Gender and Reproduction

This ethnographic study was conducted among the Kariri-Shocó, an indigenous people of Northeast Brazil. The research focused on Kariri-Shocó shamanism as a medical knowledge. The interrelation between gendered embodiment and shamanism provided the possibility of observing how Kariri-Shocó specialized knowledge relates to gendered embodiment and female embodied subjectivity. Kariri-Shocó shamanic specialists explain that the body opens during sexual intercourse and when women experience menstrual and post-delivery blood fluxes. I describe three different kinds of Kariri-Shocó cure-healing rituals which have the purpose of closing the patient's body. The reza (prayer) ritual is one of the first steps that Kariri-Shocó people take towards cure-healing processes. Specialists experience embodiment during cure-healing rituals, when the nature of the patient's health problem is discovered, diagnosed, and treated. I have discussed and demonstrated that Kariri-Shocó knowledge of the body relates to the "openness" and "closedness" of the body, which provides basis for sexual differences perceptions and experiences intertwined with gender embodiment.