Book

The fish people: linguistic exogamy and Tukanoan identity in northwest Amazonia

Cambridge University Press (39)Published In 1983 • Pages: xix, 287

By: Jackson, Jean E. (Jean Elizabeth).

AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This book is primarily a study of the Bará or Fish People, one of several Tukanoan groups living in the Colombian Northwest Amazon. These people '…form part of an unusual network of intermarrying local communities scattered along the rivers of the region. Each community belongs to one of sixteen different groups that speak sixteen different languages, and marriages must take place between people not only from different communities but with different primary languages. In a network of this sort, which defies the usual label of 'tribe', social identity assumes a distinct and unusual configuration. In this book, Jean Jackson's incisive discussions of Bará marriage, kinship, spatial organization, and other features of the social and geographic landscape show how Tukanoans (as participants in the network are collectively known) conceptualize and tie together their universe of widely scattered communities, and how an individual's identity emerges in terms of relations with others' (back cover). Also discussed in the text are the effects of the Tukanoan's increasing dependency on the national and global political economy and their decreasing sense of self-worth and cultural autonomy.
SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
Speech
Linguistic identification
Regulation of marriage
Mode of marriage
Clans
Phratries
Tribe and nation
cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
Tukano
HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
1998
RegionThe area the document pertains to
South America
Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
Amazon and Orinoco
Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
Book
Evaluation
Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
Ethnologist
Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
5: Excellent Primary Data
AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
John Beierle ; 1996
Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
1968-1970
Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
1968-1970
Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
Bará Indians, Pumanaka buro, Vaupés region, central area, Colombian northwest Amazon
NotesAdditional notes
Jean E. Jackson
Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-272) and index
LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
82023564
LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
Tukano Indians