ANTH XXX: Amazonian Religion and Nature
Contact Hours: 45 Credits: 3
Instructor: Tod Swanson
Course Description
The course examines Amazonian cultural knowledge of water, weather, plant and animal life seeking to uncover underlying assumptions that constitute a systematic, if implicit, religious philosophy of nature. It also teaches students how to ask key questions and to carry out qualitative ethnographic research in the Cultural Anthropology and the Humanities. How do Amazonian people understand their relatedness to a natural world believed to be alive and human-like? How do they understand the hidden social lives of plants and animals. What is believed to cause new species to emerge or to become extinct? How are human emotions related to the seasonal cycle of rains? How is plant and animal ecology believed to serve as a model for understanding human society and vice versa. What aesthetic, emotional or religious practices were developed to create bonds of empathy or communication between human beings and the natural world.
Learning Objectives:
• Learn to analyze Amazonian narratives on plant and animal origins
• Understand the aesthetics of Amazonian engagement of other species.
• Understand how nature works as a pattern for organizing Amazonian social life and conversely, how social life works as a model for understanding nature.
• Learn to carry out qualitative research in Cultural Anthropology and the Humanities.
Method of Instruction
This course is a field course which teaches students how to elicit and analyze indigenous knowledge of nature. Because Amazonian cultures are oral cultures their knowledge of nature has not been codified in texts but rather in origin stories, art, songs, prohibitions and patterns of speech for addressing nature. It is thus these materials which the course teaches students to analyze.
Grading and Assessment:
Daily entries in an academic journal. 60%
Participation 40%.
Required Readings: (Selections from)
Brown, Michael. Tsewa’s Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society. Smithsonian Institution Press. 1986
Descola, Phillipe. In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia. Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1986].
Muratorio, Blanca. The Life and Times of Grandfather Alonso: Culture and History in the Upper Amazon. Rutgers University Press, 1991.
Overing, Joanna and Alan Passes. The Anthropology of Love and Anger: The Aesthetics of Conviviality in Native Amazonia, Routledge Press, 2000.
Swanson, Tod. Singing to Estranged Relatives: Quichua Relations to Plants in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Journal of Religion and Culture, Vol 3.1 (2009) 36-65.
Saturday June 30 Arrive in Quito
Sunday July 1 Travel down to Iyarina. Culture of the Cloud Forest
Monday July 2 Introduction
Tuesday July 3
Swanson Lecture- Distinctive Common Features of Native Reliigious Traditions
Bélgica Dagua, "How an Unwanted Man Became the Spirit-Eye Tree."(Video recorded and edited by Tod Swanson) . Belgica Dagua. The Origin of Wooly Monkeys
Yawamana Story of the Origin of Ayawaska (animated video)
Wednesday July 4 Plant and animal origin stories. Swanson, Tod. Singing to Estranged Relatives: Quichua Relations to Plants in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Journal of Religion and Culture, Vol 3.1 (2009) 36-65.
Thursday July 5 Swanson, "Relatives of the Living Forest: The Social Relation to Nature Underlying
Ecological Action. Please read the whole article but focus your attention on the portion of the paper from page 5 on. In this article I examine how Amazonian Quichua come into a physical relation with the forest spirit owners of the animals.
Swanson "Mixed Flock Fruit Eating Birds as Symbols of Love Relations"
Friday July 6 Free afternoon
Saturday July 7 Free Day. No class.
Sunday July 8 Free Day. No class.
Monday July 9 The Western Nature/Culture split and its absence in the Native Traditions
And God Made a Farmer: The Origins of Human Exceptionalism in
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Paul Harvey, "So God Made a Farmer." We watched this video in Week 1 as an example of human exceptionalism. This week I would like for you to view it again as example of the key theme of self-reliance. The speech had tremendous appeal because portrayed the self-reliance of farm families as directly intended by God in Genesis. How does this portrait of self-reliance compare to Emerson and Thoreau? Paul Harvey's famous speech delivered at the Future Farmer's of America Convention in Kansas City Missouri in 1978 is here made into a video for the Official Ram Trucks Super Bowl Commercial "Farmer." Please study this short video carefully with the theme of self-reliance in mind..
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He owns the cattle on a thousand hills (with lyrics). Popular Christian western hymn from the 1950s written by Kansas native John W. Peterson. What are the mythic assumptions and practical implications of this song?
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This is my Father's world Popular Christian hymn written by a minister from New York named Maltbie Davenport Babcock. Published in 1901 after his death.
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How Great Thou Art Christian hymn.
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Alone in Nature: The Individual in 19th Century American Art _Hudson River School.pptx
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I come to the Garden Alone (music video) Written in 1912 and included in the Methodist Hymnal this became a favorite hymn in the western United States. In describes being alone in nature as the primary context for Encounter with God.
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Alone in Nature: The Individual in 19th Century American Art _Hudson River School.pptx
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I come to the Garden Alone (music video) Written in 1912 and included in the Methodist Hymnal this became a favorite hymn in the western United States. In describes being alone in nature as the primary context for Encounter with God.
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Bob Ross, "You are the creator." Silly but once very popular Bob Ross exemplifies the idea of each individual as a little God-like creator at least on the canvas. How would this compare to Islamic Art and Sacred Geometry or other texts we have read?
Eulodia Dagua, "On Waking Up a Tree to Ask for Its Medicine."
Peter Gow, Helplessness as the Pre-Condition of Piro Social Life
Tuesday July 10 Belaunde, Fear of Anger among the Airo-Pai
Wednesday July 11
Thursday July 12 Yasuni. National Park. Waorani culture and unconnected peoples
Friday July 13 Yasuni. National Park. Waorani culture and unconnected peoples
Saturday July 14 FYasuni. National Park. Waorani culture and unconnected peoples
Sunday July 15 Yasuni. National Park. Waorani culture and unconnected peoples
Monday July 16
Regina Harrison, The Metaphysics of Sex: Quichua Songs from the Tropical Forest
Yawamana Story of the Origin of Ayawaska (animated video) Swanson, Engaging the Spaces and Times of Species: The Kichwa Temporal Relation to Nature
Tuesday July 17
Cultural relations to water. Descola, “The world of the River.” From In the Society of Nature. Video on Origin of Ayawaska, Anaconda Sirena and the Kandu Stones
Wednesday July 18 Cultural relations to manioc gardens. Michael Brown, “The Gardens Children,” Tsewa’s Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society. Smithsonian Institution Press. 1986.
Thursday July 19 Cultural Relations to Animals in Hunting. Michael Brown, Tsewa’s Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society. Smithsonian Institution Press. 1986.
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Michael Brown, "The Uses of Affinity," from Tsewa's Gift, 67-96 .pdf
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Michael Brown, "The Garden's Children," from Tsewa's Gift, 97-132.pdf
Friday July 20 Guided research and interviewing.
Saturday July 21 Free Day. No class.
Sunday July 22 Free Day. No class.
Monday July 23
Hike into the forest. Round table discussion on strangler figs. Kichwa story of strangler figs. Swanson, Engaging the Spaces and Times of Species: The Kichwa Temporal Relation to Nature.
Tuesday July 24 Native Culture and the Changing Environment
Wednesday July 25 Native Culture and the Changing Environment.
Thursday July 2 6 Final. Course wind up.
Friday July 2 7 Travel to the airport
Saturday July 28 Arrive in Pittsburgh
2-5 Amazonian Religion and Nature
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