Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Cecilia McCallum

Reviewed work(s): La griffe des aeux: Marquage du corps et dmarquages ethniques chez les
Matis d'Amazonie by Philippe Erikson
Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 100, No. 1, (Mar., 1998), pp. 240-240
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/682877
Accessed: 12/04/2008 16:45
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240

AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST
* VOL. 100,

NO. 1 * MARCH1998

Lempert's very brief uConclusions"and aProphecy" left this reader with a feeling of puzzlement and
frustration. In this section, the author is concerned
chiefly with the way in which current developments
are producing a unified market (in both goods and
labor) over large portions of the world's surface. I
have no quarrel with this observation as such; I have
often made it myself in private conversation, and
(given the opportunity)would do so in print as well, as
have many others. I do not see, however, how this
observation flows as a conclusion from the mass of
data that precedes it in Lempert'sbook. Nor do I see
why it was necessary to go to St. Petersburg and perform many months of what must have been gruelling
fieldwork in order to make this observation.
In brief, Lempert'swork is a source of great potential value and importance whose technical flaws
make it far less useful and accessible than it might and
should have been. a
La gnffe des ateux: Marquagedu corps et demarquages
ethntq?leschez les Matis d^Amazonie.PhilippeErikson.
Langues et Societes d'AmeriqueTraditionelle,5. Paris:
Peeters, 1996.365 pp.
CECILIA
MCCALLUM
London School of Economics and Polittcal Science
In this impressive first study of an Amazonian
group, the Matis, comparative ethnography and LeviStraussian structuralismare happy bedfellows. Those
who feel that such analysis is dead (and buried in the
section of the library where the volumes of Mythologiques are stored) should order a copy. Erikson
shows, in meticulous detail, that it is no accident that
the origins of structuralism lie to a large extent in
Amazonia. The book, however, is no arid exercise in
conXiuring
and rearrangingsymbolic series, but rathera
serious contribution to the anthropology of the body
and of personhood. The title, which the editors too
loosely translate as Our elders' mark: Body-lore and
bounda7es of the Amazonian Matis, is indicative. In
particular, it focuses on ornernentiqueor work on the
body, a term borrowed from Mauss'sManuel d'ethnographie (Payot, 1967), referringto body decoration and
formation in the widest sense. Thus, Erikson locates
his discussion of such issues as apparel and tatooing in
the social and symbolic context, focusing always on
the underlyingprinciples that he finds to be embedded
in a speciElcvariant of dualism.A study for specialists,
yes. But those anthropologists who are courageous
enough to venture off their own territory,and who still
value the broad perspective that comparative study
affords, will find much of interest here.
Certainly, this is a volume that all Amazonianists
and specialists in the Panoan linguistic group will wish

to own. Erikson, together with his wife Helene, set out

in late 1984 to make a pioneering study of this justcontacted group, more than two-thirds of whom had
died recently in the usual (but not inevitable) epidemics. Numberingless than a hundredpeople, they nevertheless welcomed the young couple. On the basis of 12
months of coresidence, Erikson constructs his monograph. But his scope is larger than a simple documentation of the Matis; rather, he uses his material in a
continual dialogue with studies of other Panoan
groups (and to a lesser extent, lowland South American). His aim- and in this he succeeds-is to look at
the Panoans as a cultural ensemble and within a larger
geopolitical framework. He shows that the Mayoruna
or "Matses"(of whom the Matis are a subgroup) are
typical representatives of the Panoans and not, as has
been the custom, marginal. In the process, Erikson
exhibits an unrivaled knowledge of Panoan studies
which allows him to pursue the main trail connecting
the chapters of the book: the unveiling of pervasive
dualism in all spheres of Matis life and thought.
This dualism is founded on the special relationship between the inside and the outside which Erikson
calls the principle of constituent alterity (chapter 4)
and finds its principal expression in the idea of moiety.
Panoan dualism engenders a continual impetus to
bring the outside in. This underlies all the basic processes whereby society is constituted. In the Matis
case, an added factor is the sublimation of alterity as
the socius and the body are progressively formed before, during, and after the life cycle (which has led to
the virtual disappearance of one moiety in the local
group). In his study of how the moiety principles work,
Erikson covers interethnic relations, social organization, kinship, marriage, and architecture as a foundation for the analysis of ornementique in part 3. This
leads from taste, through knowledge, power, shamanism, procreation, hunting, child raising, agriculture,
death, and the sexies of rituals that culminate in tattooing.

It is a shame that despite his comparativeperspective, Erikson fails to engage (except marginally)with
other schools of analysis treating social organization,
gender, and personhood in or beyond the Amazonian
region. It is to be hoped that this is a task he will set
for himself in the future. I
CarrlivalSong and Society: Gossip, Sexuality and Creativity in Andalusia. Jerome R. Mintz.New York:Berg,
1997.267 pp.
VICTORIA
M. RAZAK
Niagara County Community College
Carnival Song and Society is about carnival in
Cadiz,a festival that celebrates the history, affairs,and