Shipibo

The main objectives of this research were to determine which medicinal plants are culturally most important for the native community of Vencedor as well as testing a new measure of the cultural importance of medicinal plants that can be used outside of this one particular case. Data were collected through participant observation, informal conversation, and semi-structured and structured interviews to 31 heads of family. According to the Cultural Significance for Conservation Index (CSCI) developed, significant species were Petiveria alliacea L., Jatropha gossypifolia L., Mansoa alliacea (Lam.) A.H.Gentry, Hura crepitans L., and Banisteriopsis caapi (Spruce ex Griseb.) C.V.Morton. Our index showed a significant correlation with the other indices considered in this paper. We conclude that CSCI is a good indicator of the cultural importance of medicinal plants and that it can be useful in cases where there is a need to recognize which culturally important plants are more vulnerable.

Ayahuasca has become a subject of great interest in recent years. Academics, spiritual seekers, communities, and curious individuals have all been intrigued by this topic through either writing about it or direct participation in the contemporary spiritual phenomenon that is ayahuasca, which holds promises of bestowing upon its users profound wisdom or healing. However, what anthropological (but also popular) writings barely comment on are the deviant perceptions that arise out of experiences seeking amelioration or transcendence, and the subjective ways in which those experiences are interpreted. Consequently, I wish to supplement this scope of representation. In this text, I present fieldwork conducted in the Peruvian Amazon amid the Shipibo, focusing on the experiences of the spiritual seekers who came to them in search of healing or self-discovery. I discovered a unique contradiction—participation in Shipibo ayahuasca practices while simultaneously having or developing a negative perception or attitude towards it. These aberrances are held, as I argue herein, (incognizantly) in the expressed attitudes of the Westerners (especially North American and European) as a result of the positivist notions that emerged from the Age of Enlightenment (but are not limited to it). My priority in this article is to present and expound on these atypical associations and place them against a historical (Western) background to elucidate the origin of the thus found and experienced perceptions.

La presente investigación, Cartografiando la historia, tiene como área de estudio a la Comunidad de Cantagallo en donde se busca mostrar el desarrollo demográfico y para ello se tiene como herramientas metodológicas, por un lado a las imágenes satelitales entre los años 2000 y 2012; por otro lado, se vale de la observación participante para conocer la realidad desde su cotidianeidad. La primera de ellas nos permite una visión panorámica de manera diacrónica y la otra desde una perspectiva sincrónica focalizada. Esta última denotada en un par de trabajos de campo realizados en dicha sociedad; el primero de ellos se realizó en los últimos meses del primer semestre del 2010 y el otro en el último semestres del 2011.

The ch'uqilas originates from the Titicaca Lake region and is mainly danced in the dry season. Its name already reveals a strong connection with tubers: ch'uqi means potato in Aymara. Two more revealing words are found in its name: illa (amulet, talisman) or iluña (to sow). As a matter of fact not only the ch'uqilas, but also the very similar qharwani (literally: the one who owns a llama) and mukululu/pusi p'ía (the ants' dance/four holes -referring itself to the quena flute) from the same region are mainly danced in connection with the sowing and harvest of the tubers. The most striking part of the costume used by Ch'uqila dancers is the 1.20 meters high, eye-catching ch'uqilpanqara, a headdress made of feathers resembling the flowering of the tubers in the sprouting period. It is worn by the male dancers who execute different choreographical figures playing their quena flutes and moving in serpentine lines.

Este capítulo se enfoca en la etnobotánica del shipibo-konibo (SK), un pueblo indígena de la zona del río Ucayali, ubicado en la Amazonía peruana. El capítulo está dividido en dos partes. En la primera parte se exponen los distintos medios naturales de las riberas del río Ucayali y diversos conceptos importantes de los SK sobre el mundo vegetal. Las condiciones de vida humanas y conceptos importantes sobre el mundo de las plantas son explicados. Jacques Tournon es el autor de la primera parte. Por otro lado, la segunda parte se basa en investigaciones etnobotánicas cualitativas y cuantitativas realizadas en dos comunidades de los SK del Ucayali.
Contiene los resultados de inventarios botánicos y etnobotánicos de cuatro parcelas de una de una hectárea, mismas que representan diversos ecosistemas forestales presentes en la comarca de los SK. Esta sección es el resultado
de un trabajo en equipo realizado desde 1991 hasta 1996

This dissertation outlines a research proposal for investigating ayahuasca tourism in Iquitos, the epicentre of the international ayahuasca industry. Growing numbers of Western tourists are visiting Iquitos to partake in ayahuasca ceremonies with shamans in the surrounding jungle, a phenomenon increasingly recognised as the ‘Ayahuasca Boom’. In Section I, discussion of the literature reveals significant gaps in academic understandings of the encounter between locals and ayahuasca tourists. From the local perspective, the extent to which Peruvians are truly benefitting from ayahuasca tourism is questionable, and requires a postcolonial examination. Likewise, further research is needed to establish how locals are affected by the commodification of ayahuasca through tourism. From the tourist perspective, how ayahuasca experiences are authenticated is unexplored. The various ‘types’ of ayahuasca tourist are not well understood, and there is no academic consensus as to the category of tourism represented by the ayahuasca industry. Section II outlines a proposed methodology to tackle the shortcomings of existing research. This incorporates the outcomes and hypotheses of an in-depth pilot study, through which a focused research agenda is constructed. The proposed research project will contribute towards a more holistic understanding of ayahuasca tourism from the perspective of multiple stakeholders in the ayahuasca industry.

Resumen: Uniendo los conocimientos de los dos autores, siendo Mori integrante del pueblo shipibo y Brabec etnomusicólogo europeo, se investigan las relaciones entre a) el arte, b) la música y c) la medicina tradicional así como la cosmovisión de los Shipibo-Konibo, cuestionando varios "mitos" sobre "diseños curativos" los que "se pueden cantar", sobre códigos enigmáticos en las canciones (medicinales así como no medicinales) así como en los diseños, respectivamente, y sobre los "libros" de los Shipibo mencionados en una parte de la literatura etnográfica. Además se trata de la conexión entre la medicina del ayawaska, las canciones medicinales y los presuntos "diseños curativos". Del análisis de una canción con función explícita de "evocar diseños", sus letras poéticas y sus estructuras musicales transcritas y comparadas con los diseños, resulta 1º) que los diseños geométricos discutidos (kené/kewé) sirven para indicar identidad étnica, belleza y calidad, pero que no se encuentra evidencia alguna de un código, 2º) que ciertas correspondencias se encuentran exclusivamente en un nivel estético (sin referencias a una perspectiva esotérica), y 3º) que el significado principal implicado en los diseños depende de la idea personal, de la inspiración propia de la artista misma (la que no suele obedecer a normas "dictadas" por un curandero masculino). * Bernd Brabec de Mori (*1975, Bregenz/Austria), etnomusicólogo graduado en la Universidad de Viena, actualmente se dedica a elaborar su tesis de doctorado con el tema "Documentación y análisis de las prácticas musicales contemporáneas en poblaciones indígenas en el valle del río Ucayali" (asesor: Gerhard Kubik). Ha llevado a cabo investigaciones del campo durante cinco años, incluso con apoyo económico del programa "DOC" de la Academia de Ciencias de Austria (ÖAW). Es autor de varios artículos sobre música, arte y medicina indígena en la Amazonía peruana y participa frecuentemente en ponencias en respectivos encuentros científicos. Trabaja en el Archivo Fonográfico (Phonogrammarchiv) de la ÖAW. -Laida Mori Silvano de Brabec, Neten Rama (*1975, Ucayali/Perú), bachiller en educación bilingüe intercultural, pertenece a la primera generación de indígenas amazónicos que realizaron formación escolar estatal bilingüe en las comunidades nativas. Completó sus estudios superiores en pedagogía en la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima. Trabajó como asistente lingüística e investigadora con F. Rama LeClerc (París) y luego con el co-autor en investigaciones de prácticas medicinales y música shipibo-konibo, además como traductora y guía de campo. En Austria participa en ponencias y conferencias acerca de culturas y artes indígenas. -Una versión preliminar de este artículo fue presentado en el congreso "4. Südamerika-nistInnentreffen Wien 2007" (1-4 de marzo del 2007, en Viena, Austria).

El presente texto busca exponer y analizar la construcción de la identidad frente a una realidad que está en proceso de cambio, además de buscar la relación que los vincule a ambos. La Amazonia Peruana desde su descubrimiento hasta la actualidad está pasando por un proceso de transformaciones y los grupos étnicos no están exentos de ellos. Por mencionar un par de casos, los shipibo y los cocama, a lo largo de su historia ciertos atributos han revalorado y otros han rechazado; asimismo, la aparición de nuevas instituciones también han influenciado el proceso de transformación, un ejemplo de ello son las escuelas o las misiones. Estas han reproducido patrones culturales ajenos a su entorno y también han funcionado como agencias de movilización.

Pedro Favarón es comunicador social, periodista, investigador, ensayista y poeta. Es comunero empadronado de la comunidad nativa de Santa Clara, de la nación indígena shipibo-konibo. Doctor en Literatura por la Universidad de Montreal y Magister en Comunicación y Cultura por la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Lleva más de 17 años trabajando con plantas medicinales del Perú y con médicos tradicionales de distintos pueblos indígenas, tanto de la región andino-amazónica como de Norteamérica. Fundador y director de la Clínica de Medicina Tradicional Nishi Nete. Contribuye periódicamente con la revista El Ojo Interior – Semillas para la Consciencia Ciudadana editada en Trujillo. Vive a orillas del caño del Mapo Tae, en el distrito de Yarinacocha, Perú.

This dissertation investigates the pathways and consequences of the commodification of ayahuasca, an Indigenous psychoactive and medicinal Amazonian plant brew, and the Shipibo healing rituals associated with its use. The “ayahuasca complex” is an assemblage of socionatural boundary beings, more-than-human relations, and interspecies and Indigenous practices that produce ayahuasca as a global commodity. I argue that the ayahuasca complex produces worlds in which both plant beings and humans participate, and which create ontological openings toward life. Providing healing services to outsiders is one way that Shipibo communities in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon have responded to the conditions of globalization and regional histories of colonial violence, racism, and resource extractivism; but these communities are still living in great poverty.

This dissertation unfolds in response to four guiding research questions: (1) how does the commodification of ayahuasca differ, if at all, from the socioeconomic and socioecological relations that have defined the extraction of other resources in Ucayali?; (2) how do Shipibo communities and healers benefit from ayahuasca tourism and what are the limitations on their ability to benefit?; (3) how does the adoption of Shipibo healing practices by outsiders affect relationships between humans and plant beings?; and (4) how can outsiders and researchers like myself work in Shipibo communities in ways that are not exploitative and extractive?

My findings are based on fourteen months of ethnographic research in Ucayali, Peru (over five years), in which I conducted interviews, ecological studies, focus groups, and participant-observation of practices associated with ayahuasca, including harvesting, cooking, and healing. I also lived and worked in Shipibo communities and became involved in NGO projects and a community-based forest management project. My work dwells at the intersection of political ecology, STS (Science, Technology, and Society), environmental history, and environmental anthropology while also emphasizing decolonial approaches and introducing feminist and multispecies lenses to this topic.

I use a political ecology framework to show that although the ayahuasca boom may appear similar to other extractive frontiers, the plants used to make ayahuasca also resist commodification in certain ways and create their own particular economic pathways that do not conform to usual commodity circuits. Nonetheless, as with other extractive economies, resources flow northward to rich countries through the growing ayahuasca commodity web. Although the commodification of ayahuasca does open up channels for resources to flow back to Shipibo communities, benefits and power continue to be concentrated in the North, and Shipibo communities are constrained by ongoing structural racism from capitalizing on the commodification of ayahuasca.

I find that a legacy of colonial exploitation and extractivism still structures racialized hierarchies in Ucayali and globally, which constrain Shipibo healers’ ability to benefit from capitalist/colonial systems of power. However, ayahuasca’s particular relationships with humans, both material and cultural, causes it to behave unusually as a commodity. This dissertation reveals that plants themselves are important actors in commodity networks. I argue that as the ayahuasca complex moves through capitalist and reductionist frameworks, plant-human relations are altered in such a way that plant agency is constricted. My work draws from the literature on political ontology to understand relational practices as constitutive of worlds. Ayahuasca’s relationship with humans, therefore, is constituted through specific practices that shift as they move through different ontological framings and take on new meanings, values, and configurations of power. I focus on power, knowledge, and healing, as three attributes that are associated with ayahuasca, and use this as an analytic to show that these attributes become unraveled and humanized as ayahuasca is recontextualized. However, new articulations and openings are also created as plants and humans, Shipibo healers and outsiders engage in new types of collaborative worldmaking practices.

This study investigates the changing role of the domesticated sedge waste (Cyperus spp.) among the indigenous Shipibo-Konibo who live in Ucayali river basin in the Peruvian Amazon. Waste is known as piripiri in Spanish and is associated with cultivated plants in the Cyperaceae or sedge family, commonly infected with a fungi. Many indigenous groups in the Amazon are familiar with a large number of piripiri names and uses, however these are associated with only a very small number of botanical taxa. The uses for the grated or mashed tubers of the Cyperus spp. ranges from the treatment of symptoms of physical disease to magical uses that can change state of mind or behaviour. This study offers an analysis of the many folk species of waste that have been used throughout the decades in Shipibo-Konibo culture. The Shipibo-Konibo are known for their medicinal plant knowledge and intricate ken  designs, which are closely related with ken  waste in particular. A literature analysis, unpublished field data and semi-structured interviews in collaboration with the grassroots organisation Alianza Arkana
provided the data for this study. The results show that Shipibo-Konibo culture is deeply intertwined with the wisdom of the plants spirits and the ancestors. However, their culture is rapidly changing due to influences of western education and urbanisation. The changing uses of waste seem to reflect at least to some extent both persistent and new behaviours and values in Shipibo-Konibo society. The rich connections between linguistics, culture and biology make this an illustrative case study for the concept of biocultural diversity.

In this article, I will focus on the processes of learning how to sing – that is, of acquiring curing songs – as well as on the musical phenomena occurring during the current performance. The native people’s communication with beings surrounding them is tightly bound to regarding these as self-reflecting, more or less intelligent agents. As I will show, musical learning and performance addresses such non-humans. A closer view on the singer’s subject positionality during the iteration of musical structures of curing songs can help to understand the role non-humans play in Shipibo ‘medicina’ and further on, in the Shipibo lived world.
In order to unfold my argument, I will first embark on a cultural analysis of the contexts, origins, and functions of the songs. Doing so, I will mainly refer to what the singers themselves told me about their art. These indigenous explanations provide a synthesis of my field research in the region. The fieldwork was conducted mainly from an intracultural point of view, combined with interethnic comparative data. The cultural analysis will include indigenous terminology with regards to cosmology and musical phenomena, an exploration of the ontological status of ‘a song’, and a detailed description of how the singers are supposed to acquire their songs from non-humans. Thereafter, I am going to present and analyze four Shipibo curing songs. Their melodic form, excerpts from their lyrics, and their performance modalities will be compared. Discussing the similarities and differences between these songs, I seek to explore if an analysis of performance could shed more light on the songs’ meaning than an analysis of their form.

In Western Amazonian indigenous and mestizo medical concepts, substances play a great role. In order for a substance to be efficient, a ritual or medical specialist should sing a song or whistle a melody towards the remedy. The song is then ‘contained’ in the remedy. The song may be for instructing, negotiating with, or repulsing non-human persons, like animals, spirits, or ancestors. Magical singing is also effective by singing directly to a client. Specialists can establish performative ontological linkages between human and non-human persons. By singing such linkages into being, the singer inscribes the non-human’s qualities in the human client’s body, very much like when ingesting a substance. The singers’ voices are understood as a substance that remains in the body. The same applies if the song was sung or whistled onto a remedy or a tobacco cigarette. These phenomena allow for a deeper investigation into indigenous conceptualisations of the sonic and of what can be heard and understood by whom. Finally, these findings shed more light on local concepts of the structure of the world within which we, and the spirits, live.

The significance of the sonic, especially of vocal music, in the context of animism and perspectivism was hitherto underestimated in anthropological theory. Working on examples of Shipibo-Konibo magical songs from the author's own ethnomusicological fieldwork recordings, in this paper it is proposed that the first-person experience of médicos (healers or sorcerers) has to be considered most valuable for interpreting structures of relationships between humans and non-humans. This experience surfaces most obviously in singing styles and lyrics of songs performed by médicos in the current state of interaction with non-humans during ritual curing, worshipping, or fighting. Results obtained from this analysis include: 1) The ascription of consciousness and human or humanoid physicality to non-humans is the result of the médico's perceptions during musically induced or controlled altered states of perception and cognition (ASPC); 2) The transformation into and identification with non-humans involve full conscious experience by the médico and therefore pertain to the highest level of evidentiality in Shipibo discourse which is ontologically determining; 3) Human physicality and competence of perception and action is not universal among all beings but is a matter of grading dependent on magical and practical powers of the respective species; 4) A "sonic perspectivism" allowing for agency in the construction of perspectives, and an "ambient multinaturalism" extending the notion of transformation from body to environment, are introduced by analysing sonic phenomena. Finally, the author proposes to focus more on indigenous praxis than on analysis and comparison of narratives in order to understand indigenous ontologies.

Analysing healing practices at an ayahuasca tourism centre in Peru, this article illustrates how Shipibo practices of curing and sorcery have adapted to the demands of international clients searching for primitivist healing experiences. At the core of this adaption is the thorny issue of occult power and its relation to capital accumulation. Sorcery here does not serve clients but is manifest among healers working to capitalize on the guests' primitivist rejections of modern life while operating in environments of economic scarcity and ambient poverty. Ayahuasca tourists do not request and generally do not believe in sorcery, but their very presence generates and negates the local moral economy of sorcery in novel ways. The article explores a paradoxical aspect of ayahuasca tourism wherein guests purge similar anxious desires for capital accumulation that healers achieve when curing them.

In the Peruvian Amazon, tobacco has a long history as a medicinal and magical agent. This becomes evident in names for healers or sorcerers in indigenous languages often connected to the use of tobacco (e.g. among the Matsiguenka, Asháninka, Yine), as well as in the techniques they apply for apprenticeship, curing or sorcery. The role of tobacco therefore is much more established in the region than the historically younger hallucinogen ayawaska. Among Shipibo-Konibo, for example, tobacco is a necessary prerequisite for obtaining the healer’s magical phlegm kenyon; stones with magical agency (inkanto) are ‘fed’ with tobacco; healers swallow tobacco (smoke or juice) for sucking treatments (oyoti), sorcerers blow smoke from previously magically charged pipes or cigarettes towards their victims, love magic works similarly. For all these actions and more, tobacco is necessary, but ayawaska is not.
A series of tobacco songs, or magical songs related to the use of tobacco are analysed in order to underline the fundamental historical importance of tobacco in the Ucayali valley of the Peruvian lowlands. Tobacco is a medium of communication and transformation, it is shared among humans and non-human entities, it is the carrier of love magic and it expands the songs which manifest as space in the spirit’s world. Notably, tobacco is always a medium and almost never a person. It seems to transcend, or undermine, the anthropomorphic basic of perspectivistic theory. In conclusion, it appears that the close association of tobacco with sorcery and warfare in former times clings to reciprocal ethics of illness and curing, while the more commercially oriented use of ayawaska in post-modern society seems detached from such reciprocity and represents the ‘good side’ of a probably Christian dichotomy, which explains the decline of tobacco-oriented magic in favour of ayawaska-based ‘shamanism’.

INTRODUCCIÓN La cultura Diaguita chilena creó un estilo de representa-ción abstracto y simétrico cuyos simbolismo y contexto recién en nuestros días hemos logrado descubrir en parte. El arte abstracto es esencialmente ambiguo, vale decir, el observador no puede asignar un contenido unívoco a las representaciones. El arte diaguita preincaico ex-plora juegos ópticos que engañan nuestra percepción; se trata de configuraciones visuales en que "formas y esquemas puros tienden a transformarse ante nuestros ojos. Casi parece como si el ojo conociera sentidos de los que la mente no sabe nada. La yuxtaposición de formas y colores nos hace caer en las más inesperadas trampas, las trampas conocidas como 'ilusiones ópticas'" (Gombrich 1999: 260). La maestría y delicadeza de sus diseños da cuenta de la importancia cultural asignada a esta actividad por sus creadores. Sin embargo, comprendemos solo parcialmente lo que subyace a este marcado esfuerzo cultural por explorar los derroteros del arte abstracto y simétrico. Es importante, entonces, realizar un esfuerzo por acercarnos a este concepto indígena de lo estético. Por otra parte, planteamos que el arte diaguita preincaico no constituye un logro aislado en el contexto indígena sudamericano, sino que forma parte de una tradición cultural mayor, que cuenta con una gran profundidad temporal y de la cual aún existen pueblos El arte diaguita preincaico presenta una lógica visual caracterizada por el empleo de complejas simetrías, ilusión de movimiento y vibración, infinita variabilidad a partir de elementos geométricos acotados, horror vacui, atracción hipnótica, entre otros. Estas características, así como la asociación de este arte a un alter ego animal (jaguar) y la evidencia de consumo de alucinógenos, permiten plantear un vínculo cultural con cierto arte visual de naturaleza arqueológica (mojocoya) y etnográfica (shipibo-conibo). Planteamos que, en este caso, se trata de "tecnologías de encantamiento" (Gell 1998) que tienen agencia y cautivan al espectador, pues los patrones abstractos poseen características de animación no mimética de difícil comprensión. En contextos etnográficos, estos patrones decorativos cumplen un importante rol en estrategias de sanación chamánicas. Palabras clave: cultura Diaguita chilena, cultura Shipibo-Conibo, arte chamánico sudamericano, simetría, vínculos culturales. Pre-Inca Diaguita decorative patterns present a visual logic, characterized by the use of complex symmetries, optical illusions , an endless variety of simple geometric forms, horror vacui, hypnotic attraction and other techniques. These aspects, as well as the association of this visual art with an animal alter ego (jaguar) and evidence of the use of hallucinogenics, suggest a cultural link with specific ethnographic (shipibo-conibo) and archaeological (mojocoya) visual art. We propose that in this case we are dealing with visual "technologies of enchantment" (Gell 1998) that are deemed to have social agency and captivate the viewer with extremely complex, apparently animated non-mimetic abstract patterns. In ethnographic contexts, similar decorative patterns play an important role in shamanic healing strategies.

Shipibo indigenous people perform a sophisticated array of vocal musical genres, including short 'laughing songs' called osanti. These song-jokes make fun of certain non-humans, mostly animals. They are by definition sung from within the nonhumans' perspective. Osanti are only performed by trained specialists in indigenous medicine and sorcery (médicos), because it is crucial that the performer owns the faculty of transforming into the animal in question, although in osanti the singers do not transform. Songs involving actual transformation are not meant for laughing: these are magical songs including interaction with and transformation into animals or spirits that possess a more ample radius of perception and action than 'Real Human' beings.

A partir de la historia del Perú, y como consecuencia de la colonización, se puede observar que tanto la región andina como la amazónica han crecido a espaldas del resto del país. Esto ha causado que a lo largo de los años ocurra un desarrollo desequilibrado en lo que respecta a lo económico, pero también a lo social, pues en el caso específico de la región amazónica, se cuenta con una gran diversidad cultural que sufre marginación por parte del resto del país. Es así que se identifica un problema de inclusión social y la posibilidad de abordarlo desde el enfoque de la comunicación intercultural como una base de relacionamiento y negociación entre los distintos actores. La presente comunicación, que se encuentra basada en una investigación realizada durante los meses de abril y septiembre del 2014, revisará la historia de la región amazónica, conceptos teóricos y los resultados del trabajo de campo como información básica para entender el caso presentado.

The present paper lists and illustrates eleven strategies that are systematically used by Shipibo-Konibo speakers in order to comment live soccer matches in the context of an indigenous soccer cup informally called "Mundialito Shipibo". We argue that these lexical, morphosyntactic and discursive strategies can be classified into three types according to their function: iconic strategies, which attempt to present the information more vividly (onomatopoeic forms and ideophones, reduplications, parallel structures and hearsay-quotatives); emotional strategies, which are used by soccer commentators to express their emotions and their feelings (interjections, player-directed speech and diminutives); and proximity strategies, which bring the speech closer to the Shipibo-Konibo audience (lexical Shipibo-Konibo innovations, vocatives, evidential access configurations and code alternations). These various strategies are crucial for understanding the new social dynamics that the Shipibo-Konibo language is getting into as a consequence of becoming an urban language, and are clearly creating a new speech genre. The new social uses that the Shipibo-Konibo people are giving to their language and the features that the language is developing in this new social context are crucial to understand the future of Shipibo-Konibo and other minority languages in Peru. keywords: Amazon region; Pano family; Shipibo-Konibo language; Soccer commentations; Urban indigenous languages.

In present times, it may be surprising to see the word "origins" in the title of an ethnomusicological article. Reviewing historical and current hypotheses on the origins of song, or music more generally, it becomes apparent that most authors interpret a possible bifurcation between (spoken) language and (sung) music as the most plausible point from which "music" evolved. Curt Sachs states polemically, "Music began with singing" (1943: 21). In this article, I suggest that seeking to understand the moment in which this bifurcation, or rather spreading out, of utterances occurred is a productive task. Understanding the differences between speech and song is a starting point for unpacking how these distinct phenomena emerged. Alternatively, thinking about those prehistoric times when speech and song emerged may support insights about modern meaning and the function of utterances that occupy a liminal space between speech and song.

This book focuses on ethnobotany and phytotherapy, or culturally different ways of relating to plants. It is divided into seven chapters, starting with the introduction and description of the methodological framework. Each chapter contains original contributions from authors who have done research in a particular region in Europe, America, Africa or Asia. The book is finished by an overview of authors’ profiles focused on future plans in research and fieldwork.

Ayahuasca has become a subject of great interest in recent years. Academics, spiritual seekers, communities, and curious individuals have all been intrigued by this topic through either writing about it or direct participation in the contemporary spiritual phenomenon that is ayahuasca, which holds promises of bestowing upon its users profound wisdom or healing. However, what anthropological (but also popular) writings barely comment on are the deviant perceptions that arise out of experiences seeking amelioration or transcendence, and the subjective ways in which those experiences are interpreted. Consequently, I wish to supplement this scope of representation. In this text, I present fieldwork conducted in the Peruvian Amazon amid the Shipibo, focusing on the experiences of the spiritual seekers who came to them in search of healing or self-discovery. I discovered a unique contradiction—participation in Shipibo ayahuasca practices while simultaneously having or developing a negative perception or attitude towards it. These aberrances are held, as I argue herein, (incognizantly) in the expressed attitudes of the Westerners (especially North American and European) as a result of the positivist notions that emerged from the Age of Enlightenment (but are not limited to it). My priority in this article is to present and expound on these atypical associations and place them against a historical (Western) background to elucidate the origin of the thus found and experienced perceptions.

Este estudio explora la duración vocálica en el castellano hablado por bilingües shipibo-castellano de la comunidad de Cantagallo. Este análisis se realiza tomando en cuenta el trabajo de Elías Ulloa (2011) quien examina las vocales largas del shipibo a partir de la noción de tamaño mínimo de palabra, requerimiento que no está presente en castellano. Los resultados indican que los hablantes bilingües producen vocales con mayor duración que las de los monolingües. Además, la duración vocálica entre estos bilingües varía dependiendo de su dominancia hacia shipibo o castellano. Por otro lado, sugiero que la naturaleza de las vocales largas producidas en el castellano de los hablantes shipibo podría deberse a la transferencia del requerimiento del peso silábico del shipibo al castellano.

This study explores the vowel duration spoken by Shipibo-Spanish bilinguals from the community of Cantagallo. This research takes into account the work of Elías Ulloa (2011), who analyzes the duration of Shipibo vowels founded on the notion of minimum word size, requirement that doesn't exist in Spanish. Results indicate that bilingual speakers produce longer vowels than monolingual speakers. Also, vowel duration among these bilinguals varies depending on their Shipibo and Spanish dominance. On the other hand, I suggest that the nature of the long vowels produced in Spanish by Shipibo speakers could be due to the transfer of the requirement of syllabic weight from Shipibo to Spanish.

Cette thèse propose une analyse anthropologique des dynamiques de la société shipibo contemporaine au contact des réalités politiques / économiques occidentales, du tourisme chamanique et du prosélytisme évangéliste protestant. Elle se concentre sur le cas du village péruvien de San Francisco, dont la particularité, contrairement à la plupart des autres villages amazoniens, est d’être situé à proximité d’une ville (Pucallpa). L’enquête ethnographique illustre la manière dont les Shipibo appréhendent de manière critique la présence de ces différents éléments impérialistes dans le village. En effet, malgré la marginalisation économique qui affecte les populations locales, certains chamanes astucieux tirent profit de l’altération de leur société, via le rituel et la mythologie de l’ayahuasca, ainsi que leur reconfiguration à travers le marketing et les références chrétiennes, pour renforcer la logique d’altérité constituante et la relation prédatrice sur laquelle est traditionnellement...

This book focuses on ethnobotany and phytotherapy, or culturally different ways of relating to plants. It is divided into seven chapters, starting with the introduction and description of the methodological framework. Each chapter contains original contributions from authors who have done research in a particular region in Europe, America, Africa or Asia. The book is finished by an overview of authors’ profiles focused on future plans in research and fieldwork.

The present paper lists and illustrates eleven strategies that are systematically used by Shipibo-Konibo speakers in order to comment live soccer matches in the context of an indigenous soccer cup informally called “Mundialito Shipibo”. We argue that these lexical, morphosyntactic and discursive strategies can be classified into three types according to their function: iconic strategies, which attempt to present the information more vividly (onomatopoeic forms and ideophones, reduplications, parallel structures and hearsay-quotatives); emotional strategies, which are used by soccer commentators to express their emotions and their feelings (interjections, player-directed speech and diminutives); and proximity strategies, which bring the speech closer to the Shipibo-Konibo audience (lexical Shipibo-Konibo innovations, vocatives, evidential access configurations and code alternations). These various strategies are crucial for understanding the new social dynamics that the Shipibo-Konib...