The Shamanism of Eco-Tourism
The Shamanism of Eco-Tourism
$120.00
USDIn the first book in English to focus specifically on the Makushi in Guyana, James Andrew Whitaker examines how shamanism informs Makushi interactions with outsiders in the context of historical missionization and contemporary tourism. The Makushi are an Indigeneous people who speak a Cariban language and live in Guyana, Brazil, and Venezuela. Combining ethnohistory, ethnographic fieldwork, and archival research, this book elucidates a shamanic framework that is seen in Makushi engagements with outsiders in the past and present. It shows how this framework structures interactions between Makushi groups and various visitors in Guyana. Similar to how Makushi shamans draw in spirit allies, Makushi groups seek human outsiders and form strategic partnerships with them to obtain desired resources that are used for local goals and transformative projects. The book advances recent scholarship concerning ontological relations in Amazonia and is positioned at the cusp of debates over Amazonian relations with alterity.
- The first book in English to focus specifically on the Makushi in Guyana
- Guides the reader from specific ethnographic and ethnohistorical contexts to a broader pattern of interactions that characterizes past and present Makushi engagements with outsiders
- Combines ethnography, ethnohistory, and theory to create a comprehensive work for both specialists and general readers
Reviews & endorsements
‘Written in a clear and engaging style, James Andrew Whitaker provides a case study for discussions about the ontological turn in anthropology, the relationship between history and culture, multi-species ethnography, and the effects of tourism on indigenous communities. It will make an excellent contribution to current scholarship and teaching.’ Rachel Corr, author of Ritual and Remembrance in the Ecuadorian Andes
‘In this finely conceived volume, Whitaker has traced two hundred years of how the Makushi have transformed outsiders, especially missionaries and tourists, into parts of a long-established social order, thereby maintaining their society and cosmology despite numerous threats.’ Mark Harris, University of Adelaide
Product details
February 2025Hardback
9781009478403
229 pages
235 × 158 × 18 mm
0.48kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Fetching the outside among the Makushi
- 2. Eco-Tourism and development in Surama Village
- 3. Missionaries, explorers, and other Spirits
- 4. Transformation and otherness: Prophetic movements in the aftermath of early missionization
- 5. Spirits in the landscape: Makushi Shamanism and ecological relations
- 6. Tourists as shamanic spirits: strategic engagements with the other
- 7. Becoming the other: shifting alterity In Surama Village
- Afterword
- Index.
