Abstract

ZENT, Egleé L.; ZENT, Stanford  and  QUATRA, Miguel Marcello. Bae-ja: Being a youngster? among the Jotï of the Venezuelan Guyana. Cultura representaciones soc [online]. 2016, vol.10, n.20, pp.143-186. ISSN 2007-8110.

This paper represents a first attempt to understand the notion of being a young jotï from Venezuelan Guyana, or even to examine if such a concept exists among them. Jotï (jotö, jodï or hoti) is the name by which about 1,200 Indians from South American forests are known and whose territory extends from the southwest of the Bolivian state and the northeastern Amazon state. The nature of this essay is essentially ethnographic and not theoretical. The notion of being young and, in general, all the common categories used to describe life stages among the Jotï, are not clear since they are clustered in gradients or in-conclusive end points on a rather ontological scale. Rather, being young or old, are transformation processes or articulated ways of being in the cosmos. This text, in addition to presenting a minimum ethnographic context and some final thoughts, juxtaposes the mythological narratives portrayed in a timeless and diffuse space and a present-day resistance and changes that expands and contracts within a range of 40 years.

Keywords : Ethnography of the Joti; Guayana; indigenous.