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This paper shuffles together several reflections which were wrung out of a specific ethnographic approach, staged on a street at the Manizales' historical center (Colombia). Through it, the ethnographer's experience on the field is shown as a journey of "walking" on the street, so that it provides the grounds to impinge upon current problematic notions in anthropology, such as reflexivity, the social significance of massive flow spaces and methodological questions, and the practices such ethnographic situations demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of rituals as a way of political positioning has been a very difficult task, essentially because the category of ritual itself has darkened important issues concerning the rituals' functions. Using the category of ritual digression, the present paper assesses how a specific healing ritual performed by Embera people becomes a tool to generate political commitment. The study considers the ritual as a discursive and performative work, which produces political identities in a context where conflict prevails. The present work is based in ethnographic fieldwork carried out from 2000 to 2004, in sporadic seasons in an Indian reserve called La Albania, Risaralda and San José de Caldas, Caldas, Colombia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]