Aparacida Vilaça explores the meaning of being human from her own ethnographic data. She presents the Wari’ of the Brazilian Amazon as a society whose definition of human is not refined to homo-sapiens. The name Wari’ extends to animals, plants, and inanimate objects. The body can be transformed to the effect that the form one assumes oneself to have can be perceived differently by someone else.
The work can be looked at in terms of the “Great Chain of Being,” where humans are depicted on a higher hierarchal level than animals, plants, and inanimate objects. This hierarchy falls away from the Wari’ as the power to transform is not distinctive to the Wari’. Similarly,Vilaça addresses the culture-nature dichotomy where culture is seen as separate and at times dominate to nature. Her article implies that culture and nature are constructed and as so, begs the question of where the distinction between culture and nature lies.
When one questions what it means to be human, nonhumans can be given “human” characteristics, which elicits a higher moral consideration. Humans and the environment can both beth be looked at as dynamic processes that are subject to the other. Julian Steward’s cultural ecology makes a similar connection. The environment changes just as humans change. Neither would stop changing if the other did not exist. Ideas and practices of intervention, preservation, conservation, and manipulation of the environment should be considered in a different light. The form that is presented to the eye –whether it be a crystal clear body of water, a status report on deforestation, or farmer — is not a form that should be accepted as a single image.
