Full name: Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society

Author: Beth A. Conklin Year: 2001 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Anthropology, Non Fiction Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780292712362 0292712367

Mourning the death of loved ones and recovering from their loss are universal human experiences, yet the grieving process is as different between cultures as it is among individuals. As late as the 1960s, the Wari' Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest ate the roasted flesh of their dead as an expression of compassion for the deceased and for his or her close relatives. By removing and transforming the corpse, which embodied ties between the living and the dead and was a focus of grief for the family of the deceased, Wari' death rites helped the bereaved kin accept their loss and go on with their lives. Drawing on the recollections of Wari' elders who participated in consuming the dead, this book presents one of the richest, most authoritative ethnographic accounts of funerary cannibalism ever recorded. Beth Conklin explores Wari' conceptions of person, body, and spirit, as well as indigenous understandings of memory and emotion, to explain why the Wari' felt that corpses must be destroyed and why they preferred cannibalism over cremation. Her findings challenge many commonly held beliefs about cannibalism and show why, in Wari' terms, it was considered the most honorable and compassionate way of treating the dead. Similar books: Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies by Seth Holmes Twice Dead by Margaret M. Lock Global Shadows by James Ferguson The Mountain People by Colin M. Turnbull Global Outlaws by Carolyn Nordstrom Guests of the Sheik by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea My Cocaine Museum by Michael Taussig Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes by Robert M. Emerson Cultural Materialism by Marvin Harris Local Knowledge by Clifford Geertz Exit Zero by Christine J. Walley The Women of Deh Koh by Erika Friedl Yemen Chronicle by Steven C. Caton Two Bits by Christopher M. Kelty The Way We Are by Margaret Visser Male and Female by Margaret Mead The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes The Desert Smells Like Rain by Gary Paul Nabhan Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski