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Sensing Locality in Yura: Rituals of Carnival and of the Bolivian State
Author(s) -
Bigenho Michelle
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1999.26.4.957
Subject(s) - indigenous , locality , state (computer science) , bureaucracy , space (punctuation) , population , sociology , musical , focus (optics) , aesthetics , geography , political science , politics , law , linguistics , art , visual arts , demography , computer science , philosophy , ecology , physics , optics , algorithm , biology
In this article, I discuss how an indigenous population in highland Bolivia established a sense of locality through participation in two different rituals: the musically based rituals of carnival and the bureaucratic practices or rituals of state that resulted from the initial implementation of a decentralizing law. Through a privileging of visually perceived representations, the logic behind the new law assumed populations were attached to contiguous territories within a national grid. In contrast, carnival rituals—through a focus on centerpoints, musical sonorities, and perceiving subjects—emphasized a relationship to locality through a sounding‐ off through space, [nation‐state, space, music performance, sense experience, Bolivia, Popular Participation, Yura]