acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

The rapid social change induced by globalization has forced the Merina of highland Madagascar to question their previous constructions of ethnic identity. Considering the Merina founder's myth, in which the ancestors of the Merina found sub-human creatures called Vazimba living in the highlands when they immigrated to the region centuries ago, I explore the relationships between oral history and ethnic identity in the context of globalization. Drawing on the notion of precedence established for Austronesian societies, in this dissertation I discuss the importance of the narrative in the context of Merina identity formation. I argue that the variety and complexity of the story illustrate both the nebulous definition of Vazimba and the position of the narrative in the forefront of Merina culture. I have defined seven versions of the Vazimba story, each of which has numerous variations. Throughout this monograph, I will discuss each version and variation of the history, together with the social implications of each, leading to the conclusion that 'Vazimba' is a term by which Merina define themselves regardless of the situation. This narrative's complexity illustrates the dynamics of identity as Merina seek to recreate themselves in the global era / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation examines age organization as an aspect of social identity among the Xavante, an indigenous people in Central Brazil. The Ge-speaking Xavante are among Brazil's most populous indigenous peoples, with over 10,000 individuals in indigenous reserves located in Mato Grosso State. Xavante society, particularly its dual structural aspects and ceremonial expressions, factored importantly in anthropological discussions regarding social structure of Central Brazilian indigenous societies. The objective of this research was to investigate ethnographically how notions of age are implicated in the contemporary experience of daily social life. In this dissertation, simultaneously emphasizing structure and praxis, I seek to show that multiple configurations of age engage in a lively and specific manner a complex field of perceptions of sameness and otherness with important implications for other ethnographic issues of broad relevance in Xavante society. It is based on fourteen-months of fieldwork carried out in the Pimentel Barbosa/Etenhiritipa community, with a total population of over 575 people. This community comprises descendants of the same population studied by David Maybury-Lewis in the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that age is a conspicuous and multifaceted feature of the social experience that attests to the mutuality and non-opposition of similarity and difference in its diverse manifestations. Thus, Xavante social organization is considered to be profoundly contingent, with age statuses and other aspects of social identity being plural, simultaneous, and interdependent. Evidence to that effect may be found in how the social experience implicates multiple systems of age reckoning, including informal age grades, secular and spiritual age group systems, age set moieties, and genealogical seniority in conjunction with gender and other aspects of social identity. This presentation involves an ethnographic reassessment of the Xavante life cycle that takes into account both its formal and informal properties, attending to previous scholarship regarding the Xavante and other Central Brazilian and Ge societies by demonstrating that age is implicated in diverse aspects of Xavante social life, such as dual organization, notions of relatedness, and cultural traditionalism / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu