Ana Mariella Bacigalupo
SHAMANS OF THE FOYE TREE
(Gender, Power, and Healing among Chilean Mapuche)
Ana Mariella Bacigalupo.
To purchase copies visit: http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/bacsha.html
ABSTRACT
Drawing on anthropologist Ana Mariella Bacigalupo's fifteen years of
field research, Shamans of the Foye Tree: Gender, Power, and Healing
among Chilean Mapuche is the first study to follow shamans' gender
identities and performance in a variety of ritual, social, sexual, and
political contexts. To Mapuche shamans, or machi, the foye tree is of
special importance, not only for its medicinal qualities but also
because of its hermaphroditic flowers, which reflect the gender-shifting
components of machi healing practices. Framed by the cultural
constructions of gender and identity, Bacigalupo's fascinating findings
span the ways in which the Chilean state stigmatizes the machi as
witches and sexual deviants; how shamans use paradoxical discourses
about gender to legitimatize themselves as healers and, at the same
time, as modern men and women; the tree's political use as a symbol of
resistance to national ideologies; and other components of these rich
traditions. The first comprehensive study on Mapuche shamans' gendered
practices, Shamans of the Foye Tree offers new perspectives on this
crucial intersection of spiritual, social, and political power.
LA
VOZ DEL KULTRUN EN LA MODERNIDAD: TRADICIÓN Y CAMBIO EN LA TERAPÉUTICA
DE SIETE MACHI MAPUCHE.
(The Voice of the Shaman’s Drum in Modernity: Tradition and Change
in the
Lives and Practices of Seven Mapuche Machi)
Ana Mariella Bacigalupo.
Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 2001.
271 pp. Paper US $18 or 11.800 Chilean pesos. ISBN 956-14-0623-3.
To purchase copies visit http://www.puc.cl/edicionesuc/catalogo/html/frautor.html
ABSTRACT
This book explores diversity and consensus in Mapuche shamans’ healing
practices and their challenges to Chilean notions that changes in Mapuche
shamanic practice are due to loss of tradition and modernization. The
Chilean majority stereotype machi as backward exotic practitioners who
are isolated from the Chilean state, Catholic worldviews, and its modern
liberal economy. Drawing on the lives and ritual practices of seven machi,
Bacigalupo demonstrates that the relationships between Mapuche machi and
the dominant Chilean political, religious, and medical institutions are
complex, dynamic and varied. Machi selectively resignify Catholic, medical
and Chilean national symbols into their healing practices, appropriating
outside cultural influences for the purpose of healing, dynamic self-definition
and resistance to domination. Machi practice is not relegated to rural
communities, but is also common in cities because the machi deal with
problems of modernity, identity and illnesses that require psychological
or spiritual healing. In exploring the diverse ways in which these seven
machi practice and conceptualize the world, she provides an analysis of
the relationship between diversity and consensus in the knowledge and
practices of these traditions and the process by which knowledge is produced
and reproduced.
Book review of "La Voz del Kultrun" in American Anthropologist
Book review of "La Voz del Kultrun" in Social Science and
Medicine
Book review of "La Voz del Kultrun" in American Academy of Religion
Book review of "La Voz del Kultrun" in Tipiti
MODERNIZACIÓN
O SABIDURÍA EN TIERRA MAPUCHE?
(Modernity or Ancient Wisdom in Mapuche Land?)
Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Ramón Curivil, Armando Marileo, Cristián
Parker,
Alejandro Saaverdra, Ricardo Salas.
Santiago: Ediciones San Pablo, Santiago Chile 1995. 198 pp. Paper US
$14 or
9.170 Chilean pesos. ISBN 93.278
To purchase copies contact Libreria San Pablo http://www.san-pablo.cl
Email: dirdifus@cmet.net
Telephone 011 (562) 6989145 or 011- (562) 6716884 Fax 011 (562) 6716884