from various anthropological perspectives.

There is not just one Indigenous culture, instead there is a mixture of current and traditional thoughts, ways and practices.

The main ideas of chapter one was the conquest and exploration of the early America’s by the spaniards. Throughout the chapter, it explains the difficulties that the spanish explorers faced when attempting to conquer new lands. The primary problem the explorers faced was with the current inhabitants of the lands they wanted to conquer, especially with the cultural differences between populations. On article that exemplifies the cultural differences between the Native Americans and the Spanish Explorers is the third-person biographical narrative called “The Collision of Cultures.” The narrative gives the reader insight on what the indians and the explorers pre-judgement of one another, based off of what the parties believed with their religion and moral. This article’s reader would be

Throughout the article, Doing Fieldwork among the Yanomamo, by Napoleon A. Chagnon the reader is able to read along as if they were a real anthropologist’s on a journey throughout the villages of tropical forests in unoccupied lands. Changnon begins his writing explaining the culture and life style of the Yanamamö people. How their daily lives focus on gardening, hunting, visiting and completing tasks to get through the day. He describes their short life expectancy and the risks of violence between surrounding villages. The amount of men is exceedingly larger than the women, and often time’s men have multiple wives. Changon describes how each village is apart of broader political demographic. However he expresses how difficult it is to understand all of this simply from his descriptions.

Every person on this planet has a set of beliefs and values that they implement into their daily lives, helping them understand the world, humanity, and themselves. This set of beliefs and values can be called a worldview. The worldviews and ways of knowing of Indigenous Peoples (in this paper, specifically Indigenous Peoples of North America) have existed for centuries, yet often they remain in juxtaposition with Western (in this paper, specifically Eurocentric) ways of knowing and Western worldviews. One way of knowing is reliant on science, order, and the

The author of this book is Juan Jose Arevalo and he was a professor of philosophy who became Guatemala’s first democratically elected president in 1944. He was elected after a popular uprising against the United States, backed by Dictator Jorge Ubico, which began the Guatemalan Revolution. He stayed in office until 1951 and had survived 15 coup attempts. During his presidency he had passed several social reform policies that included an increase in minimum wage and a series of literacy programs. He also directed and ministered the drafting of a new constitution in 1945. Arevalo focused much on the need of advancement with individuals and communities. After he was exiled as being a university professor he went back to Guatemala to help the new post-Ubico government, focusing on the areas of social security and drafting of a new constitution. He developed the term “spiritual socialism”, in which he defined his political philosophy as. The philosophy was pointed towards the moral development of Guatemalans with the intent to liberate man psychologically. Arevalo strongly believed that this theoretical doctrine was vital to the making of a progressive and peaceful Guatemalan society. He felt in order to create an ideal society it was necessary to allow the citizens the freedom to pursue their own opinions, property, and way of life. He proclaimed that protecting the freewill of the citizens creates more support for governmental institutions, which in turn ensures the security of

Elialde author of The Sacred and the Profane introduces a new model of the sacred and the profane. Elialde’s model is meant to be universal, therefore meant to be appropriate for any recognized religion. David Carrasco author of Religions of Mesoamerica and Kay Almere Read and Jason J. González authors of Mesoamerican Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs of Mexico and Central America, discuss their interpretation of the Mesoamerican religion although their views on the Mesoamerican religion differs in some aspects when compared to Eliade’s model of the sacred and the profane there are a few noticeable similarities between both views.

In the early 1930's during Hitler's uprising, he began to sweep throughout Europe seeking out nations to conquer and add to his already growing German empire. He used the Soviets distrust of the western nations to form a temporary alliance and take over Poland. France, and Britain would soon join the battle against one of the most powerful and destructive European powers.

In Victors and the Vanquished, Schwartz poses the question of “How can we evaluate conflicting sources” (ix)? Through reading historical events such as the “Conquest of New Spain” there is an undeniably large amount of destruction of cultural material and bias testimonies of events recorded several years after they occurred. After analyzing the Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica there is a debatable amount of evidence from the Mesoamericans and Spanish explanations of this event in history. The intentions of each explanation created a conflict to historians, art historians and anthropologists on which viewpoint holds to accuracy. There is also the issue of not only inaccuracies, but the motives behind each bias account. As many of these aspects are taken into consideration, interpreting each justification between both sides of history in Mesoamerica as a clash of ethnocentrism between two different cultures that causes an uncertainty of what actually happened in history.

There are different approaches used when discussing the survival of indigenous visual cultures. Each essay provided for analysis interprets the conquest of the Americas differently and connects it to Colonial Mexico artistic production at various degrees. Each essay also advocates for its own term that can be used to represent the process of Spanish and Indigenous art forms coming together in a complex cultural context. Kubler advocates for the term, folk art to describe colonial art because it is art production that is devoid of its past meaning. His views on conquest explicitly claim that the Spanish conquest was successful due to Spanish superiority over Indigenous cultures. However problematic his claims are, he is able to dissect the forms used by the Spanish conquest to gain control over artistic production. Mestizo, is the term used by Neumeyer to describe the mixing of two art forms that can only be apparent when Indigenous people reached a high aesthetic culture during the conquest. He also promotes the idea that Colonial art was continuously developing. However, his views of Indigenous art is that it is unable to compete with European modes of art. Finally, Dean and Leibsohn use to the term hybrid as a production and enactment that challenges norms. “Hybridity and Its Discontents” is the most liberal of the three readings. It uses the term hybrid as a way to critique the cultural context in which it was able to be produced; Spanish conquest. It also, critiques

When one pictures the societies that spanned throughout our Mesoamerica and South America the images of warriors, conquests, gold and great feats of architecture, spawn in the mind. Missing from not only there, but the focus of many studies are the crucial roles that women played in these societies. Between each society; the Mayan, Aztec and Inca, each has their own unique culture and role for women within it. One wonders the roles of women in society, where does she fit in; politics, religious practices, and within the home. These roles are dictated by the characteristics of the society in which they live. It is crucial to begin uncovering for each of these societies, the roles of which the women took on, through exploring three subject matters, the role of women concerning government and law, politics, the role of women in day-to-day life and lastly, religious roles of women.

Having an emotional focus in regards to the ayllu is a part of the Runakuna identity. Through this common relationship, a hierarchy system exists. In fact, the hierarchy of ayllus follows the hierarchy of the Tirakuna. In the book, The Hold Life Has, the hierarchy system of the ayllus is as follows: neighborhood → community → district → province. Since an ayllu coheres as a social entity when decisions are to be made it is the ayllu’s responsibility. Within each ayllu, a cargo exist. As a member of the cargo, one find’s their duties time-consuming and also expensive. However, when it comes down to decisions regarding rituals, only one person presides, the alcalde. The most important duty of the alcalde is to keep the community culture alive. The alcalde is the human symbol of collective existence and will. Even outside of a political aspect, a hierarchy system is an evident aspect of Andean culture because it exists even in the daily routines of the Runakuna. For instance, both coca chewing and the consumption of alcohol coincide with a hierarchy when being shared. Specifically, spatial hierarchy coincides with the religious hierarchy, which is also the hierarchy of the Andean’s social

In Patrick Tierney’s article “The Fierce Anthropologist,” he discussed the faults that are, or may be, present in Napoleon Chagnon’s anthropological research of the Yanamamo, or “The Fierce People,” as Chagnon has referred to them in his best-selling book on the people.

Miner’s article presents numerous anthropological concepts including culture, social behaviors, symbols, material culture and holism. While providing us with a synchronic view of an unexplored culture, Miner tackles the principle mindset that governs the “Nacirema’s” social customs and “rituals”, looks at key symbols and material possessions as the focus of the culture, and highlights the importance of studying a culture in its entirety to gain a full and accurate understanding.

The Maranaos are traditional people whose rich cultural practices continue to perplex even social scientists. Their resistance to change is seen not only in their slow modernization process,