Current Issue: Volume 20, Issue 2 (2024)

Volume 20 (2) of Tipití offers a vivid understanding of new trends in the anthropological knowledge of lowland South America and innovations based upon long-standing approaches. The two opening articles provide an insight into gender. The first discusses women’s active engagement to preserve Indigenous childbirth practices in Ecuador. The second discusses cassava in the Alto Rio Negro in Brazil. Supported by an ethnographic approach to the history of its consumption, the article focuses on different cassava-based foodstuffs, especially flatbreads (beiju) and flour (farinha).

The following three articles deal with different types of shamanic worlds. First, an article signed by two Indigenous anthropologists provides a very important understanding of how, among the Tukano, the ressurgence of living beings such as fish is linked to the Bahsé. This phenomenon—beautifully drawn by one of the authors in the picture chosen as the front cover of this issue—should be understood as part of the circulation between world platforms. The second article on shamanism focuses on multilingualism in the same region of Alto Rio Negro—a region on which Tipití has published a great deal in recent years. The third offers an insight into a fruitful debate on exchange and the spirit of cocoa, making a very original argument for greater anthropological attention to gift and commodification.

The last two articles give us a markedly different but equally important perspective on how Indigenous people living on Indigenous land in Brazil understand their relationships and responsibilities towards isolated Indigenous people living nearby. The text on the Karipuna provides access to the flow of the senses that alerts humans to the presence in the forest of both the Mirangã spirits and these isolated relatives. The final text, coauthored collectively by the Waimiri Atraori, contains a direct political message about their responsibility to protect the isolated Pirititi people. Tipití has agreed to publish this text in both English and Portuguese so that it can be freely circulated by the Indigenous authors and in international anthropological forums in general.

We are also pleased to announce the publication of a text in homage to the anthropologist Jean Langdon, which highlights a female perspective on shamanism and its contribution to anthropological knowledge. This piece gives us incentive to solicit further contributions along this line. We have occasionally published book reviews, but this time a very consistent one may even motivate colleagues to submit more of these.