Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of East Anglia
Apapaatai: Rituais de Máscaras no Alto Xingu
This book is an ethnography of the social relations that the Wauja Indians of the Upper Xingu establish with their prototypical beings of alterity ― the apapaatai ― via both illnesses and masquerade rituals. The books analyses and describes a sequential structure of ritual actions characterized by a shamanic ontology. The long-term enactment of these rituals consolidates two permanent social categories amongst the Wauja, known as kawoká-mona and nakai wekeho. These relations are institutionalized in masquerade rituals which form the medium for exchanges between different Wauja residential units, a generosity-respect-shame ethos, and Wauja cosmopolitics.