Sorcery and well-being: bodily transformation at Beckeranta

ABSTRACT

This paper examines bodily transformation and well-being within the context of a millenarian movement that emerged during the 1840s in the area surrounding Mount Roraima at the periphery of Brazil, Guyana (British Guiana at the time), and Venezuela. The site of this movement was Beckeranta – meaning ‘Land of the Whites’ – where up to 400 Amerindians were reportedly killed in a quest that is described in its sole historical account as centred around a goal of bodily transformation into white people. In examining this movement, the paper engages with longstanding debates in medical anthropology concerning the body, as well as conversations among Amazonianists concerning the social formation of bodies, and examines sorcery and shamanism as practices that go ‘beyond the body’. Notions of bodily transformation in Amazonia, which are often activated by strong emotions, facilitate conceptual expansions of the body in medical anthropology. The paper suggests that bodily transformations tied to sorcery and shamanism are in some contexts, such as at Beckeranta, associated with desires for well-being.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2020.1807726.

Keywords:

• Well-being
• bodily transformation
• sorcery
• shamanism
• millenarianism
• Guyana

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Rebecca Lynch, Tristan Sturm, and Joe Webster for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper, to the three anonymous reviewers, and to participants of the Affective Apocalypses and Millennial Well-Being workshop at Queen's University Belfast.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was given by Tulane University and the University of Western Australia. Permission to conduct research was granted by the Surama Village Council and by the governmental authorities in Guyana.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I conducted fieldwork among the Makushi during visits in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2019–2020. My residence during visits in 2012, 2014, and 2015 was at the Surama Eco-Lodge. During the 2013 visit, I stayed with a host family. And during the 2019–2020 visit, I stayed at the Surama Village Office. A brief non-research visit (with residence at the Surama Eco-Lodge) was also made in 2018 to give a copy of my doctoral dissertation to the village. The village and/or individual families in the village were compensated during each visit. All research was conducted in Surama Village, which is located in Region Nine in Guyana. All names of contemporary persons referenced in this paper are pseudonyms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the American Philosophical Society [Lewis and Clark Fund], Central States Anthropological Society [Leslie A. White Award], Tulane University [Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies, School of Liberal Arts, and Department of Anthropology], and Guyana Tourism Authority.