Shamans, Wives, Families: An Isoseño Case Considered Using Turner on Kayapo Dominance and Beauty
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this essay I describe what I have seen elapse over twenty years in the lives (and sometimes deaths) of two shamans and their respective wives in Isoso, an indigenous community of Guarani-speaking people in the Bolivian Chaco. These shamans’ two different kinds of shamanic practice, their two different sorts of marriage, and the two different life-trajectories of their wives resonate with the dual nature of Isoso itself and its historical constitution. The reproduction of a hierarchical Arawakan way of life through feminine submission to a Guarani “egalitarianism” of masculine dominance has been, I suspect, a dynamic of long standing in Isoso with significant corollaries for the personal biographical trajectories of that persistent fraction of Isoseño women who end up as elite grandmothers. Aspects of Terence Turner’s analyses of the ways that the values of “dominance” and “beauty” function in Kayapo society are applied in this different ethnographic context to help to elucidate the dynamics in play. En este ensayo describo lo que he visto transcurrir durante veinte años en las vidas (y a veces en las muertes) de dos chamanes y sus respectivas esposas en Isoso, una comunidad indígena de personas de habla guaraní en el Chaco boliviano. Los dos tipos diferentes de práctica chamánica de estos chamanes, sus dos tipos diferentes de matrimonio y las dos trayectorias de vida diferentes de sus esposas, resuenan con la naturaleza doble de Isoso misma y su constitución histórica. La reproducción de un estilo de vida arawaco jerárquico a través de la sumisión femenina a un ‘igualitarismo’ guaraní de dominación masculina ha sido, sospecho, una dinámica de larga data en Isoso, con corolarios significativos para las trayectorias biográficas personales de esa fracción persistente de mujeres isoseñas, quienes terminan siendo como abuelas de élite. Aspectos del análisis de Terence Turner, acerca de las maneras en que los valores de ‘dominancia’ y ‘belleza’ funcionan en la sociedad kayapo, son aplicados en este contexto etnográfico diferente para ayudar a dilucidar la dinámica en juego.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.027 | 0.020 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".