Preying On The State

Praying and Preying

Praying and Preying offers one of the rare anthropological monographs on the Christian experience of contemporary Amazonian indigenous peoples, based on an ethnographic study of the relationship between the WariÕ, inhabitants of Brazilian Amazonia, and the Evangelical missionaries of the New Tribes Mission. Vila�a turns to a vast range of historical, ethnographic and mythological material related to both the WariÕ and missionaries perspectives and the authorÕs own ethnographic field notes from her more than 30-year involvement with the WariÕ community. Developing a close dialogue between the Melanesian literature, which informs much of the recent work in the Anthropology of Christianity, and the concepts and theories deriving from Amazonian ethnology, in particular the notions of openness to the other, unstable dualism, and perspectivism, the author provides a fine-grained analysis of the equivocations and paradoxes that underlie the translation processes performed by the different agents involved and their implications for the transformation of the native notion of personhood. Ê

From an Antagonistic to a Synergistic Predator Prey Perspective

From an Antagonistic to a Synergistic Predator Prey Perspective: Bifurcations in Marine Ecosystems is a groundbreaking reference that challenges the widespread perception that predators generally have a negative impact on the abundance of their prey, and it proposes a novel paradigm — Predator-prey Synergism — in which both predator and prey enhance abundance by their co-existence. Using this model, the text explains a number of issues that appear paradoxical in the case of a negative predator-prey relationship, including observed ecosystem bifurcations (regime shifts), ecosystem resilience, red tides in apparently nutrient depleted water, and the dominance of grazed phytoplankton over non-grazed species under high grazing pressure. This novel paradigm can also be used to predict the potential impact of global warming on marine ecosystems, identify how marine ecosystem may respond to gradual environmental changes, and develop possible measures to mitigate the negative impact of increasing temperature in marine ecosystems. This book approaches the long-standing question of what generates recruitment variability in marine fishes and invertebrates in an engaging and unique way that students and researchers in marine ecosystems will understand. - Introduces a new paradigm, Predator-prey Synergism, as a building block on which to construct new ecological theories. It suggests that Predator-prey Synergism is important in some terrestrial ecosystems and is in agreement with the punctuated equilibria theory of evolution (i.e., stepwise evolution). - Suggests a general solution to the recruitment puzzle in marine organisms - Proposes a holistic hypothesis for marine spring blooming ecosystems by considering variability enhancing and variability dampening processes - Asserts that fisheries will induce variability in marine ecosystems and alter the energy flow patterns in predictable ways

New International Dictionary