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This afterword offers a commentary on the concept of relations
discussed in the introduction and the individual contributions to this special issue by critically reflecting on the key concepts that have emerged in it. It contributes to the discussion with a reflection on the use of the term parente in Amazonia, showing how its exclusive use in inter-ethnic contexts indicates a play of perspective in the way that relations between different groups of people are experienced.

Based on ethnographic material relating to the Wari' (Rondônia, Brazil), this article questions some of the presuppositions concerning native conceptions of the body present in contemporary anthropological literature by exploring a central dimension of Amazonian corporality – one that has been little explored in ethnographic works on the region – its unstable and transformational character. This dimension only becomes evident when our analysis presumes an expanded notion of humanity – first called to our attention by authors such as Lévy‐Bruhl and Leenhardt – that includes not only those beings we think of as humans, but also other subjectivities such as animals and spirits. Central to the problem's development is a discussion of the relations between body and soul, humanity and corporality.

This article analyses the process of producing kinship among various Amazonian peoples, focusing primarily on the Wari', a Txapakura‐speaking people living in Western Amazonia (Brazil). It argues that the production of kin cannot be related exclusively to the domestic or intra‐tribal domain, since kinship emerges through a constant dialogue with non‐human entities. By examining the significance of alimentary taboos associated with couvade practices in a number of groups, it shows that the new‐born is made human by means of the production of its body as a human body in contraposition to animal bodies.

"Winner of the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize, this work spins a heartfelt story of an improbable relationship between an anthropologist and her charismatic Indigenous father. When Aparecida Vilaça first traveled down the remote Negro River in Amazonia, she expected to come back with notebooks and tapes full of observations about the Indigenous Wari' people--but not with a new father. In Paletó and Me, Vilaça shares her life with her adoptive Wari' family, and the profound personal transformations involved in becoming kin. Paletó--unfailingly charming, always prepared with a joke--shines with life in Vilaça's account of their unusual father-daughter relationship. Paletó was many things: he was a survivor, who lived through the arrival of violent invaders and diseases. He was a leader, who taught through laughter and care, spoke softly, yet was always ready to jump into the unknown. He could shift seamlessly between the roles of the observer and the observed, and in his visits to Rio de Janeiro, deconstructs urban social conventions with ease and wit. Begun the day after Paletó's death at the age of 85, Paletó and Me is a celebration of life, weaving together the author's own memories of learning the lifeways of Indigenous Amazonia with her father's testimony to Wari' persistence in the face of colonization. Speaking from the heart as both anthropologist and daughter, Vilaça offers an intimate look at Indigenous lives in Brazil over nearly a century"--

"Praying and Preying offers one of the rare anthropological monographs 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. Vilaça turns to a vast range of historical, ethnographic and mythological material related to both the Wari' and missionaries perspectives and the author's own ethnographic field notes from her more than 30-year involvement with the Wari' community. Developing a close dialogue between the Melanesian literature, which informs much of the recent work in the Anthropology of Christianity, and the concepts and theories deriving from Amazonian ethnology, in particular the notions of openness to the other, unstable dualism and perspectivism, the author provides a fine-grained analysis of the equivocations and paradoxes that underlie the translation processes performed by the different agents involved and their implications for the transformation of the native notion of personhood."--Provided by publisher

Cet article est une analyse du cannibalisme funéraire wari' (Txapakura, Rondônia, Brésil), fondé sur les narrations détaillées d'informateurs ayant participé eux-mêmes à ces rites, à partir d'une critique de la conception de « condensation rituelle » développée par Houseman et Severi (1998) dans leur analyse du Naven Iatmul. Ma critique est basé sur le fait que les auteurs prennent comme point de départ de l'action une notion « individuée » de la personne ordinaire qui est étrangère a l'univers wari' ainsi qu'aux conceptions de beaucoup d'autres groupes natifs, en Amazonie et ailleurs. Je propose une analyse alternative basée sur la notion de « dividu », formulée par la New Melanesian Ethnography , et plus particulièrement par M. Strathern. Je veux montrer que le rituel funéraire wari', et d'autres rituels briévement analysés à la fin de l'article, n'ont pas comme but central de l'action rituelle la production de personnes qui condensent differents rôles sociaux, mais au contraire, ils visent la décompactation de rôles multiples superposés au quotidien.

AbstractThe last several decades have seen both a renewed anthropological interest in the possibility of cross-cultural comparison and the rapid rise of the anthropology of Christianity. These two trends should be mutually supportive. One of the promises of the anthropology of Christianity from the outset has been that it will allow people to compare how processes of Christianization have unfolded in different parts of the world and to consider how the resulting Christian configurations are similar to and different from one another. But to this point, relatively little detailed comparative empirical work on Christianity has appeared. Our aim here is to contribute to remedying this situation. Drawing on recent theoretical work on comparison, we set comparative work on Christianity on a new footing. Empirically, we examine how processes of Evangelical Christianization have transformed notions of the self in one Amazonian society (Wari') and two unrelated societies in Melanesia (Bosavi and Urapmin). We define the self for comparative purposes as composed of ideas of the mind or inner self, the body, and relations between people. In our three cases, Christianization has radically transformed these ideas, emphasizing the inner self and downplaying the importance of the body and of social relations. While our empirical conclusions are not wholly unexpected, the extent to which the details of our three cases speak comparatively to one another, and the extent to which the broad processes of Christian transformation they involve are similar, are surprising and lay a promising foundation for future comparative work in the anthropology of Christianity.