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 How Real People Ought to Live The Cashinahua of Eastern Peru
Kenneth M. Kensinger
This collection of the author’s Peruvian Cashinahua studies is the product of nearly forty years of study. During the 93 months he lived among the Cashinahua, Kensinger was gradually converted from being a missionary-linguist sent to translate the Bible for them to being an ethnographer-student intent on understanding their culture and communicating this understanding to others. The timing of his arrival in Cashinahua territory in 1955 could hardly have been worse. Another outsider had visited them not long before and had introduced a devastating epidemic that resulted in the death of four out of five Cashinahua. Fear and suspicion of strangers was the natural outcome of this tragic event. Despite this inauspicious beginning, Kensinger came to be known and trusted. Observing and participating in the life of the people he learned their humor, attended their social and religious gatherings, hunted with them, and witnessed the cycle of birth and death. Even during a lengthy absence from the Cashinahua, Kensinger was able to maintain contact with them indirectly via other ethnographers. He recently revisited the group to observe firsthand the changes that have occurred over the past forty years. During this time, the Cashinahua established schools in their communities, entered the national economy, and increased their population, while still maintaining much of their traditional culture—the way real people ought to live. Kensinger likes and respects these active, bawdy, complex “real people”—and so will students.
 $22.95 list, 305 pages 10-digit ISBN: 0-88133-847-8 13-digit ISBN: 978-0-88133-847-8 © 1995 “These studies of the Cashinahua are an anthropological goldmine. Only one who has spent as long studying a group and who speaks their language as fluently as does Kensinger would have thought to inquire into many of these cultural facets. Best of all, he writes so well that the Cashinahua come alive on the page.” — Patricia J. Lyon, University of California, Berkeley
“Ken Kensinger’s many years living with the Cashinahua, and the personal transformation he has undergone with them, give him a depth of understanding not reached by other anthropologists working with South American Indian cultures. His accounts of all aspects of their life are full of unexpected insights.” — Waud Kracke, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Amazonianists know that whenever they tackle a fresh subject, whether this be mortuary rituals, warfare, gender, featherwork, or a host of others, that it is wisest to see what Kensinger has to say on the subject. They also know that it is worth absorbing his limpid, honest, and affectionate style of writing. . . . I hope that other anthropologists will jump at the opportunity to purchase a work by a master of their discipline.” —Cecilia McCallum, Ethnos
Table of Contents
1. An Experiment in Crosscultural Communications 2. Subsistence Activities 3. Hunting and Male Domination 4. Bawdy Rituals and Cashinahua Sexual Stereotypes 5. Hardfaced Hussies and Flaccid Fellows 6. Why Bother?: Cashinahua Views of Sexuality 7. Categories “Real” and “Unreal” 8. Cashinahua Siblingship 9. An Emic Model of Cashinahua Marriage 10. Cashinahua Notions of Social Time and Social Space 11. The Dialectics of Person and Self 12. Dual Organization Reconsidered 13. Panoan Kinship Terminology and Social Organization 14. Leadership and Factionalism in Cashinahua Society 15. Invisible People: Ostracism in Cashinahua Society 16. Food Taboos as Markers of Age Categories in Cashinahua 17. Living with Spirit Beings: Tribal Religion in Amazonia 18. Cashinahua Medicine and Medicine Men 19. Banisteriopsis Usage among the Cashinahua 20. “You Killed My Baby!”: Dispensing Medicine in the Field 21. Disposing of the Dead 22. The Body Knows: Cashinahua Perspectives on Knowledge 23. Feathers Make Us Beautiful 24. When a Turd Floats By: Cashinahua Metaphors of Contact 25. Twenty-five Years Later: Continuity and Change |
