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Horizontes Antropológicos

Print version ISSN 0104-7183

Abstract

COHN, Clarice. Children, death, and the dead: the Mebengokré-Xikrin case. Horiz.antropol. [online]. 2010, vol.5Selected edition, pp. 0-0. ISSN 0104-7183.

This article approaches the relations children entertain with the dead, as well as with their own death risk, among the Mebenkogré-Xikrin, an indigenous Jê-speaking Indigenous group living in the North of Brazil. These themes are developed by analyzing the fabrication of the body, the formation of the self and the person, and the relations with the dead, with a special focus on children. Mebengokré-Xikrin notions of childhood are therefore discussed in an innovative manner through the formation of the self and the child's relations with the cosmos and the dead, by looking at the eventuality of caputre by the spirits of the dead, their adoption in the after-life, the mourning of children, their bodily adornments and painting, how they should be taken care of in life in order to prevent death, and their bodies and social interactions.

Keywords : anthropology of childhood; ethnology of indigenous peoples of Amazon; indigenous children; Mebengokré.

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