Limits and places: among m?bêngôkre’s paths

Abstract

We gather here two studies among the M?bêngôkre, a gê people best known as Kayapó, who inhabits the Xingu river basin. Carried out in two distinct subgroups, in the states of Pará and Mato Grosso, the ethnographies in question here draw attention to the m?bêngôkre territoriality, exploring the journeys and the production of named places-events, intimately connected to the sociopolitical organization. The movements are not very well explored in the anthropological literature about the M?bêngôkre, even though they constitute a major theme in the elders’ narratives. We set off from the toponimical enunciations in these stories to perceive the dynamics of place production and its relation to the historical splits between the subgroups, in which are also at stake today some state practices, such as land demarcation and the establishment of state limits, that, despite the contrast with m?bêngôkre territoriality, end up working as and idiom for the political relations between the subgroups.