ANTH 2051 Chapter : Economic Anthropology
ANTH 10.24.2013
- Understanding an ethnography are not about knowing the facts, but also about understanding
context and the way stories build on each other.
How has Wari’ life changed after the contact?
- Autonomy (independence)
• Lost their livelihood – being able to support themselves. Their autonomy.
• They were diseased by the people they were interacting with so they had to depend on
them for medicines and help concerning their health and sickness. Everyone was sick, so
there was no one there to take care of the sick people, so not only was the sickness worse
because no one had immunity, but the social system began to collapse because there was
no one to tend to the fields and do work and stuff.
• Missionaries and people with medicine disapproved of cannibalism so they would withhold
the medicine if they found out that if they were practicing it. It was the same if they were
eating insects.
• Wari’ wanted to be respected and that is why they would hide the fact that they ate insects.
• At the same time that they’re losing many relatives and their social system is breaking
down, they can’t bourn their dead and bury them the way they would like to.
- Changes in funerals
• Why not cremation? Because the outsiders didn’t think it was a respectable practice. The
nurses and missionaries were Catholic or Protestant, so they didn’t agree with it. Cremation
would have been easier to accept because Wari’ who had died of diseases before had been
cremated, so they practiced in that as well, and it was considered acceptable/respectable
for them. They also torched parts that they didn’t eat.
• It’s not just that burning was accepted and it was practiced, but it was their understanding
that the ground was not an accepted place to put the dead because it was dirty and cold,
and discarding something on the ground is disrespectful. They have an extensive cultural
meaning about putting something into the ground or on it; they didn’t even sit on the
ground.
• Why was burial difficult to accept? A lot of us who grew up with a lot of furniture and where
it is an integral part of how we relate to the world, we don’t have to worry about where we
sit. But to the Wari’, you either sit on a mat or a rug or you squat or crouch.
- Relocation
• It was often the case that after a family lost someone, they would leave and stay with
relatives for a while so that they wouldn’t have to be at a place with memories of the lost.
They often burned the fields, so you basically had to go and stay with relatives.
• FUNAI was relocating them and they wanted to create more concentrated communities
because they were developing certain regions, there were roads being built, and from the
point of view of the capitol, you’re thinking “How can I have access to these indigenous
communities? How can we send them things?” and it’s easier to do that near a major river
or a major road because that way you can build schools and stuff.
• However this also cut people off from their traditional economic basis. Also, they wanted to
ease their assimilation.
Document Summary
Understanding an ethnography are not about knowing the facts, but also about understanding context and the way stories build on each other. Lost their livelihood being able to support themselves. Their autonomy: they were diseased by the people they were interacting with so they had to depend on them for medicines and help concerning their health and sickness. Because the outsiders didn"t think it was a respectable practice. The nurses and missionaries were catholic or protestant, so they didn"t agree with it. Cremation would have been easier to accept because wari" who had died of diseases before had been cremated, so they practiced in that as well, and it was considered acceptable/respectable for them. They also torched parts that they didn"t eat. A lot of us who grew up with a lot of furniture and where it is an integral part of how we relate to the world, we don"t have to worry about where we sit.
