The Indigenists of the Society of the Divine Word in Paraguay. 1910-2000
2008 368 p.
Fr. 75.- / EUR 50.-
ISBN 978-3-7278-1620-8

Darius J. Piwowarczyk Coming Out of the "Iron Cage" The Indigenists of the Society of the Divine Word in Paraguay. 1910-2000 Collection: Studia Instituti Anthropos, Volume 52 The book is a socio-historical study of missionaries-indigenists of the Society of the divine Word (SVD) in Paraguay in the twentieth century. Specifically, the author focuses on changes in the missionary ideology and practice that corresponded with major shifts in global relations of power, or what is termed here – after Pierre Bourdieu – doxas, as expressed and enforced through three consecutive metanarratives of « progress, » « development, » and « cooperation-participation. » The main argument fo the book is that the missionary practical ideologies of « conversion » (dominant in the beginning of the 20 th century), and « ethnodevelopment-interreligious dialogue » (in the 1980s and the 1990s) have been ecclesiastical versions of those globalizing discourses as well as products of contextualization and adaptations of Catholic tenets to specific historical configurations of the Paraguayan field of Indigenism – a Latin American version of the colonial field. Darius J. Piwowarczyk was born in 1958 in Jawor, Lower Silesia, Poland. In 1983, after receiving his MA degree in ethnology from the University of Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland, he joined the society of the divine Word and worked as well as conducted research in Paraguay (1992–1995, 1997, 2000). He completed his doctorate in cultural anthropology at the Catholic Universeity of America in Washington, Dcm in 2002, and then taught social sciences at the Divine Word College in Epworth, IA. Currently he works as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Anthropos in Sankt Augustin, Germany. 368 pages, broché, Fr. 75.- / EUR 50.- ISBN 978-3-7278-1620-8