Crisis at the Border: Amazonian Relations with Spirits and Others

  • Artionka Capiberibe
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic book series (PHSWM)

Abstract

This chapter has as its theme a phenomenon called the “Crisis” by the indigenous peoples living in the Amazon region of the Brazilian/French Guyana border. It is an outbreak of attacks by spirits occurring inside and outside the different Christian churches in the indigenous area. The chapter shows that the Crisis has spread in the region through a common grammar based on shamanism, which conjoins the distinct forms of Christian religiosity and indigenous ritualistic practices through the permeability of the different worlds of the Amerindian cosmos and by their drive to alterity.

Keywords

Indigenous peoples Brazil French guyana Christianities Religious ecstasy Religious possession God Devils Shamanism Indigenous cosmology Alterity 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The research for this chapter was partially funded by a Ford/Cebrap project grant (2013) and by PPGAS-Museu Nacional/UFRJ, CAPES and projeto NUTI-PRONEX grants (2004–2008). This chapter has benefitted from discussions with Aparecida Vilaça, whose suggestions are partly incorporated here. I also thank Michael Ostling and Christiane Fontinha de Alcantara for their interventions in the text. Any remaining shortcomings are my own.

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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  • Artionka Capiberibe
    • 1
  1. 1.State University of Campinas / IFCH-UNICAMPCampinasBrazil

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