Strange Enemies

"This intimate portrait of a remarkable people who insist on encountering modernity on their own terms challenges us to think beyond outmoded notions about acculturation and loss of tradition. Deftly weaving the insights of Amazonian perspectivism with history, myth, and personal experience, Aparecida Vilaca shows how Wari' choices to live with whites and adopt many of their ways are part of the logic of being indigenous. Empowerment derives from seeing the world through the eyes of others. "Strange Enemies" invites us to see the world through Wari' eyes. The view is fascinating."--Beth A. Conklin, author of "Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society"

Aparecida Vilaça is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology in the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology of the Museu Nacional, Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro. She is a co-editor of Native Christians: Modes and Effects of Christianity in the Americas.

"It is based upon an intimate and extensive knowledge of their culture and fundamental notions and proposes an explanation of how and why these contingent events unfolded in the last hundred years the way they did. As is evident from this enumeration, the depth of the ethnography is combined with an analysis firmly based upon the current state of Amazonian ethnology. The book is a well-written, highly readable, profound and original ethnographic and analytic contribution to Amazonian ethnology and 'first encounter' literature, such that any divergence in interpretation will also need an extended argument: it should be read by everyone interested in the subject." Edwin Reesink, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies "Thanks to the excellent anthropological work of Aparecida Vilaca and colleagues studying Amazonia and Melanesia, it becomes increasingly apparent that the incorporation of otherness--in practices ranging from marriage and shamanism to warfare and cannibalism--is an essential condition of human being. It follows that the relationship between societies is an essential condition of their respective cultural orders as well as their historical development. Now Vilaca has produced a landmark ethnography of these processes, with an unparalleled documentation from the inside of the assimilation of the outside, highlighted by a stunning analysis of the cultural reciprocities of the colonial encounter."--Marshall Sahlins, author of The Western Illusion of Human Nature "This intimate portrait of a remarkable people who insist on encountering modernity on their own terms challenges us to think beyond outmoded notions about acculturation and loss of tradition. Deftly weaving the insights of Amazonian perspectivism with history, myth, and personal experience, Aparecida Vilaca shows how Wari' choices to live with whites and adopt many of their ways are part of the logic of being indigenous. Empowerment derives from seeing the world through the eyes of others. Strange Enemies invites us to see the world through Wari' eyes. The view is fascinating."--Beth A. Conklin, author of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society