Praying and Preying: Christianity in Indigenous AmazoniaPraying and Preying offers one of the rare anthropological monographs on the Christian experience of contemporary Amazonian indigenous peoples, based on an ethnographic study of the relationship between the Wari’, inhabitants of Brazilian Amazonia, and the Evangelical missionaries of the New Tribes Mission. Vilaça turns to a vast range of historical, ethnographic and mythological material related to both the Wari’ and missionaries perspectives and the author’s own ethnographic field notes from her more than 30-year involvement with the Wari’ community. Developing a close dialogue between the Melanesian literature, which informs much of the recent work in the Anthropology of Christianity, and the concepts and theories deriving from Amazonian ethnology, in particular the notions of openness to the other, unstable dualism, and perspectivism, the author provides a fine-grained analysis of the equivocations and paradoxes that underlie the translation processes performed by the different agents involved and their implications for the transformation of the native notion of personhood. |
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Abrão According Achuar affines Amazonian anger animals Anthropology arrived associated become believe Bible biblical blood body Brazilian called capuchin monkey chicha Christian church service conception constituted context conversion culture devil differentiation dividual divine double encounter enemies equivocation Evangelical father festivals Genesis God's Guajará-Mirim heart heaven human hymn idea Indians indigenous innate world involved jaguar jamixi Jesus karawa killed kinship Kopenawa language later Leenhardt lesson book living maize Marubo missionaries moral myth mythic native Negro River village notion observed OroNao Paletó Papua New Guinea pastor Awo Kamip peccary person personhood perspective perspectivism Pinom Portuguese prayers prey refer relation Rio de Janeiro Robbins Royal Sagarana Santo André saw in chapter shamans speak spirit Strathern subgroups tamataraxi Tanajura things tion told transformation translation Tribes Mission University Urapmin Vilaça Viveiros de Castro Wari white-lipped peccary whites wijam words Yanomami