This study focuses on the altars of the major annual Hopi ceremonials which display ritual objects, the possession and use of which give religious and secular power. With the importance of such objects in mind, an iconographic study of Hopi religion is particularly illuminating. This study aims to demonstrate how to view Hopi altars and is supplemented by a theory of the mechanics of efficacy in the Hopi altar context. The text provides a general introduction to (...) Hopi religious practice and distinguishes three levels of information: 1) the calendrical and ritual contexts of Hopi altars, 2) the functions of these altars within those contexts, and 3) the iconography and iconology of the altars, understood here in a literal sense as the study of the forms and structures of the altars on the one hand and the study of the implicit and explicit symbology of the altars on the other. The book provides keys to understanding through exemplification and typology, and is meant to be of particular use to museums and research libraries. (shrink)

Ethics, in the sense of a recognized branch of inquiry, reputedly began with Socrates and the Sophists, at least for the western world. Ethics, understood as a set of moral standards, traditionalized by maxims and admonitions, has existed in human cultures from so early a time that it would be hazardous indeed to conjecture the date of its probable origin. The "Hopi Ethics" which Mr. Brandt has studied is obviously that of this second sense, whereas his own study, at (...) least insofar as it is a "theoretical analysis" and goes beyond mere description, is "ethics" in the first sense. That the Hopi Indians were somewhat astonished and perplexed by Mr. Brandt's line of inquiry is indicated by some of their quoted remarks, such as their mention of the "hard questions" being put to them, and their amazement at the suggestion of the possibility that "there is no right answer to ethical questions." One gathers, thus, that while the problem of ethical relativism was of high concern to Mr. Brandt, such an idea was nigh unthinkable to the Hopi. (shrink)

Not an anthropologist by training, Tyler succeeds where the trained anthropologist has often failed: he manages to understand a style of life not his own. He relates and interprets the stories of the gods of the Zunis, Keres, and Hopi Indians, comparing them to some of the Greek myths. The Pueblos are "realists"; they believe in a world of rough harmony, of "normalcy," and their animistic religion is devoted to preserving the natural order of things. Their sophisticated outlook (...) cannot be explained by theories of primitive or infantile animism; in fact, Tyler uses Pueblo animism to debunk the Freudian and other theories of animism. A map, a geographical table, and an extensive bibliography help fill out the picture of the Pueblo.—A. B. D. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Philosophical Tale.

In 1936, Benjamin Lee Whorf wrote a justly famous paper entitled "An American Indian Model of the Universe" (Carroll, 1956). In that paper, Whorf criticized the easy assumption that people in different cultures, speaking radically different languages, share common presuppositions about what the world is like. He contrasted the Hopi view of space and time with what he called elsewhere the Standard Average European view. For the Hopi, space and time are inherently relativistic; for the speaker of Western (...) European languages, like English, the universe is basically Newtonian, time and space are absolute, "containers" of things and events. (shrink)

The following event dates back more than twenty years, when I made contact for the first time with the Otomi Indians in the craggy regions of the eastern Sierra Madre. At that time I went through life fortified by the hope and inspired by the naiveté and enthusiasm that I would add a supplementary stroke of the brush to the ethnographic picture of Indian Mexico. The disposition of my mind was far from that of a researcher seized by the (...) expectancy of the unforeseen, desirous to change the all too static and stereotypical image of the autochthonous communities that the academic tradition had created of the Americas. (shrink)

Indigenous ecologies in industrial societies need immediate attention in light of the ongoing debate on indigenous resource rights and decreasing biodiversity. This paper examines the functions and meanings of hunting, fishing, and gathering activities among contemporary Nez Perce Indians in Idaho, USA. The collected data were analyzed with Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of “symbolic capital” and “practice” within the framework of political ecology. The results clearly demonstrate that hunting, fishing, and gathering practices play significant roles not only in social and (...) religious but also economic and political senses within the contemporary Nez Perce society. This study suggests that investigation of indigenous ecologies in industrial societies take a synthesized approach between idealist and materialist perspectives. (shrink)

Does Foucault’s work on sexuality open toward the possibility of a genealogy of sex understood as binary anatomical and genetic sexual difference? I believe that it does. I argue that, if we take s...

UNTIL very recently, the most perplexing mystery of Southwestern archeology -- what caused the collapse of the ancient empire of the Anasazi -- seemed all but solved. Careful scrutiny of tree-ring records seemed to establish that in the late 1200's a prolonged dry spell called the Great Drought drove these people, the ancestors of today's pueblo Indians, to abandon their magnificent stone villages at Mesa Verde and elsewhere on the Colorado Plateau, never to return again.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 1, April 1998, pp. 53-70 Hume on Justice to Animals, Indians and Women ARTHUR KUFLIK I. The Circumstances of Humean Justice For Hume, the virtue of justice is its "usefulness" to the support of society.1 To help prove this point, he guides us through a series of imaginative thought-experiments. Suppose that resources were infinitely available or that human beings were generous and kind (...) without limit: in such unusual circumstances, nobody would have even "dreamed of" the various property restrictions associated with justice. If the supposition seems too fanciful, the same point can be illustrated, at least to some extent, by special real-life circumstances as well: e.g., by the way that air or water or land go unregulated in those places where they are super-abundant or the way in which the line between what is "mine" and "thine" blurs in loving families or between intimate friends. Moving to the opposite extreme: suppose that resources were so scarce as to render it impossible for most people (regardless of their cooperative exertions) even to subsist. Or suppose that people were not merely limited in their benevolent concern but "perfectly malicious"! Once again, there would be little or no point to the observance of rules of justice. On Hume's account, such rules define a scheme of social cooperation. But by hypothesis, extreme scarcity makes even well-meaning cooperative effort unproductive. Extreme villainy makes it pointlessly dangerous. Indeed, in a world wholly villainous, just cooperative schemes would be altogether impossible. Arthur Kuflik is at the Department of Philosophy, The University of Vermont, 70 South Williams Street, Burlington, Vermont 05401-3404 USA. email: akuflik@zoo.uvm.edu 54 Arthur Kuflik What can we conclude? There is a range of circumstances within which schemes of justice make sense: (1) moderate scarcity (resources are adequate to sustain people, but not so extensive that everyone could have as much as might be desired); and (2) limited benevolence (people are neither saintly nor satanic; though clearly concerned about themselves, they are not incapable of caring about what happens to others). John Rawls has dubbed these conditions "the Humean circumstances of justice."2 Hume wants us to notice that they are the very conditions under which justice is both practically possible and socially necessary. Fortunately, they are also the conditions that most commonly prevail. ("The common situation of society is a medium amidst all these extremes" [EPM 188].) II. A More Puzzling Thought-experiment Suppose we grant that the foundation of justice is its usefulness to society. This raises a certain worry: aren't there groups whose members ought to be treated justly even though "society" could flourish just as well if they weren't? (Another way to put the point is to ask: just who are the members of "society"?) This very issue underlies one more puzzling, and even disturbing, Humean thought-experiment: Were there a species of creatures intermingled with men, which, though rational, were possessed of such inferior strength, both of body and mind, that they were incapable of all resistance, and could never, upon the highest provocation, make us feel the effects of their resentment; the necessary consequence, I think, is that we should be bound by the laws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them, nor could they possess any right or property, exclusive of such arbitrary lords. Our intercourse with them could not be called society, which supposes a degree of equality; but absolute command on one side, and servile obedience on the other.... And as no inconvenience ever results from the exercise of a power, so firmly established in nature, the restraints of justice and property, being totally useless, would never have place in so unequal a confederacy. (EPM 190-191) What can we learn from this thought-experiment? What insight into justice do we gain by imagining a "species of creatures intermingled" among us who, though endowed with some ability to think and to reason, are: (i) greatly inferior to us both physically and mentally; (ii) "incapable of all resistance" to our provocations; and... (shrink)

This article examines the change which occurred in discussions of cultural transmission between the Enlightenment and the liberal outlook of the nineteenth century. The former is exemplified mainly by eighteenth-century historical discussions, the latter by the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville. An interest in the influence of advanced Western cultures on seemingly inferior non-Western societies was consistent throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was manifested mainly in discussions of the barbarian conquest of the Roman Empire on the one hand, (...) and of European colonial policies on the other. The sources discussed here evinced a clear Eurocentric chauvinism, yet were inherently non-racial in nature. While many Enlightenment intellectuals retained a generally positive view of cultural transmission, Tocqueville's post-revolutionary outlook was more pessimistic. (shrink)

à Mauritz Friisen souvenir des soiréesde Görväln et de PampachicaFrancisco was born in 1573 in the old capital of the Incas, a pretty town stretching along a high valley of the Andes 11,000 feet above sea level but close enough to the earth's breast to enjoy a gentle springtime throughout the year, even in winter. 1573: forty-two years since the first Spaniards, three of them, reached the city as emissaries of the conqueror, who was then especially occupied with the last (...) Inca whom he held prisoner in a northern village and of whom he demanded an enormous ransom. Guided and protected by officers of the empire, they came to hasten the despoiling of temples and palaces and to collect vases and plaques of gold ordered by Atahualpa, who vainly hoped to gain his freedom. Three years later, on March 23,1534, before an astonished crowd of Indians, opening a new era in the name of the king and the pope, the founding of the new Spanish and Christian order in Cuzco solemnly took place. Then, one after another, material catastrophes occurred: in 1536 the conqueror's brother, the first governor, endured the siege of an army of twenty thousand Indians commanded by a phantom Inca, the second Manco, and the city, its thatched roofs ravaged by fire, was blown up by mines and countermines; in 1538 the newly rebuilt houses were destroyed by the rivalry of Pizarro and Almagro; in 1541, after the assassination of the former, new troubles caused new ruins. (shrink)

Based on Nietzsche's critique of religion and culture, including recent developments of it, assesses the origin myths that articulate western attitudes toward beauty and shame.

This chapter contains sections titled: Vitoria Las Casas References Further Reading.