Ethics, Place and Environment

Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2009, 107–130

Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia:

Environmental Ethics and Cultural Identity
in Northern Brazil
SCOTT WILLIAM HOEFLE
Departamento de Geografia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

ABSTRACT Socio-spatial diversity of environmental ethics and regional–ethnic identity in northern

Brazil is examined with the aim of presenting a culturally complex account of Amazonian
worldviews in the making. These worldviews involve the variable merging of Amerindian, riverine
peasant and new settler beliefs. Interpretative and empiricist textual strategies are juxtaposed
in order to explore both broad human–environmental relations, as seen through the prism of
enchanted and disenchanted worldviews, as well as the subtlety of belief and disbelief in specific
elements of worldview, which reflect the different social backgrounds of individuals. The first
part deals with the cultural significance of what is believed while the second part treats the
socio-environmental implications of who believes and why.

Amazonian Environmental Ethics in a Regional Perspective

I will interpret environmental ethics and cultural identity in the Amazon using
anthropological and environmental-studies/history literature on enchanted and
disenchanted worldviews, as this literature is highly relevant for human geographers
exploring human–animal and nature–society relationships (cf. Castree, 2003; Claval,
1999; Cosgrove, 2003; Philo & Wilbert, 2000; Whatmore, 2000; Wolch et al., 2003).
Normally in the Amazon, these subjects are treated using a peoples-ethnographic
approach that analytically separates Amerindians, riverine peasants, and settlers
arriving from other regions for specific study, even though mutual influences
and regional–global processes are now highlighted in research on the Amazon.
Castro (1996), for example, compares and contrasts Amerindian human–natural
relationships based on the numerous case studies which have been made of
individual indigenous groups of the Amazon, but does not include riverine peasants,
let alone arriving settlers in his overview (also see Hornborg, 2005; Whitehead, 2003).
Slater (1994) did a detailed ethnography of enchanted worldviews in Parintins
county, using a small number of riverine informants, which yielded rich material

Correspondence Address: Scott William Hoefle, Departamento de Geografia, Universidade Federal do Rio
de Janeiro, Cidade Universitária—Ilha do Fundão, Caixa Postal 68537, 21941-972, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Email: scotthoefle@acd.ufrj.br

1366-879X Print/1469-6703 Online/09/010107–24 ß 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13668790902753112
108 S. W. Hoefle

concerning meaning, storytelling and performance, but one wonders whether hyper-
enchanted Parintins is representative of the Amazon. Smith (1996) took an origins
and ecological functions approach to the same material, and covered the eastern
half of the Amazon over a 20-year period, but limited his study to people long
present in the region, tracing the origins of the lore from Amerindians, and excluding
recent settlers. Unsurprisingly, the sub-title of his book refers to a vanishing world.
My aim here is different: rather than focussing on one social group and how it has
received outside influences, and then comparing case studies in order to (maybe)
arrive at regional trends, I will directly examine regional cultural interaction.
A consensus exists among researchers that there are very few ‘pure’ Amerindians
in the Amazon, and that most groups have experienced decades if not centuries of
‘acculturation’. For example, the worldview of the Tikuna Amerindians included
in this study has a good deal in common with that of the historic riverine peasants,
who are themselves to varying degrees the descendants of Amerindians and
Europeans. As the agrarian frontier advances into southern Amazonas State,
considerable interaction also occurs between riverine peasants who move to the
roads and settlers coming from both developed and less developed regions of Brazil.
Research that continues to separate these groups in an essentialist way simply flies
in the face of reality, and does not address the future of the region. Consequently,
I have employed a systematic-qualitative research design involving multiple sites in
an effort to embrace the actual socio-spatial complexity of the Amazon.
In what follows, the relationships between worldview, environmental ethics and
cultural identity are presented from two complimentary theoretical perspectives,
each based on different epistemological and textual strategies. In the first part,
a qualitative-interpretative approach is used to illustrate how belief and disbelief in a
living earth in which extraordinary creatures exist in the wilds are shown to define
human identity before Nature, as well as to express historical/colonial ethnic
relations in the Amazon. A more quantitative-descriptive approach is employed in
the second part to demonstrate how degree of belief and disbelief in different
elements of an enchanted worldview varies according to cultural factors (age, gender,
educational attainment, farming systems, geographical place of origin and present
residence and religious affiliation). My objective is to critically evaluate different
models of worldview disenchantment with regard to socio-environmental impacts,
as well as to offer a complex view of environmental ethics at the level of individuals.

Enchanted and Disenchanted Environmental Ethics

The anthropological and environmental-studies/history literature concerning
enchanted versus disenchanted worldviews is a good starting point for examining
environmental ethics in the Amazon, although we must ultimately question the ideal
types of worldview identified, and the functionalist assumptions concerning the
capacity of enchanted worldviews to act as an ideological shield preventing the
over-exploitation of natural resources and the rise of social inequality. In this
literature, the mechanistic worldview of modernist science and laissez-faire
capitalism, which is based on the egocentric ethics of individual good over the
good of society and nature, is contrasted with the homo-ecocentric ethics of
pre-modern European and non-western peoples, enchanted views of nature, and
 Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 109

contemporary Radical Ecology. In the latter views, nature is considered to be an

organic-vital entity with which humans maintain reciprocal relationships, the good
of society and the whole ecosystem take priority over individual good, and there are
consequently lower levels of environmental degradation and human exploitation
of other humans (Merchant, 2005; Pepper, 1996).
In enchanted-vitalist worldviews, Nature is not divided into material-physical and
spiritual-metaphysical, or organic-vital and inorganic-nonvital, phenomena. Not just
humans, fauna and flora are living organisms, but land, water and even rocks can be
considered living entities, possessing similar vital attributes. Consequently, humans
are not beings apart, but rather are intimately tied to a holistic earth whose vitality
must be actively conserved. In addition, the natural, social and spiritual spheres
are interrelated and not considered to be worlds apart. Nature is animated with
spiritual entities with which humans must interact in a reciprocal way, and contact
with the ancestors is not severed by death. Fear of arousing the envy of souls of the
ancestors, spirits of the wilds, and fellow villagers limits individual selfishness,
because a person who neglects kinship and community obligations in order to
accumulate riches at the expense of others may suffer spiritual attack or be accused
of witchcraft (Evans-Pritchard, 1937; Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1976; Sahlins, 1966;
Schneider, 1990; Thompson, 1995).
Disenchantment promotes a radical separation of the Other World from This
World, and of the natural world from the human social world. Historically,
this occurred in two phases. First, in Bifurcate Spiritualism, direct contact between
the spiritual and mundane realms is severed, hierarchy is introduced, and spirits are
distilled into groups led by rival deities, each clearly representing good versus evil.
As these rival deities interfere in worldly affairs only indirectly, notions of balanced
reciprocity between humans and spirits are abandoned. This worldview change
coincides with the rise of the State and caste-class society, opens the way for a more
intensive and exploitative use of both human and natural resources, permits large-
scale landscape domestication, and justifies social inequality (Gauchet, 1997; Service,
1976; Schneider, 1990; Trigger, 2003).
The development of quantitative, reductionist, mechanistic science reinforced
these trends by promoting a materialist worldview that separates human society from
nature, divides the latter into organic and inorganic phenomena, and eliminates
belief in the interference of spiritual entities in natural processes, or even their
very existence. As universal education indoctrinates the general population with
modernist cosmologies, scientific worldviews progressively ridicule and eliminate
‘superstitious belief’, or turn it into harmless ‘folklore’. Without the forest spirits, the
wilds are despoiled. Without the checks of personal envy and mutual obligation
among kin, ancestors and villagers, the way is open for the individual appropriation
of resources based on egocentric environmental ethics (Crosby, 1997; Gauchet, 1997;
Merchant, 2005; Schneider, 1990).
These three kinds of worldviews and environmental ethics can be encountered
in the Amazon, but rarely in pure form. True, the few remaining tribal
Amerindians have enchanted environmental ethics, but so do the acculturated
Amerindians and the mestizo historical peasantry (among whom it co-exists with
a spiritually bifurcated Christian worldview, involving a benevolent God, aided by
saints, pitted against a malevolent Devil—all of these spiritual beings interfering
110 S. W. Hoefle

in mundane affairs). Settlers, too, bring a spiritually bifurcated worldview with them,
as well as tales of enchanted creatures from their regions of origin. Consequently, the
emphasis here will be on regional processes of cultural interaction and fusion
between Amerindians, riverine peasants and settlers, an approach I previously
employed in comparative studies of Amazonian farming systems and multi-scalar
politics (see Hoefle, 2003, 2006; Bicalho & Hoefle, 2008a).

Research Design
This study builds on three decades of research on the relationship between farming
systems, environmental ethics, and cultural identity in Northeast and Southeast Brazil
(Hoefle, 1983, 1990, 1999, 2003, 2008). During this time, research methods shifted
from a classic ethnographic approach to the systematic-qualitative approach used
here. However, long before researching multiple sites became the norm for
ethnography (Marcus, 1995), and under the influence of criticism of village studies
in which communities were assumed to be isolated, socially homogenous and, until
recently, unchanging (Gough, 1968; Harris, 1968; Hymes, 1969; Frank, 1969), I have
always included at least three different sites in previous research with the aim of
embracing spatial variation. Consequently, I have always tried to steer a middle course
between what later became multi-sited research and those, such as Candea (2007), who
espouse a return to some form of bounded holism (also see Hensen, 2007).
The present study involves more than two years of accumulated time in the field.
Since 1998, general socio-economic questionnaires have been applied to farm owner
and worker families (n ¼ 527) in 15 municipalities of Amazonas state, which were
chosen to reflect differing degrees of capitalisation of farming systems and market
articulation, according to proximity to the principal consumer market of Manaus.
Beginning in 2002, I started experimenting with questions about enchanted creatures,
asked at the end of the interviews. In 2005, encouraged by two French research
institutions, I began full-blown research on issues of landscape perception on and
beyond the greater frontier. Specific, open-ended questionnaires were applied to
farmer and worker families concerning spatial perception (n ¼ 48), ethno-agronomy
(n ¼ 187) and environmental ethics and worldviews (n ¼ 279) in six study areas:
(1) Benjamin Constant-Tabatinga, (2) Humaitá, (3) Manaus and environs, (4)
Manicoré, (5) Parintins and (6) Silves (Figure 1).
Questions concerning enchanted creatures were, as before, always the last subject
to be treated, and asked in a manner meant to give the impression of an after-
thought, because, as Smith (1996) noted, people do not want to be seen as
superstitious bumpkins. I would ask, ‘Has anyone seen Curupira around here?’ in a
tone of voice marking an open-mind concerning its existence. When the answer was
not a resounding no, I would then go through questions I had used in previous
ethno-biological research in order to explore the similarities and differences between
these ambiguous creatures, conceptually located between, and mediating, people
and animals: Where were they found? What did they eat and what eats them?
Was their name used as nicknames for certain people (beastly metaphors)? If dealing
with human–animal transformations, why were they transformed, and what could be
done to transform them back? The ‘questionnaire’ consisted of a list of the creatures
and lots of space to write down what was said, always repeating out loud the exact
 Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 111

Figure 1. The study areas in the Central and Western Amazon.

words being transcribed. This strategy was meant to dispel suspicion, and even made
the person being interviewed feel intellectually empowered because I was noting
down their exact words.
Of the different research areas, Humaitá proved to be crucial, due to the diversity
of social actors present. This municipality is located on the greater frontier in the
south of Amazonas state, and is undergoing intense colonisation along the
Transamazonian and Porto Velho-Manaus highways with the arrival of different
kinds of settlers from developed and less developed regions of Brazil, who practise
farming systems ranging from non-capitalised basic food production to highly
capitalised rice and soybean production [see Bicalho and Hoefle (2008a) for details
on farming systems in southern Amazonas state]. Many of the farmers on the urban
periphery of Manaus also arrived from other parts of Brazil, practise capitalised
vegetable cropping, and have relatively high levels of education, while riverine
farmers and those along roads of the nearby municipalities of Careiro da Várzea,
Iranduba, Manacapuru, Manaquiri and Rio Preto da Eva have mixed farming and
educational backgrounds [see Bicalho and Hoefle (2008b) and Noda et al. (2000) for
details on farming systems]. Farmers of Benjamin Constant, Manicoré, Parintins and
Silves, by contrast, are riverine peasants (as well as acculturated Tikuna Amerindians
in the case of Benjamin Constant) long resident along the Amazon and Madeira
Rivers, who practise semi-subsistence and semi-commercial agriculture and have low
levels of formal education.
112 S. W. Hoefle

The principal difference between this study and those undertaken by Slater (1994)
and Smith (1996) is the large number of people interviewed along a north–south axis
meant to include the accounts of riverine farmers and new settlers. With regard to the
latter, comparisons are made to previous research undertaken in their regions
of origin, so that the study takes on a multi-site dimension commonly used in
contemporary migration studies (Kenny, 2006). The present study thus represents
a rupture with classical ethnography, which assumes cultural and sub-cultural
homogeneity. Particularly in Humaitá, along the greater frontier, where different
social actors are present, a research design meant to gauge cultural diversity is
required, but this method also produces interesting results in the so-called traditional
riverine areas, which at first glance appear to be socially homogeneous.

Tales of Enchanted Amazonia

During the field research, when immigrants from southern Brazil were asked about
spirits of the wilds specific to the Amazon, they often answered that they did not
know much about the spirits and that it would be better to talk with riverine peasants
who knew them well. With this we see at the most obvious level of analysis that the
belief in enchanted and disenchanted worldviews is bound up with regional identity.
In addition to this, the appearance and behaviour of the spirits express historical
ethnic relations in which the creatures are identified with Amerindians, and
occasionally with African Brazilians, as if they were less human, if not animalistic,
a legacy of colonial ethnic relations also encountered in research in Northeast and
Southeast Brazil. Consequently, an interpretative reading of the tales concerning
extraordinary creatures of the wilds reveals ideas about the identity of humans
vis-à-vis animals, and about the ethnic identity of the coloniser and the colonised.
With this we enter the cultural terrain of ‘wild men and wild women’, of dominated
ethnic groups placed outside of (colonial) society (cf. Duerr, 1985; Taussig, 1987).
The tales are a product of centuries of cultural merging between descendants
of detribalised Amerindians and immigrants from other regions of Brazil, which
produced a historical peasantry living along the river and lake systems of the
Amazon. Water courses are large, and extensive forested areas exist close by, so that
riverine peasants possess a rich lore of human-like spirits of the forests and rivers,
of enchanted animals temporarily transformed into humans who do evil, of humans
temporarily transformed into monstrous animals that attack people, and of divine
interference with worldly affairs. Some of these tales are specific to the Amazon,
while others are common throughout rural Brazil (though differing in detail). These,
along with yet others brought to the Amazon by new settlers, enter into a process
of cultural merging which continues today, provoking what Lévi-Strauss (1969b)
called ‘transformations’ involving combination, recombination, mutation and
inversion of different elements of myth, important conceptual tools which allow us
to go beyond cultural essentialism.

Extraordinary Creatures of the Forest and Rivers

Curupira (occasionally referred to as Caipora, the term used in the Northeast) is the
most commonly encountered belief concerning forest spirits. The term Curupira,
 Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 113

like others treated below, is of indigenous origin, and is also used in Spanish in the
Peruvian and Colombian Amazon. This creature is ‘chief of the forest’ or ‘mother
of the forest’, and as such is feminine, like Caipora in the Northeast (Hoefle, 1990,
2008). This differs from the eastern Amazon, where Smith (1996) reports that
Curupira is male as is also the case in Southeast Brazil (Bicalho & Hoefle, 2002).
This illustrates how the myth suffers transformations in space [see Cascudo (1962,
1976) for the classic geographical and origins approach to Brazilian folklore].
Curupira lives deep in the virgin forest of inter-fluvial areas, and at the headwaters
of rivers where few people live, so that only male hunters have contact with her.
She eats natural fruit or hunts animals like people do. As protector of wild animals,
Curupira can interfere with human hunting activities by causing a hunter to become
lost in the forest, and by springing traps. She normally only beats a hunter or his
dogs with invisible blows, or throws rocks at them, but in some tales dead hunters
were found tied to a tree deep in the forest, and this was attributed to Curupira.
Curupira is usually thought of as an enchanted spirit with the power of invisibility,
but when sighted she appears as a small brown-skinned mestizo (cabocla) or
Amerindian woman (occasionally as a man, occasionally with black skin). Curupira
can show her presence without being seen by making noise, such as striking a tree
trunk three times. She mixes human and animal characteristics and the human traits
are said to be Amerindian. She uses no clothes, has long hair covering her face,
and fur over her body. Her feet are pointed backwards, and in the western Amazon
she is said to have a short tail. She does not have the capacity of speech and only
makes guttural sounds. Because of this, she is said to have a ‘semblance’ to humans,
and so occupies a half-way position between people and animals (Figure 2). Hairy
men, or someone who is always in the forest, can receive the nickname of Curupira,
as can individuals who vomit their food (also thought to be a common trait of
Curupira). This of course implies that their appearance and behaviour is not human,
which is a classic function of animal–human metaphors (cf. Urton, 1985).
Curupira loves tobacco and sugarcane spirits, which are used to placate her into
not interfering with the hunt. This could be interpreted as an act of reciprocity within
an enchanted worldview, which might limit over-hunting, but no one interviewed
expressed the idea that Curupira maintains a balance between kills and reproduction
like that encountered elsewhere in Brazil, or in case studies of Amazonian
Amerindians (Bicalho & Hoefle, 2002; Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1976). In addition, no
one said that they avoided certain parts of the forest so as not to encounter Curupira
or other feared extraordinary creatures, in the manner that Smith (1996, p. 11)
suggests might serve to create no-go buffer zones that could permit faunal
reproduction. However, the idea of limiting over-hunting was present in one
description of Hell, told by a riverine farmer of Benjamin Constant, where the
damned were forced to eat the rotten meat of all the animals that they had hunted
beyond their alimentary needs.
Normally people steer clear of Curupira, but several have been captured using
sugarcane spirits to attract and to put her to sleep. In fact, because of her great force
and invisibility Curupira can only be captured this way. A number of stories were
encountered in the upper Amazon and Madeira Rivers of individuals or close
relatives having actually seen a captured Curupira being transported to sell
downriver or abroad. Older informants in Manaus remember reading of one such
114 S. W. Hoefle

Figure 2. Curupira mixes human and animal appearance and behaviour. Source: Wood
carving displayed in a restaurant in Leticia, Colombia (across the border from Tabatinga).

case in the newspaper. This goes beyond ‘folk imagination’, and indeed some
informants consider Curupira and Mapinguari (treated below) to be actual animals
rather than enchanted spiritual entities. Consequently, these cases could involve the
capture of a rare species of primate, much like Jensen (1983) postulated for yetis
of the Himalayas, although having said this, it must be noted that having a short tail
or no tail are not characteristics of New World primates. Furthermore, as Sahlins
(1976) argued long ago, this is the typical reaction of a scientific worldview whereby
a ‘rational’ explanation is sought for supernatural belief in beings that by definition
cannot ‘exist’.
Mapinguari is a lesser-known creature of the deep forest. It is said to have
a similar furry appearance to Curupira, and to walk on two feet turned backward,
which led some informants to identify it as the male consort of Curupira. However,
Mapinguari is much larger, and dangerous because it kills and eats hunters who
venture into the forest at night. The creature also has distinctive physical features,
such as a mouth where a belly button should be, and an impenetrable hide and/or
bone structure that repels bullets. A kill can only be made by shooting it in the
mouth at the exact moment when it screams. This creature is considered to be ugly
and particularly smelly, so that ‘Mapinguari’ can be used as a pejorative nickname
 Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 115

for a smelly person. Like the nickname ‘Curupira’, a person who only goes out
at night can also be called ‘Mapinguari’.
Unlike Curupira, though, Mapinguari attacks and eats people. Consequently,
it is usually considered to be a true animal, and not a human-like animal. The
ornithologist David Owen has the theory that belief in Mapinguari is folk memory
or actual experience with giant sloughs, which roamed the Amazon during the
Pleistocene or still exist in remote areas (Smith, 1996), a possibility which Forth
(2005) critically evaluates for Homo floresiensis on the island of Flores, Indonesia.
Furthermore, it is hard to imagine a giant sloth attacking and eating people, as it was
believed to have been a herbivore.
Juma, also called Jurupari Indian, is an extraordinary tall Amerindian entity with
long hair, ugly eyes and one huge deformed foot. Jumas can form couples and live
in the deep forest. They use Amerindian dress consisting of a loin-cloth for men and
bead apron for women, or go naked. A Juma may or may not have the power
of speech, and scares people with loud screams as if a shotgun is being fired. Some
people consider it inoffensive, saying that it may spit seeds at people, while others
insist that it attacks and eats people.
Martin is an invisible spirit that appears as a sudden wind deep in the forest.
As it is invisible, only its loud whistle indicates that it is nearby. It wanders through
the forest with no attachment to any specific place, and is fairly harmless, just licking
people to scare them.
Mention of Saci Pererê is rarer in riverine Amazonia, and more commonly found
on the advancing frontier among immigrants from southern Brazil, even if most do
not believe in it. In Humaitá it is characterised as a little black boy with only one leg,
who wears red shorts and a black cap, smokes a pipe and mounts a horse (Figure 3).
However, some stories ‘mix the description of the spiritual entities’, which cautions
against insisting on ‘typical’ tales. One farmer in Humaitá called this spirit Martin
Pererê, but gave a description normally attributed to Curupira. Another person
who lives on the periphery of Manaus said Saci once existed there when forest was
still present. His description mixed the appearance of Saci with the behaviour of
Curupira, in that Saci causes people to get lost in the forest and hunts forest animals
to eat. Here we see at the individual level how classic Structuralist transformations
and inversions occur, whereby people recombine elements of what for the ‘collective
consciousness’ approach to myth would be ‘different’ beliefs. Indeed, ethnographic
research methods that are not multi-sited and do not consult a larger number of
individuals would not even have detected this socio-spatial complexity.

Enchanted Animals Transformed into Extraordinary Humans

Belief in enchanted giant snakes is common in the eastern Amazon, but not in the
western part of the basin, and a giant snake is a favourite mythical creature for
Boi Bumbá presentations, a festivity of carnival proportions held annually in
Parintins and in other cities of the lower Madeira and middle Amazon. In the stories,
giant black snakes measuring from 30 to over 200 metres are said to live in the rivers,
and to have red blazing eyes that illuminate the surface of the water. The snakes are
so big that when asleep the snoring shakes docks and mooring posts. People are
116 S. W. Hoefle

Figure 3. Saci-Pererê, a belief of southern origin, which mixes Afro-descendant and

animalistic appearance. Source: Lobato (1998, cover plate).

afraid of the snakes because they attack and eat people, swallowing whole canoes.
A few individuals thought that the snake could transform itself into a woman, come
on to land, and try to carry off children, much like enchanted dolphins and mermaids
(see below).
Certain pink (actually ‘red’ in local colour perception) dolphins also have the
capacity to turn into people, usually young men, who come onto land at night. A
handsome but unknown young white man, dressed all in white, will appear at a party
or before a young woman near the river when she is washing clothes or taking a bath at
dusk, and enchant her into accepting his advances. Alternatively, such a dolphin will
transform from the shoulders down into human form, maintaining a dolphin head and
dressed only in a string-ray hat, an electric eel belt and shoes (Figure 4).
Unlike grey (called ‘black’ locally) dolphins, which are seen as being helpful to
people, particularly when they are drowning, pink dolphins are larger and tear nets.
These dolphins can scare fishermen by appearing suddenly at the surface with a
human bone or skull it has brought up from the deep. They are characterised as
being mean-spirited and wicked, terms usually reserved for human behaviour.
Enchanted pink dolphins ‘do evil’ to humans by placing young maidens into a trance
in order to seduce and impregnate them. An affected woman must be physically
restrained or else she will jump into the river and accompany her dolphin lover down
to his underwater abode, from which she will never return.
 Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 117

Figure 4. The dolphin, his human partner and mixed-species offspring. Source: Wood
carving displayed in a restaurant in Leticia, Colombia.

As with the gods in Greek mythology, an ‘inexplicable’ pregnancy is attributed to

an enchanted dolphin. Such a pregnancy may involve species mixing, and the child
in the womb may squirm about like a fish and make dolphin noises (see the offspring
in Figure 4). In one such pregnancy the woman went to town to have the baby in the
county hospital, to which the dolphin father is said to have gone and taken the child
away. Disbelievers jokingly comment that the dolphin was invented to explain
unwanted pregnancy and to avoid paying child support. The belief in dolphins
thus serves to project conflict outside of a small community, where all present are
kin and friends, by placing blame for randy behaviour on the dolphin, who is outside
the limits of proper civility. The affected women are not responsible for their acts
and the bewitchment can be removed by spiritual cures. Some Protestants consider
the dolphin to be a manifestation of the Devil, and as such a spirit of the wilds not
of This World.
118 S. W. Hoefle

The belief in mermaids, also occasionally called iara, is not common in this part
of the Amazon, but when present it takes the contrary form of dolphins. Sirens
are beautiful women who have a human torso, a fish tail and sometimes duck feet.
They can live in the rivers, but usually in the sea. They seduce fishermen, take them
to their underwater abodes, and the fishermen are never heard of again. As with the
dolphin, a mermaid can transform herself into a complete human and come on land
to carry a man away with her. The dolphin and the mermaid thus form a pair of
symbolic inversions highly charged with ethnic and sexual overtones. The dolphin
is a white man or half ‘fish’ that seduces caboclas (female mestizos) and the
mermaid is a white or Amerindian woman who seduces caboclos (male mestizos).

Wicked Humans Transformed into Extraordinary Animals and Lost Souls

The term visage or visagem (vision) denotes spirits or shades (vultos), particularly the
ghost of a dead person who was not ‘saved’ (did not go to Heaven). They dress in
white robes and have no hair. They appear in a vision that appears and disappears
in an instant, late at night, along a dark trail or in the village; and when people see
such a spirit they become petrified to the point of immobility. Shades do not actually
attack people, but rather scare the daylight out of them. They are thought to be lost
souls without salvation, who once did evil and now wander in an earthly solitary hell,
a common notion in Brazilian Popular Catholicism (Hoefle, 1999).
The transformation of men into werewolves is another kind of divine punishment,
in this case for those who were not baptised. Just before midnight on Wednesday of
Holy Week, such a man is transformed into a kind of ugly pig-like—or dog-like—
creature that during the night must run on its elbows and knees through seven
parishes (not an easy task, particularly in the Amazon, where parishes are quite
large). Along the way, a werewolf may stop to gnaw on old animal and fish bones it
encounters, or in some accounts to attack and eat children. Dogs get nervous and
bark at a werewolf, but do not dare attack it because it will brutally beat them if they
come too near to it. On the other hand, if a werewolf is beaten by people,
it transforms back into a human and any wound received will appear the next day,
so confirming suspicions about the strange behaviour of a neighbour.

Human Identity and Colonial Ethnic Relations

As Douglas (1966, 1975), Lévi-Straus (1969a) and Leach (1964) argued long ago,
certain animals, and extraordinary creatures in particular, are useful for thinking
about human society. At the most general level, the difference between people and
extraordinary and ambiguous creatures, such as those described above, serves to
define human-ness in terms of physical appearance and proper behaviour. Curupira
has some human traits, for instance, such as walking on two legs and a taste for
tobacco and cane spirits, but she is also fury, wears no clothes, possesses super-
human force, and has the power of invisibility. Mapinguari is said to be similar to
Curupira in form, but is larger, has a mouth in the wrong place, and stinks horribly.
Saci has human form and dresses in shorts, but has only one leg and an ability to
 Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 119

appear and disappear. People dress properly and take a bath every day, and only
hunters go out into the forest at night.
All of the creatures described above engage in beastly acts or play harmless but
scary tricks on humans. Mapinguari and enchanted snakes are predators of humans,
almost like jaguars. Curupira reigns over the wild animals which men hunt. She is
almost a rival, like predators are, and she can do violence to hunters resulting
in death, but does not eat them. Werewolves are transformed humans who take
on the animal-like physical characteristics of filthy dogs and pigs, or behaviours
like eating raw meat and old bones, all of this divine punishment for not observing
proper religious practices. Similarly, a visage suffers miserable solitude because
of the sins perpetrated in life.
Creatures temporarily transformed into people, like enchanted dolphins and
sirens, lead people into sexual temptation and cause them to abandon their human
homes and live in an enchanted abode at the bottom of rivers and the sea. Some
stories of Curupira attribute a sexual side to her, describing how she tries to keep
hunters as mates; but men resist her overtures because she is so ugly, and are
consequently tied to a tree and forcibly abused.
The belief in lost souls closes the circle between humans and the extraordinary
creatures, in that some people think that enchanted dolphins are the lost souls of
drowned humans. Lost souls usually appear to ask the living to do some task left
unfinished, such as fulfilling a vow to a saint. They may also appear because they
want to carry a living person off to death, and so have company in their lonely
wanderings, or, when the lost soul is an enchanted dolphin, in their abode under
the water.
At another level, enchanted beings represent different historic ethnic groups in the
Amazon. Enchanted dolphins are young white males, and as such are considered
to be handsome. Juma is a deformed Amerindian, and Curupira is a hairy cabocla,
both living in the forest like animals. Saci is black, and also lives in the wilds. These
creatures can be seen as inverse images of the traditionally dominant European
ethnic component of Brazil. In popular and official history, the European colonists
were civilizados (the civilised) who desbravaram (tamed) the wilderness, and brought/
harnessed the other ethnic groups into this process; while the enchanted creatures
represent untamed Amerindians and Africans, living in the wilds outside of
European-dominated society. Riverine peasants commonly made statements like,
‘Mapinguari is a transformed Indian’ or ‘Curupira is an old Indian which turned into
its present form’. Another variant was, ‘Curupira tamed wild Indians and turned
them into cabolos’.
Finally, at the level of social groups defined by region of origin, belief and disbelief
in enchanted creatures set the historical population off from the new settlers
who arrive from other regions of Brazil. When asked about the creatures, settlers
would express disbelief or just unfamiliarity by saying that these beliefs are typical
of the riverine population, not themselves. They could soften their attitude vis-à-vis
the riverine peasants by stating that they had heard stories about other enchanted
creatures when they were growing up in southern or north-eastern Brazil, but that
they had never seen these creatures there. Finally, they could state simply that they
did not believe in enchanted creatures of any kind, anywhere.
120 S. W. Hoefle

Regional Identity, Cultural Diversity and Environmental Ethics in the Amazon

Environmental ethics are thus associated with cultural identity, and a subtle
variation from belief to disbelief in the different elements of an enchanted worldview
exists. I will now relate this to the varying socio-spatial backgrounds of different
individuals, and to how belief or disbelief in the entities might, or might not,
influence the course of natural resource appropriation and social transformation.
I will work through three dimensions:
(1) the belief in spirits of the wilds considered to be part of This World, which
might limit over-fishing and over-hunting;
(2) the belief in the interference of supernatural forces of the Other World, as in
the case of God and the Devil, and of This World, as in the case of the evil
eye, which are thought to affect the health of the crops, farm animals and
people; and
(3) the belief that land and water are alive, which could impose ethical
limitations to economic exploitation.
The role of the spirits of the wilds was treated in the previous section, so that what
needs to be discussed a bit more, before exploring cultural diversity in environmental
ethics, is the role of supernatural forces and vitalism. It is thought, for example, that
God can come to the aid of a farmer who suffers problems with his crops, his animals
or the evil eye. Alternatively, Satan can cause diabolical harm leading to the death
of crops and animals, or can arouse jealousy in an individual, causing them to harm
another person. The evil eye denotes the malignant gaze of an envious person, which
causes the crops to wilt, and animals, or even a child, to die. It can be considered
an intentional or unintentional disposition of that person. Finally, in a vitalist
worldview, land and water are considered to be living because they have the capacity
of movement and a generative force that sustains all life on earth.
Mechanistic science, as taught in the schools, approaches the subject of the
worldview treated here in dualistic terms: either an individual believes in the
supernatural entities (and is ‘traditional/superstitious’) or does not (and is ‘modern/
rational’). However, reality in the Amazon is far more complex. A person can believe
in a large number of spiritual entities and forces, or, selectively, in some and not
others, or even in only one spirit (with which he or she may have had what he or she
considers to have been a concrete experience). A shade below this kind of certitude
is the view that, although a spiritual entity has never been seen, the person has an
open mind, believing that it does or might exist and might one day be encountered.
The same response, with a different tone of voice expressing doubt, moves in the
direction of disbelief. Finally, the blanket denial of ‘not believing in any of that
idiocy’ is an affirmation of absolute disbelief.

Regional Origin, Farming System and Landscape Domestication

At first glance, when comparing the worldview of the people who are from the less
developed North (Amazon) and Northeast with that of people from the more
developed Central-West, Southeast and South, it appears that the use of ‘traditional’
or ‘modern’ agriculture is decisive for worldview disenchantment (Table 1).
 Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 121
Table 1. Belief in spirits of the wilds and spiritual interference according to regional
origin (%)

Environmental Amazon Amazon Amazon North- Central- South

ethics rivers roads urban east West Southeast

Belief in forest spirits

believe in two or more 61 50 27 32 17 13
believe in one 8 19 0 13 17 8
never seen 10 0 0 23 33 0
doubt exist 21 31 73 32 33 79
Believe in river spirits
believe in two or more 39 19 0 17 0 6
believe in one 22 50 27 8 17 6
never seen 11 6 0 8 17 0
doubt exist 28 25 73 67 66 88
Belief in spiritual-vitalist interference in farming
evil eye 43 75 20 42 20 13
divine help 71 100 75 n.d. 100 n.d.
diabolical harm 50 50 100 n.d. n.d. n.d.
vitalism 100 100 67 100 100 0
Source: Field research, 2002 and 2005.

The worldview in areas of riverine farming held by acculturated Tikuna Amerindians

and historical peasants is highly enchanted, with the great majority of individuals
believing in enchanted forest spirits such as Curupira and Mapinguari, and in
enchanted river creatures such as giant snakes and sirens. At the other extreme,
large, capitalised producers of rice and soybeans who arrive from developed regions
of Brazil do not believe in, or are unfamiliar with, the enchanted spirits of the
Amazon. Nor do they believe in enchanted spirits in their regions of origin. A similar
relationship exists between belief in spiritual intervention in farming, with almost all
of the riverine farmers believing in divine help, and most in diabolical harm and
the evil eye, while the opposite is true for farmers from more developed regions.
With regard to a vitalist view of Nature, only the most modern and highly educated
farmers from southern Brazil hold a materialist view of Nature, while the rest think
of the land and water as a vital entity. This would seem to support Marxist and
Modernisation theories concerning the techno-economic determination of environ-
mental ethics (ideology).
However, the high level of disbelief among individuals who came from urban areas
of the Amazon shows that the relationship is much more complex than mere
technical determinism, which states that when natural risk is controlled using
modern farming methods, recourse to spiritual aid and spiritual explanations of
misfortune is no longer necessary. As will be seen below, perhaps other influences,
such as level of education and class position are more important. Urban individuals
are highly disbelieving of river spirits—but then most people do not believe in the
dolphin, which causes overall belief in river spirits to fall. In fact, most settlers
from southern Brazil come from domesticated landscapes, and some arrive with
disenchanted-mechanistic worldviews that were instilled by high levels of schooling
122 S. W. Hoefle

just as much as by the use of capitalised farming methods. This is clearly the case
of farmers of southern origin who have higher levels of education and do not believe
in enchanted spirits, and of farmers from the same regions with low levels of
education who do. Consequently, regional origin involves an aggregate of technical,
social and ideological influences.
This can be seen when environmental ethics is related directly to specific farming
systems, and to whether the person is a farmer or a worker (Table 2). Without doubt,
small non-capitalised farmers along the rivers and highways have a more enchanted
worldview, and small capitalised farmers along rivers and highways have a less
enchanted worldview, but the relationship swings up and down according to whether
the person is a farm owner or a worker, which suggests the importance of class
position and access to higher education, rather than mere technical control of natural
processes.
Indeed, non-capitalised slash-and-burn agriculture and semi-extensive stock-
raising along the rivers and roads involve lower environmental and market risk than
cropping of sensitive vegetable and fruit crops, or highly capitalised rice and soybean
production. This is particularly true for farming above the flood plain, which is not
subject to flood risk and involves small fields of highly resilient manioc scattered out
in fallows of varying ages. Vegetable and fruit crops for the Manaus market, planted
on the flood plains or above, require the use of expensive crop defensives, are subject
to a number of crop pests, and may or may not have a harvest price which
compensates the higher production costs. In fact, belief in divine help and diabolical
harm is highest among small capitalised farmers growing these sensitive crops, even if
they believe less in the evil eye, much like occurs in capitalised vegetable farming
in Northeast Brazil (Hoefle, 1999). Ranchers as a group display cross-cutting trends:
(1) stock-raisers accompanying the frontier who are rural folk with enchanted
worldviews not much different from ranch hands; and (2) highly-educated, urban-
based merchants who invest in the nearby countryside as a sideline, and have more
disenchanted worldviews.
The greatest disenchantment is present in commodity production of rice and
soybeans, the most capitalised of Brazilian farming systems, in which even a slight
variation in weather can reduce productivity below profitable levels. Production
costs are high, produce prices fluctuate, and profit margins are so tight that this kind
of farming involves more environmental risk via market risk and not less [see Becker
(2004), Bernardes and Freire (2005) and Brown et al. (2004) for more on soybeans
in the Central-West and North of Brazil; also Bicalho and Hoefle (2008a) for
limitations to this kind of farming in the central Amazon]. What this farming system
does is promote large-scale deforestation, so that techno-economic modernisation
is more important for provoking disenchantment indirectly through landscape
domestication, which eliminates the abode of the spirits and ultimately belief
in them.
Historic riverine farming involves low landscape domestication, restricted to land
close to rivers and lakes. Fields are small and forest areas nearby (while the opposite
occurs with capitalised commodity production). Contact with the wilds through
hunting is common for men, and the occasional attack of a jaguar or alligator is a
risk for all. Men hunt alone or in pairs at night, deep in the forest where, in the pitch-
black darkness, all sorts of real and imagined noises are heard, and shadows seen.
 Table 2. Belief in spirits of the wilds and spiritual interference according to farming system and environment (%)

Frontier farming systems along roads

Capitalised Middle-scale Highly capitalised

Riverine farming systems small farming ranching commodity farming

Non-
Non- Capitalised Non- capitalised
Environmental capitalised off- capitalised Capitalised smallholder
ethics off-floodplain floodplain floodplain floodplain foodstuffs Owner Worker Owner Worker Owner Worker

Belief in forest spirits

believe in two or more 53 50 60 32 55 32 75 43 39 0 20
believe in one 16 0 5 12 10 11 25 7 31 0 0
never seen 5 0 11 7 6 2 0 0 15 0 40
doubt exist 26 50 24 49 29 55 0 50 15 100 40
Belief in river spirits
believe in two or more 36 17 50 31 33 6 0 15 8 0 0
believe in one 26 17 20 26 7 9 50 8 46 0 40
never seen 3 0 7 12 4 3 0 0 0 0 20
doubt exist 35 66 23 31 56 82 50 77 23 100 40
Belief in spiritual-vitalist interference in farming
evil eye 37 20 68 26 50 27 40 22 55 0 0
divine help 60 100 86 100 71 100 n.d. 100 n.d. 0 0
diabolical harm 40 50 50 67 67 100 n.d. 0 n.d 0 0
vitalism 100 100 100 100 90 100 n.d. 50 100 67 100
Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia

Source: Field research, 2002 and 2005.

123
124 S. W. Hoefle

These can be interpreted as encounters with enchanted and extra-ordinary creatures

such as Curupira, Mapinguari, Juma and Martin.
Large-scale forest clearing along roads and near cities removes the wild landscape
in which the spirits live, so they cease to exist locally, and stories about them fade
from oral tradition. One young man with a complete secondary school education
(a rarity in the Amazon), who lived on the edge of the medium-sized city of Parintins,
stated that forest spirits used to exist nearby, and that his father had seen them on
various occasions, but with land clearing they had gone to live in distant forest areas.
As he had no direct empirical experience with forest spirits, in the future he will
probably tell less or maybe nothing at all about them to his children.
Indeed, other individuals, who had only heard stories from their grandparents,
usually knew little about the entities, frequently only the name and not much else.
The grandparents had been rubber tappers who lived in the remote upper reaches
of rivers. In one case, when talking to a family of riverine origin now living along a
road, the children had never heard of the creatures because their parents never talked
about them, as their grandparents had when the parents grew up along the rivers.
This shows how, by the third generation, the tales can disappear from oral tradition.
However, rejecting linear techno-economic determinism does not validate the
view, present in the environmental studies literature, that reciprocity between spirits
and humans serves as an ideological shield limiting over-exploitation of natural
resources (cf. Gottlieb, 1995; Merchant, 2005; Thompson, 1995). Such notions in the
Amazon, as elsewhere in Brazil, are easily overcome by pecuniary motivations
typical of commercial hunting, farming and land speculation. Hunting beyond
subsistence needs was encountered even among the most traditional of farmers with
highly enchanted worldviews in the remotest community of the Benjamin Constant
area. One interviewed farmer was drying a jaguar skin to sell in town. Another had
killed a number of peccaries and tapirs; to the question as to whether his family was
going to eat all that meat, he replied, ‘I have debts to pay’. In other words, egocentric
financial interest overwhelms homo-ecocentric environmental ethics.

Education, Gender, Age and Religious Affiliation

The most direct relationship exists between worldview and level of education
(Table 3). Of individuals who have studied up to the first years of middle school,
52–65% believed in one or more forest spirits and 43–57% in one or more river
spirits. After that, disbelief rises quickly. Starting in primary school, children learn
that enchanted entities are just ‘folklore’, and as such do not really exist. Then, in
middle school and after, students have courses in biology and other natural sciences
that instil a mechanistic, materialist cosmology, in which the world is divided into
organic and inorganic entities, only empirical processes are the proper subject
of science, and supernatural phenomena are mere superstition. In interviews, the
greater the level of education, the greater was the irritation expressed in reaction
to questions about the enchanted entities, no doubt because it seemed that the
researcher doubted the person’s level of rationality.
With this we see that one ideological aspect, education, strongly influences
another, environmental ethics, though even here, not as directly as we might think.
 Table 3. Belief in spirits of the wilds and spiritual interference according to educational attainment (%)

No formal Not finish Primary Not finish Middle High

Environmental ethics education primary school school middle school school school University

Belief in forest spirits

believe in two or more 36 47 50 34 31 11 0
believe in one 16 17 17 21 6 21 0
never seen 19 12 6 8 6 5 0
doubt exist 29 24 27 37 57 63 100
Belief in river spirits
believe in two or more 18 20 39 29 25 0 0
believe in one 25 31 18 25 8 15 0
never seen 12 9 4 8 0 0 0
doubt exist 45 40 39 38 67 85 100
Belief in spiritual-vitalist interference in farming
evil eye 40 38 37 44 13 26 20
divine help 50 82 83 75 50 50 50
diabolical harm 67 67 40 57 50 0 0
vitalism 100 100 100 100 100 50 0
Source: Field research, 2002 and 2005.
Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia
125
126 S. W. Hoefle

As more schools have been opened in rural areas over the last 15 years, the young
have had the opportunity to obtain a formal education. Girls are more studious,
so they go to school for more years. This would lead us to expect that the young,
and particularly young females, would be more sceptical of the spirits of the wilds.
This does not occur in a clear-cut way; quite the contrary (Table 4).
The majority of people believe in one or more forest spirits. The young are just as
believing as the elderly, and even more so for river spirits. Disbelief in the spirits
of the wilds is surprisingly balanced across the age groups. Women are more
believing than men of both forest and river spirits (51% versus 45%, and 44% versus
25%, respectively, for two or more spirits). Indeed, with regard to the dolphin,
women would relate stories of actual encounters involving close relatives and friends,
while most men considered the dolphin to be much too convenient for accounting for
allegedly unexplainable pregnancies. On the other hand, when taking the dolphin out
of the equation, many men and women believe in the giant snake.
While people under 30 years of age believe less in spiritual interference in farming
than do people over 70, they believe more in the evil eye and diabolical harm than
middle-aged individuals do, some of whom have higher levels of education. Women
believe a little less than men do in supernatural forces, and a bit more in a vitalist
world.
The process of secularisation among interviewed individuals who have higher
levels of education also is not complete, as the exceptional case of a farm extension
agent with a university education demonstrates. This man is quite aware of the fact
that he should not believe in the agency of God in a material world; but because
of his strong faith he continues to believe in this. He also pointed out that all farmers

Table 4. Belief in spirits of the wilds and spiritual interference according to gender
and age (%)

Gender Age groups

Environmental ethics Men Women <30 30–49 50–69 >70

Belief in forest spirits

believe in two or more 45 51 57 36 32 54
believe in one 12 5 10 19 16 15
never seen 7 12 0 8 11 0
doubt exist 36 32 33 37 41 31
Belief in river spirits
believe in two or more 25 44 37 30 19 8
believe in one 22 17 19 17 26 50
never seen 6 3 0 6 13 0
doubt exist 47 36 44 47 42 42
Belief in spiritual-vitalist interference in farming
evil eye 48 37 38 31 33 52
divine help 75 50 50 69 80 100
diabolical harm 58 50 75 57 60 n.d.
vitalism 92 100 100 100 100 100
Source: Field research, 2002 and 2005.
 Enchanted (and Disenchanted) Amazonia 127

of the region are highly religious so that if we can talk about secularisation at all
we must consider it to be selective, in that religion can co-exist alongside the
scientific worldview propagated by the system of formal education. Consequently,
the extension agent does not believe in the other entities of an enchanted worldview,
but does believe in divine agency, and hedges his view concerning vitalism in terms
of his awareness of environmentalist view points.
Finally, the relationship between religious affiliation and belief in enchanted
entities reinforces the importance of level of education. During the last few decades,
Catholicism has been losing members to introduced Protestant sects across the study
area, as well as the older Cruzista dissident Catholic movement which arose in the
western Amazon during the 1960s in reaction to the Vatican reforms. The rivalry
between these three religious groups internally divides communities, and even the
Tikuna Amerindians.
Contrary to what might be expected according to models of disenchantment,
worldview and level of education do not follow a linear transition from enchanted
folk Catholicism to disenchanted Protestantism, and finally to scientific secularism
(as in classic Marxist and Modernisation theories). One would expect on
theological grounds that Protestants would react strongly to questions about
belief in animist beings, because the latter can be considered to be manifestations
of the Devil; but in fact Pentecostal groups and Cruzistas believe much more in
forest spirits (63% and 100%, respectively, versus 45% for Catholics); more in the
evil eye (43% and 100%, versus 24% for Catholics); less in divine help and
diabolical harm in farming activities (respectively 43% and 50% for Pentecostals,
and 74% and 67% for Catholics), but much more in the area of social behaviour
(particularly with regard to diabolical interference in the morality of individuals in
which the dolphin is transformed into a manifestation of the Devil). Both
Pentecostals and Cruzistas are poor, practise non-capitalised farming, live in
forested areas and have low levels of formal education, and these traits, rather than
the disenchanting influence of religion, explain why so many of them have
enchanted worldviews. A few Lutherans were interviewed who had highly
disenchanted worldviews, but not because their religion demonised the forest
spirits, but rather because they were from the South, coming from domesticated
landscapes with high levels of education.

Exceptions and Socio-Spatial Complexity

As we have seen, at the cold analytical level of broad aggregate trends, belief
in the existence of enchanted beings is influenced by a number of social and
environmental conditions, the most important of which are regional origin, greater
or lesser presence of forested areas, proximity to urban areas, and level of education.
If analysed in a dualist way, of peasant riverine farmers versus highly educated,
urban-based commodity farmers from the developed south of Brazil, this seems to
confirm a linear relationship between technical modernisation and worldview.
However, at an existential level, real belief often hinges on whether the person,
or someone the person trusted, like a parent or close relative, actually had a
concrete encounter with a specific spiritual entity or human–beast transformation.
128 S. W. Hoefle

Seeing (or hearing), or, perhaps thinking what one saw (or heard), an enchanted
spirit, is believing. Direct personal experience is so important that it can override
considerations of farming system, educational attainment or religious worldview that
would predispose a person to not believe. This concrete certitude can even cause
someone to label almost all of the beliefs as childish superstition, but with regard to
a particular one say, ‘no, this one exists because my father saw it’. One’s father would
not exaggerate, or make up hunter’s or fisher’s tales. This emphasis on believing
in what has been actually experienced introduces exceptionality and complexity into
our account, so that it is not just an open-and-closed case of believing or not
believing, as if one attitude is ‘traditional’ and the other ‘modern’, the linearity of
which could be measured quantitatively through multiple-regression analysis, and
the extremes at the two ends of the curve of standard deviation could be discounted
as not being typical.
In fact, focussing on the exceptional cases, such as an elderly riverine farmer who
does not believe in the spirits, his better educated daughter who practises modern
vegetable farming who does, a relatively well-educated adolescent living in a peri-
urban area who does, or a university-trained veterinarian who does not, but believes
in divine agency knowing that he was trained to have a materialist, biological view,
reveal what really motivates the individuals who make up the aggregate trends.
A conventional ethnographic approach in a single-sited setting, involving a small
number of ‘informants’, probably would not have yielded these exceptional cases,
nor have detected the importance of actual experience for belief.
An approach centred on individual experience also shows how belief can
disappear. A common initial response to asking about enchanted creatures was
that these stories are told by grandparents or older ancestors who lived a different
way of life, in remote areas as rubber tapers, and with whom one had little or no
direct contact. Tales of enchanted creatures can only define human-ness and proper
social conduct if they do not disappear from the cultural repertoire.

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