The anthropological study of space usually presents the cultural construct of space as a prefabricated stagelike structure. The cultural construct of space of the Ongee hunters and gatherers of Little Andaman is not stagelike but is a “map” of movements created by the plotting of various experiential coordinates that demarcate activity‐specific places. Ongees share space both with spirits who hunt and with animals who are hunted. Conjunctions in the paths of movement of humans, spirits, and animals set up the culture's dynamics of movement, dynamics expressed in patterns of individual movement, myths, body painting, language, and the maps of space that the Ongees drew for this ethnographer.
Seasons, or temporal duration, for Andamanese are created by the flow of winds through the Andamanese cultural construct of space, which is neither fixed nor constant. In order to organize the space for society, Andaman islanders have to move constantly out from the place where the winds are. Winds associated with temperamental spirits are powerful aspects of nature that culture has to negotiate. Within this worldview where winds affect individual body condition and the capacity to continue hunting and gathering, Andaman islanders negotiate space by creating conditions that invite winds to structure and sustain life. For this purpose, smells are ritualized and wind movements are manipulated. As a result, seasons are distinguished either by winds that are spirit‐given, or by a lack of winds caused by islanders' actions. Based on ethnographic data from the Ongees and Jarwas, this analysis will focus on how various forms of movement in Andamanese culture are negotiated according to a political economy of winds and smells. The worldview of the Andaman islanders, within which winds are so central, has major implications for government authorities, who are keen to confine the translocating Jarwas to a specific and permanent location. But is this possible for the Andamanese, for whom space, like time, changes by the presence and absence of winds?
This article examines the significant role of dreams among the Andamanese and the changes in sleep and dreaming that have taken place as modern settlements replace traditional campsites. As Andamanese hunters and gatherers go to sleep at a campsite, they discuss what they did throughout the day and especially what they have seen in dreams. In the morning, it is proscribed to wake a person up so that dreaming is not disturbed. A shared consensus on the group's dreams guides the members' waking actions. The sleeping arrangements in modern Andamanese settlements have changed: Andamanese believe that these afford less dream recall or understanding and attribute their declining hunting success to this diminished dreaming.
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