Explores the legacy of Peter Riviere, the retired Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford, in the development of the anthropology of Amazonia. The contributors demonstrate their conviction that the impact of Amazonian ethnology is comparable to that of African ethnology in the 1950s.

1. Forty Years of Amazonian Anthropology: The Contribution of Peter Riviere ; 2. Gut Feelings about Amazonia: Potential Affinity and the Construction of Sociality ; 3. Wives, Pets, and Affines: Marriage among the Jivaro ; 4. Seed and Clone: The Symbolic and Social Signification of Bitter Manioc Cultivation ; 5. The Blowpipe Indians: Variations on the Theme of Blowpipe and Tube among the Yagua Indians of the Peruvian Amazon ; 6. Myth and Material Culture: Matis Blowguns, Palm Trees, and Ancestors ; 7. From Longhouse to Village: Structure and Change in the Colombian Amazon ; 8. The Composition of Me bengokre (Kayapo) Households in Central Brazil ; 9. Piercing Distinctions: The Making (and Remaking) of Social Contract in the North West Amazon ; 10. Inside and Out: Alterity and the Ceremonial Construction of the Person in the Guianas ; 11. Itoto (Kanaima) as Death and Anti-Structure ; 12. Kanaima: Shamanism and Ritual Death in the Pakaraima Mountains, Guyana ; 13. Finding One's Body: Relationships between Cosmology and Work in North West Amazonia ; 14. The hierarchy Bias and the Equality Bias: Epistemological Considerations on the Analysis of Gender