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176 reviews for:
Das glücklichste Volk: sieben Jahre bei den Pirahã-Indianern am Amazonas
Daniel L. Everett
3.8 AVERAGE
176 reviews for:
Das glücklichste Volk: sieben Jahre bei den Pirahã-Indianern am Amazonas
Daniel L. Everett
3.8 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
fast-paced
The stuff about the Pirahã culture and Daniel's life in the jungle with them was really interesting. It was quite linguistics-heavy at times, which largely went over my head. I wish he'd explained more about his actions as a missionary and subsequent de-conversion; that part is glossed over quite quickly at the end.
Fascinating book about a Christian missionary who goes to Brazil. While his initial mission is as a missionary, he is also a linguist. I was reading this book to prepare for a qualitative research course I am teaching next semester. I think this will be a great read for the class. It's also so interesting that I have been reading parts of it to my boys who are aged 9, 9, & 11. (Note that I said I am reading selected parts - not all of this is appropriate for children. But the adventure and the learning of a different culture is very intriguing - they like it!)
An interesting book, if a little disjointed. The author combines an autobiographical account of his work as a missionary and a linguist among a group of Indians in Brazil (the Piraha) with some classic ethnography (describing the culture as a whole) and musings on linguistics theory, philosophy, and religion.
The Piraha are really different, both in terms of language and culturally. If you want to read about about people that think about life in a fundamentally different way, this is a good introduction. Sleep, ambition, raising children, numbers - wow. It's hard to wrap your mind around their worldview, but even the little we can comprehend makes you question your own life choices - this one of the things that is most seductive about good anthropology.
Some might find the chapters on linguistics a little slow going (but if you've always wanted to read about Chomsky, Whorf, etc. this is a good intro.), but you can always skim that and just enjoy the parts about Everett's life and how the Piraha change him, and how incredibly different their lives are. Whether their culture shaped their language or the language molds their lives is one of the points Everett discusses at some length.
The title comes from a Piraha belief that sleep is dangerous, too much will make you weak and vulnerable to jungle threats. They get up a lot in the middle of the night, poke the fire, bake a potato, eat something, chat, etc. - an 8 hour stretch of sleep is unheard of in their villages. They nap during the day, though.
The Piraha are really different, both in terms of language and culturally. If you want to read about about people that think about life in a fundamentally different way, this is a good introduction. Sleep, ambition, raising children, numbers - wow. It's hard to wrap your mind around their worldview, but even the little we can comprehend makes you question your own life choices - this one of the things that is most seductive about good anthropology.
Some might find the chapters on linguistics a little slow going (but if you've always wanted to read about Chomsky, Whorf, etc. this is a good intro.), but you can always skim that and just enjoy the parts about Everett's life and how the Piraha change him, and how incredibly different their lives are. Whether their culture shaped their language or the language molds their lives is one of the points Everett discusses at some length.
The title comes from a Piraha belief that sleep is dangerous, too much will make you weak and vulnerable to jungle threats. They get up a lot in the middle of the night, poke the fire, bake a potato, eat something, chat, etc. - an 8 hour stretch of sleep is unheard of in their villages. They nap during the day, though.
I don't recall who recommended this book to me, but I appreciate it. The first half or more of the book is a fascinating look at a nearly unknown culture of an Amazonian tribe. The author of the book has spent most of his adult life living with them. The one thing I didn't know before picking up the book was that he was a missionary, there to convert this tribe to Christianity - and, although he mentions it now and again, it plays little part in this section, other than as part of a compare and contrast of cultures. The next part of the book focuses on the Piraha tribal language - much of it is interesting, but much of it devolves into the technical aspects of linguistics, some of which are explained well for the layman, some of which are not. I have to admit that my enthusiasm waned. The last section of the book goes full tilt back into the missionary world, though in the end [spoiler alert], it is the author, the missionary, who is converted, rather than the tribe. This last section is handled a bit tritely and didn't stand up to either of the previous sections. So, do I recommend it? Certainly the whole first section. The second, only if you're really into languages and more accurately, linguistics. The last, meh.
informative
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
Casual read somewhere between autobiography and informal ethnography. If you have any interest in cultural anthropology or linguistics, this is a great read.
I was really enjoying this book until it got to the linguistics-heavy section and I just don't have enough linguistics knowledge to understand it.
If you are willing to submit to some technical linguistic jargon it is accompanied in this book by a fascinating description of a language and culture so different to those established in the West that it is hard to believe. The Pirahas are simple, proud, pragmatic people who make a stark contrast to the redheaded missionary living among them and trying to learn their language in order to translate the Bible to them and convert them to the Judeo-Christian god.
Daniel Everett presents central ideas around the primacy and immediacy of life with this group, and how this represents a real force in their culture and their language. On the subject of language and culture, he denies previously held ideas of universal grammar popularised by Noam Chomsky and instead puts forward that a culture can, in this instance, shape a language. Indeed the two halves of the book are first a culture and then a language, albeit closely woven together as they were experienced.
Ultimately the conclusions the author reaches are very interesting and very compelling and though the cynic in me says this will have almost no impact on many people I think it is a valid and useful reflection on current Western culture as much as it is an investigation of that of 400 people living on a riverbank in the Amazon rainforest.
Some of this is almost unbelievable, but not because of the style. Matter-of-fact and engaging - though with more linguistics than the average person expected in their reading - this is worth pursuing.
Daniel Everett presents central ideas around the primacy and immediacy of life with this group, and how this represents a real force in their culture and their language. On the subject of language and culture, he denies previously held ideas of universal grammar popularised by Noam Chomsky and instead puts forward that a culture can, in this instance, shape a language. Indeed the two halves of the book are first a culture and then a language, albeit closely woven together as they were experienced.
Ultimately the conclusions the author reaches are very interesting and very compelling and though the cynic in me says this will have almost no impact on many people I think it is a valid and useful reflection on current Western culture as much as it is an investigation of that of 400 people living on a riverbank in the Amazon rainforest.
Some of this is almost unbelievable, but not because of the style. Matter-of-fact and engaging - though with more linguistics than the average person expected in their reading - this is worth pursuing.
Most of the focus of this book is cultural and linguistic, but I was fascinated by it as an account of how the author lost his faith in the face of the lives his potential converts were able to lead.
I would have appreciated this book more if I were a linguist, as there are chapters that get pretty technical. But there is enough that is anthropological in nature to keep me happy.