Las imágenes semióticas están enlazadas a sus modos de interpretación y siempre, de una forma esp... more Las imágenes semióticas están enlazadas a sus modos de interpretación y siempre, de una forma específica, a una cultura. Para este estudio usamos la descripción de la interpretación de sueños quechuas sudperuanos presente en el Ritual formulario de Pérez Bocanegra junto a la etnografía contemporánea. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar que el modo de interpretación de los signos oníricos es distinto de los signos narrativos y rituales, aun cuando los mismos signos se usen a través de estos medios. Los signos narrativos se anclan en relaciones sintácticas, los signos rituales en relaciones tanto sintácticas como pragmáticas. Por lo tanto, estos últimos tienen una estabilidad diacrónica mayor que los signos oníricos. Este trabajo es un paso a una teoría general de la estabilidad de formas culturales, a través de anclas y replicadores semióticos
Las imágenes semióticas están enlazadas a sus modos de interpretación y siempre, de una forma esp... more Las imágenes semióticas están enlazadas a sus modos de interpretación y siempre, de una forma específica, a una cultura. Para este estudio usamos la descripción de la interpretación de sueños quechuas sudperuanos presente en el Ritual formulario de Pérez Bocanegra junto a la etnografía contemporánea. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar que el modo de interpretación de los signos oníricos es distinto de los signos narrativos y rituales, aun cuando los mismos signos se usen a través de estos medios. Los signos narrativos se anclan en relaciones sintácticas, los signos rituales en relaciones tanto sintácticas como pragmáticas. Por lo tanto, estos últimos tienen una estabilidad diacrónica mayor que los signos oníricos. Este trabajo es un paso a una teoría general de la estabilidad de formas culturales, a través de anclas y replicadores semióticos
Teleological reasoning involves the assumption that entities exist for a purpose (giraffes have l... more Teleological reasoning involves the assumption that entities exist for a purpose (giraffes have long necks for reaching leaves). This study examines how teleological reasoning relates to cultural context, by studying teleological reasoning in 61 Quechua-speaking Peruvian preschoolers (Mage = 5.3 years) and adults in an indigenous community, compared to 72 English-speaking U.S. preschoolers (Mage = 4.9 years) and university students. Data were responses to open-ended "why" questions ("Why is that mountain tall?"). Teleological explanations about nonliving natural kinds were more frequent for children than adults, and for Quechua than U.S. However, changes with age were importantly distinct from differences corresponding to cultural variation. Developmental and cultural differences in teleological explanations may reflect causal analysis of the features under consideration.
The commonplace division of labor between linguistics and linguistic anthropology, on the one han... more The commonplace division of labor between linguistics and linguistic anthropology, on the one hand, and sociology and social anthropology, on the other, is predicated on a nominal- ist error, the belief that institutionally embedded and named fields denote discrete phe- nomena. An influential and much-cited twentieth-century bellwether of this division was Susanne Langer’s distinction between “discursive” and “presentational” form, a polythetic distinction that tacitly constructed a metaphysic. An examination of social interaction in its most elementary form suggests that no such distinction is warranted and that, instead, a systematic account of social interaction transcends the boundaries of these and several additional “preliminary disciplines.”
Authority, Hierarchy, and the Indigenous Languages of Latin America: Historical and Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. Alan Durston and Bruce Mannheim, South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press. , 2018
In Sacred Matter: Animism and Authority in the Americas, ed. Steven Kosiba, Thomas Cummins, and John Janusek, Cambridge: Harvard University Press for Dumbarton Oaks. , 2019
Drawing on evidence—ethnographic, grammatical, cognitive, and visual—from the central Andes (and ... more Drawing on evidence—ethnographic, grammatical, cognitive, and visual—from the central Andes (and principally from Southern Quechua language and society), I discuss four kinds of ontological relativity: properties of the world; spatial orientation and their impact on principles of semiotic interpretation; agency; and causal structures within conceptual domains. In each case I identify social practices that presuppose and entail the ontological categories.
In Andean ontologies: New perspectives from archaeology, ethnohistory and bioarchaeology, ed. María Cecilia Lozada & Henry Tantaleán, Gasinesville: University Press of Florida. , 2019
In Historia de las literaturas en el Perú, 1. Literaturas orales y primeros textos coloniales, ed. Juan Carlos Godenzzi y Carlos Garatea, Lima: Casa de Literatura. pp. 367-380, 2017
Social skins of the head. Body beliefs and ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica and the Andes, ed. María Cecilia Lozada & Vera Tiesler. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press., 2018
Our goal is to interpret the practice of cranial vault modification in the south-central Andes in... more Our goal is to interpret the practice of cranial vault modification in the south-central Andes in terms of what we know archaeologically, historically, and ethnographically about the relationships between developing personhood, place, language and social differentiation (some no longer practiced, some which have endured until now). We will track this practice along a diachronic axis from the Formative period until the time of the European invasion, tracing changes in a child care practice that became an index in an ideological complex that connected personhood to place and language within an “organization of diversity”.
During the Formative period in Cusco, a single ubiquitous child care practice produced a variety of non-standardized head shapes that can neither be categorized by form nor used by archaeologists as proxies for cultural or linguistic difference. In contrast, in Inka and early colonial contexts, varied techniques crafted standardized and distinct head shapes that provide one of the few forms of material evidence for the ways in which cultural and linguistic differentiation played out in everyday settings. Our goal, then is to understand cranial modification as the outcome of social processes differentiated by locality, gender, and age rather than simply as a classificatory device.
In The Routledge handbook in linguistic anthropology, ed. Nancy Bonvillain, Routledge. pp. 44-61 , 2015
How do ideas about the social world spread? I discuss the construction of the social imaginary in... more How do ideas about the social world spread? I discuss the construction of the social imaginary in Southern Peruvian Quechua narratives and songs as both a tacit folk sociology of everyday life and a critique of forms of domination in modern Peruvian society, in which Southern Peruvian Quechua speakers are oppressed linguistically, culturally, and economically. Although these narratives and songs often deal in explicit fantasy, including supernatural beings, anthropomorphic animals, fantastic events, and exaggerated sorrow and loss, the social imaginary is constructed tacitly, in the background of these art forms. I discuss three linguistic and literary mechanisms by which the social imaginary is shaped: (1) presupposition, in which tacit assumptions can be calculated from what is said; (2) implicature, in which the social imaginary is calculated from the way it is said; (3) and pragmatic lamination, in which imaginary is constructed interactionally, through ambiguities in the way in which one speech event is embedded within another.
Las imágenes semióticas están enlazadas a sus modos de interpretación y siempre, de una forma esp... more Las imágenes semióticas están enlazadas a sus modos de interpretación y siempre, de una forma específica, a una cultura. Para este estudio usamos la descripción de la interpretación de sueños quechuas sudperuanos presente en el Ritual formulario de Pérez Bocanegra junto a la etnografía contemporánea. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar que el modo de interpretación de los signos oníricos es distinto de los signos narrativos y rituales, aun cuando los mismos signos se usen a través de estos medios. Los signos narrativos se anclan en relaciones sintácticas, los signos rituales en relaciones tanto sintácticas como pragmáticas. Por lo tanto, estos últimos tienen una estabilidad diacrónica mayor que los signos oníricos. Este trabajo es un paso a una teoría general de la estabilidad de formas culturales, a través de anclas y replicadores semióticos
Las imágenes semióticas están enlazadas a sus modos de interpretación y siempre, de una forma esp... more Las imágenes semióticas están enlazadas a sus modos de interpretación y siempre, de una forma específica, a una cultura. Para este estudio usamos la descripción de la interpretación de sueños quechuas sudperuanos presente en el Ritual formulario de Pérez Bocanegra junto a la etnografía contemporánea. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar que el modo de interpretación de los signos oníricos es distinto de los signos narrativos y rituales, aun cuando los mismos signos se usen a través de estos medios. Los signos narrativos se anclan en relaciones sintácticas, los signos rituales en relaciones tanto sintácticas como pragmáticas. Por lo tanto, estos últimos tienen una estabilidad diacrónica mayor que los signos oníricos. Este trabajo es un paso a una teoría general de la estabilidad de formas culturales, a través de anclas y replicadores semióticos
Teleological reasoning involves the assumption that entities exist for a purpose (giraffes have l... more Teleological reasoning involves the assumption that entities exist for a purpose (giraffes have long necks for reaching leaves). This study examines how teleological reasoning relates to cultural context, by studying teleological reasoning in 61 Quechua-speaking Peruvian preschoolers (Mage = 5.3 years) and adults in an indigenous community, compared to 72 English-speaking U.S. preschoolers (Mage = 4.9 years) and university students. Data were responses to open-ended "why" questions ("Why is that mountain tall?"). Teleological explanations about nonliving natural kinds were more frequent for children than adults, and for Quechua than U.S. However, changes with age were importantly distinct from differences corresponding to cultural variation. Developmental and cultural differences in teleological explanations may reflect causal analysis of the features under consideration.
The commonplace division of labor between linguistics and linguistic anthropology, on the one han... more The commonplace division of labor between linguistics and linguistic anthropology, on the one hand, and sociology and social anthropology, on the other, is predicated on a nominal- ist error, the belief that institutionally embedded and named fields denote discrete phe- nomena. An influential and much-cited twentieth-century bellwether of this division was Susanne Langer’s distinction between “discursive” and “presentational” form, a polythetic distinction that tacitly constructed a metaphysic. An examination of social interaction in its most elementary form suggests that no such distinction is warranted and that, instead, a systematic account of social interaction transcends the boundaries of these and several additional “preliminary disciplines.”
Authority, Hierarchy, and the Indigenous Languages of Latin America: Historical and Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. Alan Durston and Bruce Mannheim, South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press. , 2018
In Sacred Matter: Animism and Authority in the Americas, ed. Steven Kosiba, Thomas Cummins, and John Janusek, Cambridge: Harvard University Press for Dumbarton Oaks. , 2019
Drawing on evidence—ethnographic, grammatical, cognitive, and visual—from the central Andes (and ... more Drawing on evidence—ethnographic, grammatical, cognitive, and visual—from the central Andes (and principally from Southern Quechua language and society), I discuss four kinds of ontological relativity: properties of the world; spatial orientation and their impact on principles of semiotic interpretation; agency; and causal structures within conceptual domains. In each case I identify social practices that presuppose and entail the ontological categories.
In Andean ontologies: New perspectives from archaeology, ethnohistory and bioarchaeology, ed. María Cecilia Lozada & Henry Tantaleán, Gasinesville: University Press of Florida. , 2019
In Historia de las literaturas en el Perú, 1. Literaturas orales y primeros textos coloniales, ed. Juan Carlos Godenzzi y Carlos Garatea, Lima: Casa de Literatura. pp. 367-380, 2017
Social skins of the head. Body beliefs and ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica and the Andes, ed. María Cecilia Lozada & Vera Tiesler. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press., 2018
Our goal is to interpret the practice of cranial vault modification in the south-central Andes in... more Our goal is to interpret the practice of cranial vault modification in the south-central Andes in terms of what we know archaeologically, historically, and ethnographically about the relationships between developing personhood, place, language and social differentiation (some no longer practiced, some which have endured until now). We will track this practice along a diachronic axis from the Formative period until the time of the European invasion, tracing changes in a child care practice that became an index in an ideological complex that connected personhood to place and language within an “organization of diversity”.
During the Formative period in Cusco, a single ubiquitous child care practice produced a variety of non-standardized head shapes that can neither be categorized by form nor used by archaeologists as proxies for cultural or linguistic difference. In contrast, in Inka and early colonial contexts, varied techniques crafted standardized and distinct head shapes that provide one of the few forms of material evidence for the ways in which cultural and linguistic differentiation played out in everyday settings. Our goal, then is to understand cranial modification as the outcome of social processes differentiated by locality, gender, and age rather than simply as a classificatory device.
In The Routledge handbook in linguistic anthropology, ed. Nancy Bonvillain, Routledge. pp. 44-61 , 2015
How do ideas about the social world spread? I discuss the construction of the social imaginary in... more How do ideas about the social world spread? I discuss the construction of the social imaginary in Southern Peruvian Quechua narratives and songs as both a tacit folk sociology of everyday life and a critique of forms of domination in modern Peruvian society, in which Southern Peruvian Quechua speakers are oppressed linguistically, culturally, and economically. Although these narratives and songs often deal in explicit fantasy, including supernatural beings, anthropomorphic animals, fantastic events, and exaggerated sorrow and loss, the social imaginary is constructed tacitly, in the background of these art forms. I discuss three linguistic and literary mechanisms by which the social imaginary is shaped: (1) presupposition, in which tacit assumptions can be calculated from what is said; (2) implicature, in which the social imaginary is calculated from the way it is said; (3) and pragmatic lamination, in which imaginary is constructed interactionally, through ambiguities in the way in which one speech event is embedded within another.
In Southern Peru, one of the principal axes of social discrimination is the aperture of the speak... more In Southern Peru, one of the principal axes of social discrimination is the aperture of the speaker's vocal tract, which identifies the first language of speakers regardless of the language that they are actually speaking. This is manifest most saliently in the vowel systems, which give rise to two scalar fractals, one in which the vocal tract distinction is stereotyped recursively and the other which embeds vocal aperture in a series of identifications of race, class , language, and geography, each of which is progressively more encompassing, from local interaction to the State. The two fractals in turn project a polythetic social classification in which features at one level of the fractal are identified with features at another, establishing essentialist social “identities.” Methodologically, the paper brings a hierarchy of indexicalities (Silverstein) into conversation with fractal recursivity (Irvine and Gal) as modalities of sociolinguistic differentiation; establishes the projection of polythetic social classifications as a hinge between scalar linguistic phenomena and social essentialism; and suggests that the interactional particulars of social discrimination encompass generic social ascriptions rather thanvice-versa. Empirically, we falsify two widely held beliefs about language and social discrimination in the Andes: (1) that a single phonological representation can account for linguistic practices in the zone of contact between Quechua and Spanish, especially in bilinguals (proposed by Fries and Pike but assumed in most subsequent research); (2) that racial categories are gradient and can be mapped univocally onto geographic scale (which underlies most treatments of race and class in the central Andes).
Over the years, I have presented papers—at the Midwest Conference and elsewhere—that argued that ... more Over the years, I have presented papers—at the Midwest Conference and elsewhere—that argued that traditional translations of culturally-relevant terms in Quechua and in other Andean languages: for example, ayni, wak’a, unu, yaku, qaqa (if you have to look them up, you’ve already missed the point) were wrong,, for reasons similar to those that would befall us if we gave similar kinds of explanations for objects without either context or provenience. In this paper, I discuss the theoretical reasons for it and contrast the consequences of traditional and “radical” translation for understanding a specifically Inka material ontology.
Every translation requires the ethnographer or historian to make substantive claims about the ont... more Every translation requires the ethnographer or historian to make substantive claims about the ontological commitments of the people they work with, regardless of whether the historian or ethnographer is aware of it. Every translation also requires an alignment to a specific, socially identifiable register of the language, again regardless of whether the the scholar understands that they are doing so. In this presentation I discuss several examples from the southern Andes in which commonly accepted translations from Quechua are interlocked with social commitments, colonial and modern, propose an alternative translations, and an alternative methodology.
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Papers by Bruce Mannheim
During the Formative period in Cusco, a single ubiquitous child care practice produced a variety of non-standardized head shapes that can neither be categorized by form nor used by archaeologists as proxies for cultural or linguistic difference. In contrast, in Inka and early colonial contexts, varied techniques crafted standardized and distinct head shapes that provide one of the few forms of material evidence for the ways in which cultural and linguistic differentiation played out in everyday settings. Our goal, then is to understand cranial modification as the outcome of social processes differentiated by locality, gender, and age rather than simply as a classificatory device.
During the Formative period in Cusco, a single ubiquitous child care practice produced a variety of non-standardized head shapes that can neither be categorized by form nor used by archaeologists as proxies for cultural or linguistic difference. In contrast, in Inka and early colonial contexts, varied techniques crafted standardized and distinct head shapes that provide one of the few forms of material evidence for the ways in which cultural and linguistic differentiation played out in everyday settings. Our goal, then is to understand cranial modification as the outcome of social processes differentiated by locality, gender, and age rather than simply as a classificatory device.