A gente não faz mais guerra, agora a gente está pensando

The objective of this ethnographic es-say is to describe some Maxakali forms of relation toalterity. The contact with the whites is analyzed incontinuity with the relationship of Maxakali withenemies and spirits. Warfare and ritual are unders-tood as different moments of a single process ofpredation and subsequent domestication of exteriorpowers needed to the constitution of the maxakalisocius. The relation between shamanic knowledgeand school education is analyzed, suggesting thatthe writing skill is used to pacify the whites in a wayanalogous to that in which ritual chants are used topacify the spirits. Warfare – the practice of which isalmost impossible today – is thus actualized on thelevel of cosmology, thought, and in the contexts ofritual and the school

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