Age Grades and Environmental Practice among the Xavante of Pimentel Barbosa

Abstract

Through its emphasis on diachronic change in human-landscape interactions, the historical ecology model implies connections between the past and the future. However, making these connections requires new ways of understanding the present. In this paper, I argue that among the Xavante people of Pimentel Barbosa village, Brazil, contemporary age-based variation in environmental practice (behaviors and perspectives involving the environment) manifests an ongoing process of continuity and change with implications for the past and the future. I discuss this pattern in terms of three formal age grades – adolescent youth (wapté), young adults (ritei’wa), and mature adults (iprédu) – and their mutual involvement in an ongoing tension between “traditional” and “modern” environmental roles.