Urban Imaginaries in Native Amazonia

"Urban life has long intrigued native Amazonians, who regard cities as the locus of both extraordinary power and danger. Cities -both modern and ancient- have thus become models for the representation of extreme alterity under the guise of extraordinary, other-than-human worlds. The Urban Imaginaries in Native Amazonia: Tales of Alterity, Power, and Defiance seeks to analyze how these ambiguous urban imaginaries -complex representations that function as cognitive tools- express a singular view of the cosmos and cosmopolitical relations, how they inform and shape forest-city tensions and interactions, and what were the historical processes through which they came into existence. Above all, it seeks to underscore how these urban imaginaries constitute a means through which native Amazonians convey their concerns not only about the nature of power and alterity, but also of domination and defiance. Through the systematic analysis of these urban imaginaries as represented in myths, cosmological discourse, and narratives of personal experiences, the volume seeks to understand the reasons for their widespread diffusion, as well as their influence in present-day rural-urban migration and processes of urbanization. The volume consists of three parts, and eight chapters"--