Société des Américanistes

Dear member of the Société des Américanistes,

First of all, we wish you all the best for the year 2022.

We are also pleased to announce that the next conference of the Société des Américanistes will take place on Thursday 3 February, at 6pm (Paris time) by videoconference.

We will have the pleasure of welcoming the winner of the Société des Américanistes’ Young Researcher Prize.

Rodrigo Bulamah

.

Circular ruins : life and history in the north of Haiti

Circular Ruins: Life and History in the north of Haiti is a historical work about the village of Milot, where different traces of past times overlap and intersect in the ritual and daily experiences of the inhabitants of the Haitian Mornes. By focusing on interactions with ruins, ancestors, animals and symbols, I propose an anthropology dedicated to the production of the past, present and future in this Caribbean context. Combining ethnography and archival work, I argue that history is a more-than-human process, actively produced by the work of various agents who generate contemporary forms of life in the ruins of colonial and revolutionary projects.

The login link will be sent to you a week before this session.

Dear members, we are pleased to invite you to the General Assembly of the Société des Américanistes, which will take place on December 15, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. (Paris time).

The Assembly will be followed by the screening of the film “Under the Clouds”, directed by Marco Antonio Gonçalves and Eliska Altmann in 2015.

 

Portuguese with english subtitles, 74 minutes

 

In 1961, for the first time in Brazil’s history, a woman, Carolina Maria de Jesus, living in a slum in São Paulo, writes about her daily life and has her diary published. Fifty years later the directors of the film, inspired by this diary, go to look for characters that somehow dialogue with Carolina. In the slum Complexo da Maré, in Rio de Janeiro, five women reveal different experiences and visions of their life in the slum, thus creating continuities and discontinuities with the poetic and critical vision of life expressed by Carolina de Jesus. The voices and visions of these women, Geandra, Iraci, Edilma, Maria da Paz and Vanessa, provide a revigorating and poetically rich image of life in the slums that escapes from the current themes of violence and male dominance, revealing a slum literally lived through a feminine soul. Through the voice of Geandra, an actress, the words written by Carolina gain a new life, in dialogue with the contemporary voices of the other equally strong characters of the women from the Maré complex.

Dra. Carla Jaimes Betancourt

Department of Anthropology of the Americas, University of Bonn, Germany

Archeology of the Llanos de Moxos: wealth is in diversity

For a long time, the Amazon region occupied a marginal position in the pre-Columbian cultural history of the Americas. However, over the past decades, archaeological research carried out within the framework of numerous projects has revealed a surprising complexity and diversity of cultural processes in the region. Based on the case of the Llanos de Mojos in Bolivia, this presentation summarizes the current debates and the different positions on the domestication of plants, the origin of ceramics, landscape transformations, anthropic forests and complex cultural developments in the pre-Columbian era in the southwest of the Amazon.

The plains of Mojos, in what is now Beni in Bolivia, are characterized by an almost entirely anthropized landscape, the result of several millennia of intense human occupation. From 300 AD, hundreds of monumental sites developed there which, thanks to pre-Hispanic techniques adapted to the management of natural resources, left strong imprints on the landscape. Mojos is an excellent illustration of how diversity can be the best driver of cultural development over time. This conference presents an overview of archaeological research in Mojos and case studies in specific fields.

Eduardo Kohn

An anthropophagic anthropology: towards a psychedelic science

My personal experiences with psychedelic substances in my ethnographic work among the Runa and Sapara communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon have led me to broaden the concept of “psychedelic” to encompass the processes that give rise to the “world-called-forest” (sacha in Kichwa, naku in Sapara). In this talk, I will try to explain, first, what it means to say that the “world-called-forest” is psychedelic; second, how anthropology is a psychedelic science; and, finally, how a psychedelic science can serve as a guide for dealing with the global ecological crisis that threatens the “world-called-forest” of which we are part.

The conference will be given in Spanish

For your information, the next session will be held on June 17 and we will be pleased to receive Anthony K. Webster (University of Texas, Austin).

Pablo F. Sendón

(CONICET-Argentina)

The Massif of Ausangate as a Field of Ethnological Research

The Southeastern part of the region of Cuzco (Peru) lies at the foot of the massive mountain range of the Ausangate, exceeding 5000 meters above sea level, which separates the Amazonian basin to the North from the Andean valleys to the South. Owing to the severe ecological conditions of habitat at these high altitudes, the exposure to strong winds, the extreme seasons, and the poverty of the soil, it would appear, at first glance, that any form of human endeavour should be doomed. Nonetheless, all of this region, including its most distant corners that are adjacent to eternal snow, is inhabited by an indigenous Quechua-speaking population whose productive activities, patterns of social organisation, symbolic conceptions and ritual practices, indicates that they constitute a unity that lends itself to be treated as a field of ethnological research. This lecture proposes a definition based on specific ethnographic data collected in Marcapata, the Easternmost district of this part of the Peruvian Andes, a territory that once extended to the entrance of inhospitable lands of the Amazonian Antisuyo.

The conference will be given in Spanish

Dear members, we are pleased to invite you to the General Assembly of the Société des Américanistes, which will take place on Wednesday, December 9, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. (Paris time).

The Assembly will be followed by the announcement of the results of the Publication Prize, awarded for the first time this year, and a presentation of their work by the laureates.

Due to the health situation, this meeting will take place by videoconference, which will allow us to meet despite the distances and oceans. We will send you the connection link the day before the meeting.

Agenda of the General Assembly:

•             Approval of the moral report and the financial report 2019

In case of unavailability, please send us an e-mail with your proxy (with delegation of your power of attorney to one of the members of the Society)

Official announcement of the results of the Publication Prize by Philippe Descola, President of the Society, followed by a 15-minute speech by each of the laureates.

•             Patricia Horcajada Campos : Mayan art in miniatura: las figurillas ceramicas de La Blanca

•             María Agustina Morando : Ñande ñee jekove: lengua y praxis social entre los chanés del noroeste argentino

Cher(e) membre de la société des américanistes,

La prochaine conférence de la Société des Américanistes, organisée en collaboration avec le musée du quai Branly, aura lieu le jeudi 29 octobre 2020, à 16h30-18h30 (merci de bien prendre note de l’horaire), dans la salle de cinéma du musée : Projection et discussion du film Ex pajé (Ex-chaman) Réalisé en 2018 par Luiz Bolognesi

Présenté et discuté par

Cédric Yvinec

Chargé de recherche au laboratoire Mondes Américains (UMR 8168-EHESS)

« Nous n’avons pas de chaman, mais un ancien chaman. »

Depuis leur premier contact « officiel » avec l’Etat brésilien en 1969, les Paiter Suruí, population autochtone vivant dans le bassin amazonien, ont vécu de profonds changements sociaux. Les missionnaires, les smartphones, le gaz et l’électricité, les médicaments, les armes et les médias sociaux font désormais partie leur quotidien. Au milieu de ce nouveau monde, un ex-chaman essaie de trouver une place au sein de sa communauté. Contraint dans le passé de devenir chrétien, il lutte pour guérir les personnes souffrantes de son village, en même temps qu’il fait face à la colère des esprits de la forêt, contrariés d’avoir été abandonnés.

En raison du contexte sanitaire actuel, l’accès à la salle de cinéma sera limité à 45 personnes. Nous reviendrons vers vous rapidement afin de vous tenir informés de la possible mise en place d’une liste de pré-inscription et d’un système de diffusion asynchrone du film et de la discussion.

Chères et chers collègues,

Jeudi 26 mars 2020, la Société des Américanistes recevra :

Nathan Wachtel, directeur d’études honoraire à l’EHESS

et Professeur honoraire au Collège de France,  qui présentera son ouvrage :

Paradis du Nouveau Monde (Fayard, 2019, 340 pages).

6pm, Salle de cinéma du Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, 37 Quai Branly, 75007 Paris.

Résumé : la découverte d’un monde jusqu’alors insoupçonné, à la fin du XVe siècle, suscita en Occident d’innombrables hypothèses et fantasmes. Que ce soit la localisation du Paradis terrestre au cœur de l’Amérique du Sud ou le problème de l’origine des populations indiennes, ces recherches se fondaient souvent sur des études remarquablement documentées, menées avec une rigueur que l’on peut presque dire scientifique. Parallèlement, parmi les populations amérindiennes, en réaction à la situation coloniale, se développèrent sur l’ensemble du continent américain des mouvements «messianiques » ou «prophétiques», récurrents dans la longue durée. Migrations vers le Terre sans Mal, attente du retour de l’Inca, vision extatique du retour des morts dans la Ghost Dance : ces mouvements combinent des croyances et pratiques autochtones avec certains apports occidentaux, en ordonnant ces derniers selon la logique propre des systèmes de pensée indigène. Ainsi se modela au fil des siècles l’identité indienne. L’auteur poursuit, avec ce nouveau livre, sa réflexion sur la pluralité des perspectives historiques, leur complémentarité, pour la restitution d’une histoire globale, et les traces que les traumatismes hérités du passé inscrivent dans les mémoires collectives.