The Amazon Indian is an icon that straddles the world between the professional anthropologist and the popular media. Presented alternately as the noble primitive, the savior of the environment, and as a savage, dissolute, cannibalistic half-human, it is an image well worth examining. Stephen Nugent does just that, critiquing the claims of authoritativeness inherent in visual images presented by anthropologists of Amazon life in the early 20th century and comparing them with the images found in popular books, movies, and posters. The book depicts the field of anthropology as its own form of culture industry and contrasts it to other similar industries, past and present. For visual anthropologists, ethnographers, Amazon specialists, and popular culture researchers, Nugent's book will be enlightening, entertaining reading.
By:
Stephen Nugent
Imprint: Left Coast Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 22mm
Weight: 544g
ISBN: 9781598741766
ISBN 10: 1598741764
Pages: 260
Publication Date: 15 November 2007
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Illustrations, Preface: Talismanic Indians, 1. Introduction: Anthropology with Pictures, 2. The Head Hunter Cliché, 3. Visualizing Social Memory: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in Amazonia, 4. The Tropic of Amazon: Missing Peoples and Lingering Metaphors, 5. The Professional Literature: ‘What I Saw in the Tropics’, 6. Method and Data: Framing Indians, 7. Amazonia on Screen: Building a Lost World, 8. Conclusion, References, Index, About the Author
Stephen Nugent is professor of anthropology and director of the Centre for Visual Anthropology at the Goldsmith's College, University of London. He has done fieldwork in Brazil since the 1970s. He is author of five books on the Amazon, elite culture, and cultural studies and a member of the Critique of Anthropology editorial collective.
