The Mapuche man who became a woman shaman: Selfhood, gender transgression, and competing cultural norms

Bacigalupo, Ana Mariella

doi:10.1525/ae.2004.31.3.440

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Machi further complicate ethnic categories because they must inhabit multiple identities to mediate between other times, worlds, genders, and beings to heal and maintain the moral order (Bacigalupo , , ). Until the early 20th century, machi of mixed backgrounds were thought to possess special powers that allowed them to see the world as both insiders and outsiders.…”

Section: Colonization and Ethnic Intermixing In The Configuration Of mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Machi, in contrast, link “celestial bibles” to their own life histories. Thus, in machi Marcelina's initiatory dream, the Virgin Mary had a “paper like a will in her hand … and on top of her purse she had a huge Bible with [Marcelina's] name in it and a silver cross” (Bacigalupo :442). Machi Jose learned in his dream that my ethnographic writings about him would be mirrored in his “celestial bible”: “If you do your work well, Mariella, it will be written in the sky.…”

Section: The Production Of Mapuche “Bibles” and Biblical Machimentioning

confidence: 99%

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The potency of indigenous “bibles” and biographies: Mapuche shamanic literacy and historical consciousness

Bacigalupo

2014

American Ethnologist

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Mapuche oral shamanic biographies and performances—some of which take the form of “bibles” and involve shamanic literacies—play a central role in the production of indigenous history in southern Chile. In this article, I explain how and why a mixed‐race Mapuche shaman charged me with writing about her life and practice in the form of such a “bible.” This book would become a ritual object and a means of storing her shamanic power by textualizing it, thereby allowing her to speak to a future audience. The realities and powers her “bible” stored could be extracted, transformed, circulated, and actualized for a variety of ends, even to bring about shamanic rebirth. Ultimately, I argue, through their use and interpretation of this kind of “bible,” Mapuche shamans expand academic notions of indigenous history and literacy. [shaman, text, Bible, mestizo, history, literacy, Mapuche, Chile]

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Section: Colonization and Ethnic Intermixing In The Configuration Of mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Production Of Mapuche “Bibles” and Biblical Machimentioning

confidence: 99%

The potency of indigenous “bibles” and biographies: Mapuche shamanic literacy and historical consciousness

Bacigalupo

2014

American Ethnologist

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“…Bacigalupo (2004) discusses a transgendered identity involving a male sexed Mapuche individual in Chile who became a gendered woman upon initiation into shamanic ( machi ) status. “Every neophyte undergoes a change of identity when he or she becomes a machi, but in Marta's case the transformation was especially dramatic because it involved a change in gender identity and name as well as the incorporation of the identities of Flora's spirit and the Virgin Mary” (Bacigalupo 2004:443). In addition to wearing shirts, shawls, and makeup, Marta speaks in falsetto as an index of her acquired femininity, and the falsetto sign is itself iconic as noted above.…”

Section: Falsetto Voice In Cultural Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Falsetto voice and observational logic: Motivated meanings

Stross¹

2013

Lang. Soc.

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A B S T R A C T Examples of falsetto and higher pitched modal voice are presented in which the meanings are linked iconically and/or indexically to the signs, and therefore nonarbitrarily. Nine such meaning types are identified and discussed as inferences about falsetto derivable from observations that are minimally informed by cultural traditions. Observational knowledge and the logic by which it is utilized are seen as central concepts mediating universals and relativist approaches to the social meanings of voice qualities, including falsetto, and it is proposed that most falsetto use can be placed within the nine functional meaning categories identified. (Voice quality, falsetto, iconicity, indexicality, observational logic, universals, relativity)* usually not arbitrary, but instead motivated, that is, not symbolic but rather iconic or indexical. To the extent that the linkages are motivated by cross-culturally relevant factors-specifically observable characteristics of the voice qualities themselvesthey can be generalized in import, even while maintaining the immediacy of cultural factors and the semiotic process in mediating the patterned coincidence of voice qualities with social functions and the contexts in which speech and other communicative acts take place. By using observational logic as a methodological tool for examining the relationship between sign and meaning and as a middle ground between universals and relativist positions, it is unnecessary to discount universals in favor of culturally specific motivations for voice qualities, and vice versa.Icons, indices, and symbols are somewhat idealized yet analytically separable sign types (Anttila 1972), mediating between the external referent world around us and our internal world of knowledge (Nöth 1995). Iconicity and indexicality, rather than being natural qualities, relationships, or processes in and of themselves, derive meaning in human communication through their mediation of semiotic relationships, but the meanings of icons and indices are related to these signs by way of similarity and contextual contiguity respectively and are thus motivated. At least some of their meanings, then, can be acquired from the signs themselves. Symbols, however, are related to their meanings arbitrarily, by cultural convention, contextually situated, and culturally specific.Cultural traditions, knowledge, assumptions, and logic do not provide the only input to our interpretation of what goes on around us. Many signs are experienced that do not have to depend on language or culture for their interpretation. Interpretation of linguistic signs (i.e. symbols) does require cultural knowledge but voice qualities as paralinguistic features, while informed by the specific cultural contexts in which they occur, appear to have some autonomy by virtue of a usually motivated relationship of sign (sign vehicle) to the meaning, which leads to a hypothesis relating to the use of falsetto voice and higher pitches in modal voice.

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“…I focus here on these contradictions that make such processes both possible and unstable. Anthropologists have explored liminal spaces and objects of ambiguity that are marginalized or excluded from centers and often stigmatized (Bacigalupo 2004; Jackson 2005). Here, I look to ambiguities that are central rather than marginal to social institutions.…”

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confidence: 99%

Biomedical ambivalence: Asthma diagnosis, the pharmaceutical, and other contradictions in Barbados

Whitmarsh

2008

American Ethnologist

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In recent years in Barbados, the interaction of multinational pharmaceutical companies, the Ministry of Health (MOH), and international biomedical research has resulted in a focus on pharmaceuticals in public health intervention and the production of an expansive category of asthma. This article explores the views and uses of this process based on fieldwork conducted with doctors, nurses, pharmacists, MOH officials, and patient families involved in asthma care. Following ambiguities and contradictions in the significance of biomedical objects, I argue that this integration of pharmaceutical markets occurs with a foundational instability. Such ambiguity and contradiction are central to both the efficacy and undermining of global economic processes, including “pharmaceuticalization.”[pharmaceuticalization, ambiguity, asthma, globalization]

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The Mapuche man who became a woman shaman: Selfhood, gender transgression, and competing cultural norms

Cited by 11 publications

References 30 publications

The potency of indigenous “bibles” and biographies: Mapuche shamanic literacy and historical consciousness

The potency of indigenous “bibles” and biographies: Mapuche shamanic literacy and historical consciousness

Falsetto voice and observational logic: Motivated meanings

Biomedical ambivalence: Asthma diagnosis, the pharmaceutical, and other contradictions in Barbados

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