NURTURING THE OTHER by V. Grotti (2022)
Nurturing the Other
First Contacts and the Making of Christian Bodies in Amazonia
By Vanessa Grotti
Berghahn, 2022
Nurturing the Other combines archival research, oral history and long-term ethnography, to study relations between Amerindians and outsiders, such as American missionaries, through a series of contact expeditions that led to the ‘pacification’ of three native Amazonian groups in Suriname and French Guiana. The author examines and contrasts Amerindian and non-Amerindian views on this process of social transformation through the lens of the body, notions of peacefulness and kinship, as well as native warfare and shamanism. The book addresses questions of change and continuity, and the little explored links between first contacts, capture and native conversion to Christianity in contemporary indigenous Amazonia.
https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496230010/
Reviews
“Offers a unique perspective on the complexity of indigenous Amazonia today. By studying interactions between Christianized horticulturalists (Trio and Wayana) and ‘wild’ people (Akuriyo) with whom peaceful contact has more recently been established, Grotti avoids the usual pitfall of presenting a specific case study as typical of Amazonia in general.” • Olivier Allard, Collège de France
About the author
Vanessa Grotti is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna. She is coeditor of Animism in Rainforest and Tundra (Berghahn, 2012), Ownership and Nurture (Berghanh, 2016), and Migrant Hospitalities in the Mediterranean: Encounters with Alterity in Birth and Death (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021).
