Author: Andrew Gray
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Keywords: amazonian, peru, series, volume, arakmbut, community, spirituality, history, mythology
Number of Pages: 350
Published: 2004-02
List price: $25.00
ISBN-10: 1571818359
ISBN-13: 9781571818355

The Arakmbut are an indigenous people who live in the Madre de Dios region of thesoutheastern Peruvian rain forest. Since their first encounters with missionaries in the 1950s,they have shown resilience and a determination to affirm their identity in the face of many difficulties. During the last fifteen years, Arakmbut survival has been under threat from a goldrush that has attracted hundreds of colonists onto their territories. This trilogy of books traces the ways in which the Arakmbut overcome the dangers that surround them: their mythology and cultural strength; their social flexibility;

Author: Thomas Gregor
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Keywords: amazonian, people, lives, sexual, pleasures, anxious
Number of Pages: 231
Published: 1987-01-15
List price: $25.00
ISBN-10: 0226307433
ISBN-13: 9780226307435

"Good fish get dull but sex is always fun." So say the Mehinaku people of Brazil. But Thomas Gregor shows that sex brings a supreme ambiguity to the villagers’ lives. In their elaborate rituals—especially those practiced by the men in their secret societies—the Mehinaku give expression to a system of symbols reminiscent of psychosexual neuroses identified by Freud: castration anxiety, Oedipal conflict, fantasies of loss of strength through sex, and a host of others. "If we look carefully," writes Gregor, "we will see reflections of our own sexual nature in the life ways of an Amazoni

Author: Beth A. Conklin
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Keywords: amazonian, society, cannibalism, compassionate, grief, consuming
Number of Pages: 368
Published: 2001-07
List price: $24.95
ISBN-10: 0292712367
ISBN-13: 9780292712362

"This is probably the most significant ethnography of cannibalism. Period. . . . I expect this book to become a classic, an ethnography of exceptional depth and clarity by an anthropologist whose sensitivity and insight are apparent on every page." --Donald Pollock, Associate Professor of Anthropology, SUNY Buffalo Mourning the death of loved ones and recovering from their loss are universal human experiences, yet the grieving process is as different between cultures as it is among individuals. As late as the 1960s, the Wari’ Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest ate the roaste

Authors:R. M. W. Dixon, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald,
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Keywords: surveys, language, cambridge, languages, amazonian
Number of Pages: 476
Published: 1999-11-13
List price: $180.00
ISBN-10: 0521570212
ISBN-13: 9780521570213

The Amazon Basin is the least known and the most complex linguistic region in the world today. It is the home of some 300 languages many of which (often incompletely documented and mostly endangered) show properties that constitute exceptions to received ideas about linguistic universals. This book is the first in English to provide an accessible overview of this rich and exciting linguistic area. It will provide a basis for further research on Amazonian languages as well as a point of entry to important data for theoretical linguists.

Authors:Wolfgang J. Junk, Maria T. F. Piedade, Florian Wittm
Publisher: Springer
Keywords: management, ecological, studies, sustainable, biodiversity, floodplain, forests, ecophysiology, amazonian
Number of Pages: 615
Published: 2010-10-06
List price: $179.00
ISBN-10: 9048187249
ISBN-13: 9789048187249

Central Amazonian floodplain forests are an unique and endangered ecosystem. The forests grow in areas that are annually flooded by large rivers during mean periods of up to 8 months and at depths of up to 10 m. Despite this severe stress, these forests consist of over 1,000 species and are by far the most species-rich floodplain forests worldwide. The trees show a broad range of morphological, anatomical, physiological, and phenological adaptations that enable them not only to survive the adverse environmental conditions, but also to produce large amounts of biomass when the nutrient levels i

Authors:William I. Woods, William I. Woods, Wenceslau G. Tei
Publisher: Springer
Keywords: vision, sombroek, wim, earths, amazonian
Number of Pages: 504
Published: 2008-12-09
List price: $279.00
ISBN-10: 1402090307
ISBN-13: 9781402090301

Amazonian soils are almost universally thought of as extremely forbidding. However, it is now clear that complex societies with large, sedentary populations were present for over a millennium before European contact. Associated with these are tracts of anomalously fertile, dark soils termed terra preta or dark earths. These soils are presently an important agricultural resource within Amazonia and provide a model for developing long-term future sustainability of food production in tropical environments. The late Dutch soil scientist Wim Sombroek (1934-2003) was instrumental in bringing the sig