The article concerns the experience of Wayãpi women in the commune of Camopi, in French Guiana, a... more The article concerns the experience of Wayãpi women in the commune of Camopi, in French Guiana, and deals specifically with the behavioral prescriptions and treatments that frame the moment of their first period. The bodies of young girls are then considered to be particularly sensitive to attacks from malicious entities. The ritual of descending from the hammock organized at the end of the confinement of the first period constitutes a parallel moment of reproduction, because the women of previous generations organize it in order to transmit to young girls physical and mental capacities such as motivation at work and resistance to pain. However, our Wayãpi interlocutors highlight the equivalence between the ritual of the first menstruation for women and that of the birth of the first child for men, thus showing that the main capacities expected of adults are the same, whatever their gender.
The article concerns the experience of Wayãpi women in the commune of Camopi, in French Guiana, a... more The article concerns the experience of Wayãpi women in the commune of Camopi, in French Guiana, and deals specifically with the behavioral prescriptions and treatments that frame the moment of their first period. The bodies of young girls are then considered to be particularly sensitive to attacks from malicious entities. The ritual of descending from the hammock organized at the end of the confinement of the first period constitutes a parallel moment of reproduction, because the women of previous generations organize it in order to transmit to young girls physical and mental capacities such as motivation at work and resistance to pain. However, our Wayãpi interlocutors highlight the equivalence between the ritual of the first menstruation for women and that of the birth of the first child for men, thus showing that the main capacities expected of adults are the same, whatever their gender.
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