Space-time of the Bororo of Brazil /

The Bororo have experienced much contact with anthropologists and have been prominent in the ethnographic literature since the 1880s. In this century their complex social organization and elaborate cosmology have been the focus of considerable research. Based on ten months of participant-observation in 1983, Fabian's study provides a comprehensive analysis of Bororo concepts of cosmology and explores the extent to which Bororo astronomical observations are replicated in their social structure. Methodologically sophisticated and rich in ethnographic detail, the work is organized according to native thought processes and allows the Bororo to "speak for themselves." Fabian begins appropriately with a new variant of the Bororo myth of Toribugu (which also served as the key myth for Levi-Strauss's Mythologiques; Paris, 1964). This myth includes important astronomical observations as well as key themes for the analysis of Bororo concepts of time and space. Fabian demonstrates that Bororo concepts of time-space are inextricably linked. Bororo calendars, for example, not only mark the passage of time but are also maps. In his final chapters, Fabian convincingly argues that Sun and Moon are the major celestial bodies through which society and nature, space and time, and structure and process merge. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and up. S. D. Glazier; University of Nebraska at Kearney