Praying and Preying - Christianity in Indigenous Amazonia

"This volume is an outstanding model of how ethnography and theory can illuminate each other. Drawing on a sophisticated command of anthropology’s central debates and decades of careful research with the Wari', Aparecida Vilaça’s masterful discussion is a real gem."—Webb Keane, author of Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter

"This book will be something of a milestone in the long journey anthropology has made in the company of people facing vast changes in their lives. Vilaça brings to a new level recent probings of Christian practice: as it becomes a vehicle through which the Amazonian Wari' give shape to their world, Christianity itself shifts, and it is no longer quite the perspective on change an outsider might have thought. Frankly and lucidly written, this is a superb testimony to the openness of first-hand inquiry." —Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

 

List of contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1 • The New Tribes Mission
2 • Versions versus Bodies: Translations in Contact
3 • The Encounter with the Missionaries
4 • Eating God’s Words: Kinship and Conversion
5 • Praying and Preying
6 • Strange Creator
7 • Christian Ritual Life
8 • Moral Changes
9 • Personhood and Its Translations
Conclusion

Notes
References
Index

About the author

Aparecida Vilaça is Associate Professor at the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at the Museu Nacional, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of Strange Enemies, Quem somos nós, and Comendo como gente and coeditor of Native Christians. 

Summary

Offers an anthropological monograph on the Christian experience of contemporary Amazonian indigenous peoples, based on an ethnographic study of the relationship between the Wari', inhabitants of Brazilian Amazonia, and the Evangelical missionaries of the New Tribes Mission.

Additional text

"Praying and Preying is a remarkably original and important study."

Product details

Authors	Aparecida Vila&, Aparecida Vilaça, Aparecida Vilaca, Aparecida Vilaça, Vilaca Aparecida, Aparecida Vilaoca
Publisher	University Of California Press
Languages	English
Product format	Hardback
Released	29.03.2016
EAN	9780520289130
ISBN	978-0-520-28913-0
No. of pages	330
Series	The Anthropology of Christianity; The Anthropology of Christianity
Subjects	Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Christianity; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Miscellaneous; Brazil, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Indigenous Studies, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Indigenous Peoples, Relating to indigenous peoples, Social and cultural anthropology

Product details

• Authors: Aparecida Vila&, Aparecida Vilaça, Aparecida Vilaca, Aparecida Vilaça, Vilaca Aparecida, Aparecida Vilaoca
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 29.03.2016
• EAN: 9780520289130
• ISBN: 978-0-520-28913-0
• No. of pages: 330
• Series: The Anthropology of Christianity; The Anthropology of Christianity
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Christianity; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Miscellaneous; Brazil, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Indigenous Studies, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Indigenous Peoples, Relating to indigenous peoples, Social and cultural anthropology