"We No Longer Make War, Now We Are Thinking": Shamanism and School Education among the Maxacali

Authors

  • Marina Guimarães Vieira Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9133.v19i19p135-150

Keywords:

Maxakali, Warfare, Shamanism, Ritual, School

Abstract

The objective of this ethnographic es-
say is to describe some Maxakali forms of relation to
alterity. The contact with the whites is analyzed in
continuity with the relationship of Maxakali with
enemies and spirits. Warfare and ritual are unders-
tood as different moments of a single process of
predation and subsequent domestication of exterior
powers needed to the constitution of the maxakali
socius. The relation between shamanic knowledge
and school education is analyzed, suggesting that
the writing skill is used to pacify the whites in a way
analogous to that in which ritual chants are used to
pacify the spirits. Warfare – the practice of which is
almost impossible today – is thus actualized on the
level of cosmology, thought, and in the contexts of
ritual and the school.

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Author Biography

  • Marina Guimarães Vieira, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
    Doutoranda em Antropologia Social / MN-UFRJ

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Published

2010-03-30

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 19 (2010)

Section

Articles and Essays

License

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I attest to the unpublished nature of the work submitted

How to Cite

Vieira, M. G. (2010). "We No Longer Make War, Now We Are Thinking": Shamanism and School Education among the Maxacali. Cadernos De Campo (São Paulo, 1991), 19(19), 135-150. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-9133.v19i19p135-150