Abstract

VANZOLINI, Marina. "The sorcerer is not human": considerations on sorcery and kinship for rethink the xinguano multiethnic system. Runa [online]. 2013, vol.34, n.2, pp.215-232. ISSN 1851-9628.

The article analyzes the sociopolitical dynamics of the xinguano multiethnic system, located in central-west Brazil, drawing from the logics revealed by sorcery practices. Based on fieldwork with the Aweti, a Tupi xinguano group, the analysis of this logic enables a description of the xinguano sociocultural unity and of the groups that constitute it not only as historical products -something that has already been shown by the region's ethnology- but also as continuously historical products, always to be recreated. The article's key argument is that sorcery is the dark side, the unwanted effect of the process of becoming kin, a process central to the constitution of xinguano identity. Thus, sorcery would be what makes the xinguano people never seem perfectly xinguanos/humans to themselves.

Keywords : Upper Xingu; Aweti; Sorcery; Shamanism; Amerindian Politics.

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