Books by Norman E. Whitten

A powerfully written memoir, by a respected anthropologist with more than five decades of experience as an ethnographer, author, editor, and mentor, that makes the case for serious ethnography as the foundation of anthropological theory and provides valuable and sometimes surprising perspectives on American Anthropology from 1950s to the present.

The wellspring of critical analysis in this book emerges from the major Indigenous Uprising of 1990 and its ongoing aftermath in which indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian action transformed the nation-state and established new dimensions of human relationships. The authors weave anthropological theory with longitudinal Ecuadorian ethnography to produce a unique contribution to Latin American Studies.

The Andean nation of Ecuador derives much of its revenue from petroleum that is extracted from its vast Upper Amazonian rain forest, which is home to ten indigenous nationalities. This book presents a trenchant ethnography of history, ecology, imagery, and cosmology to focus on shamans, ceramic artists, myth, ritual, and political engagements.