The Amerindian peoples of Guiana, the geographical region of north-east South America, have long been recognized as forming a distinct variety of the tropical forest culture. In this book, Peter Rivière employs a comparative perspective to reveal that Guianan societies, generally characterized as socially fluid and amorphous, are in fact much more highly structured than they first appear, and he identifies certain common patterns of social organization that result from sets of individual choices and relationships. By contrasting the characteristics of Guianan society with those from elsewhere in Lowland South America, he constructs a spectrum of complexity of Amerindian social structure, and argues that the Guianan variant represents the logically simplest form of organization in the area.

"Oxford has arguably contributed more to our understanding of tribal societies than any other department of anthropology in the world. Through creating a virtual community, by uniting their work and their lives, by their assurance, generations of Oxford scholars have been able to make the leaps which take us into new and previously unsuspected worlds. They had the privileges, the shared zeal and the shock of similarity-with-difference which engenders true creativity and they made good use of it." (from the Preface by Alan MacFarlane, Cambridge University). Informative as well as entertaining, this volume offers many interesting facets of the first hundred years of anthropology at Oxford University.

The Amerindian peoples of Guiana, the geographical region of north-east South America, have long been recognized as forming a distinct variety of the tropical forest culture. In this book, Peter Rivière employs a comparative perspective to reveal that Guianan societies, generally characterized as socially fluid and amorphous, are in fact much more highly structured than they first appear, and he identifies certain common patterns of social organization that result from sets of individual choices and relationships. By contrasting the characteristics of Guianan society with those from elsewhere in Lowland South America, he constructs a spectrum of complexity of Amerindian social structure, and argues that the Guianan variant represents the logically simplest form of organization in the area.

"Oxford has arguably contributed more to our understanding of tribal societies than any other department of anthropology in the world. Through creating a virtual community, by uniting their work and their lives, by their assurance, generations of Oxford scholars have been able to make the leaps which take us into new and previously unsuspected worlds. They had the privileges, the shared zeal and the shock of similarity-with-difference which engenders true creativity and they made good use of it." (from the Preface by Alan MacFarlane, Cambridge University). Informative as well as entertaining, this volume offers many interesting facets of the first hundred years of anthropology at Oxford University.