Sociality as the outside among the mestizo descendants of the Capanahua in the Peruvian Amazon (original) (raw)

“Eleventh Sesquiannual Conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America”. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, 2017

Abstract

The paper explores the idea that Panoan sociality depends on its own construction as the foreign milieu which enables the coexistence of formative ‘kinds’ of people (Panoan or not) to the point of an actual historical ‘acculturation’ or ‘ethnogenesis.’ In representations of the prevailingly Spanish-speaking descendants of the Capanahua, as well as of their Panoan ancestors, local sociality is construed as an inherently foreign, external milieu - whether in the ontogenic, historic, mythic, politic or economic terms. The space is composed by the organising knowledge or laws, as well as by the materials and ways which compose the living milieu (such as concrete, calamine, clothes, food or surnames). The resulting qualities of an ideal ‘outside’ are clarity, homogeneity, permanence, nobility. Sociality is enabled by relations which transcend the hierarchies, fragmentation and problems inherent to local notions of kinship. An external intervention is of central importance - especially by the foreign, containing ‘owner’ or ‘absolute’ figures who provide the containing and protective space of unity. From a historical perspective, the local Panoan substrate practically spills out of itself, both by partially incorporating alterity, as by penetrating into Others - not only across the varied formative Panoan groups, but also with the outsiders such as Cocama, or mestizos. As such, it opens to the widespread mestizo ideological and practical milieu, an ‘outside’ shared by descendants of various historical ethnic categories. The resulting frontiers become contestable, inherently relational and mutually nested in this part of Eastern Peru.

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