Seeing, Hearing and Speaking: Morality and Sense among the Panar in Central Brazil

摘要

Based on the ethnographic example of the Panar, a G-group in central Brazil, this paper examines the significance of vision and visibility. For G-speaking groups it has been suggested that while hearing and speaking are socially privileged faculties, contributing to the mature status of an individual, seeing has been considered to be an anti-social faculty and is largely associated with the exercise of negative mystical power. While not wishing to deny the appropriateness of this association, I argue that seeing and being seen, as well as the particular visual qualities of phenomena play an important role in an Amazonian lived world.