The (dis)empowerment of things in Amazonian cosmopolitics

An Anthropological Workshop at the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, UEA, Norwich, UK
29 – 30 May 2009

A workshop convened by Dr Aristóteles Barcelos Neto, of the Sainsbury Research Unit, with speakers from Oxford, Paris, Berlin, St Andrews and Rio de Janeiro.

Discussants: Prof Steven Hooper (SRU) and Dr George Lau (SRU).

Programme

Friday

29 May

 

14:00

Registration and welcome

 

14:20

Vanessa Elisa Grotti

Contact expeditions, contagious influence and the politics of ordinary objects in northeastern Amazonia.

15:00

Cristiane Lasmar

Western goods and new female subjectivities in the upper rio Negro

15:40

Marc Brightman

Painted cosmos: the Wayana maluwana and embodiment of collectivity.

16:20

Coffee break

 

16:40

Evelyn Schuler

Appropriation in question: Waiwai meanderings

17:20

Debate

Discussant: Professor Steven Hooper (Sainsbury Research Unit)

19:30

Dinner

  

 

Saturday

30 May

 

09:00

Paolo Fortis

What does General Douglas McArthur do among the Kuna of Panamá? Images and alterity in an Amerindian ontology.

09:40

Cesar Gordon

The objects of the whites: commodities and consumerism among the Xikrin-Kayapo Indians of Amazonia

10:20

Coffee break

 

10:40

Aristoteles Barcelos Neto

The biographical temporality of Xinguano rituals and the (dis)empowerment of objects and chiefs

11:20

Dimitri Karadimas

Why do flutes and trumpets generate? Yurupari instruments in North-west Amazon mythology and ritual.

12:00

Debate

Discussant: Dr George Lau (Sainsbury Research Unit)

 

The Shaman and the Jaguar mask - Amazonia