Scoping the Amazon

The Amazon Indian is an icon that straddles the world between the professional anthropologist and the popular media. Presented alternately as the noble primitive the savior of the environment and as a savage dissolute cannibalistic half-human it is an image well worth examining. Stephen Nugent does just that critiquing the claims of authoritativeness inherent in visual images presented by anthropologists of Amazon life in the early 20th century and comparing them with the images found in popular books movies and posters. The book depicts the field of anthropology as its own form of culture industry and contrasts it to other similar industries past and present. For visual anthropologists ethnographers Amazon specialists and popular culture researchers Nugent's book will be enlightening entertaining reading.