Customer Reviews

The Jivaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls, With a new preface.

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This is a classic ethnography of the Shuar, the one that established the standard for all subsequent descriptions of the Shuar. I have done extensive field work with a Shuar related group and was impressed on how accurate Harner's account was, even though the group I worked with was separate in both time and space from the untsuri shuar. This is a must read for anyone interested in the ethnography of lowland South America.

Harner's Jivaro is a very interesting book. I cannot attest to the ethnographic veracity of the text as some other reviewers, but I can speak to what I thought about the book. This book is one of the most fascinating ethnographies I have read. It is very "sexy": violence, drugs, death, decapitation, shrunken heads...edgy stuff. What utterly fascinated me was the description of how this state of affairs came about. Harner claims that head-hunting raids didn't take place, or at least not with the frequency as reported in this book until the introduction of firearms by the Spanish. At this point rival tibes were better able to kill each other, and violence increased. I found it all very interesting, and would recommend it.

The title is good -- the Shuar (Jivaro) indeed have a special reverence for sacred waterfalls -- but the rest of the book captures little of the true flavor of Shuar culture and character. (I spent several months among the Shuar many years ago.) As an example, Nunkui is the spirit of Earth when referred to as a living being, but the author refers to Nunkui as "a female crop fairy." Even if one does not speak Shuar, the relationship of the word "Nunkui" to the word "Nunka" (land or territory) should be obvious. There is much superficial observation in this book but very little true insight.

Michael Harner's "Jivaro" documents a society marked by excessive use of hallucinogenic stimulants. I read this book to fulfill a class assignment. It's going to take a whole lot of acid to get me to read it again.