This volume reveals that individuals in Amazonian cultures often disregard or reinterpret the marriage rules of their societies–rules that anthropologists previously thought reflected practice. It is the first book to consider not just what the rules are but how people in these societies negotiate, manipulate, and break them in choosing whom to marry. Using ethnographic case studies that draw on previously unpublished material from well-known indigenous cultures, The Anthropology of Marriage in Lowland South America defies the tendency to focus only on the social structure of kinship and marriage that is so common in kinship studies. Instead, the contributors to this volume examine the people that conform to or deviate from that structure and their reasons for doing so. They look not only at deviations in kinship behavior motivated by gender, economics, politics, history, ecology, and sentimentality but also at how globalization and modernization are changing the ancestral norms and values themselves. This is a richly diverse portrayal of agency and individual choice alongside normative kinship and marriage systems in a region that has long been central to anthropological studies of indigenous life.
Author(s): Paul Valentine, Stephen Beckerman
Edition: 1st Edition
Publisher: University Press Of Florida
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 316
Tags: Indians Of South America: Marriage Customs And Rites, Indians Of South America: Marriage Customs And Rites: Amazon River Valley
Cover......Page 1
The Anthropology of Marriage in Lowland South America......Page 2
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 6
List of Illustrations......Page 8
Introduction......Page 10
PART I......Page 22
1. Marriage Matsigenka Style: Some Critical Reflections on Theories of Marriage Practices......Page 24
2. Marriages, Norms and Structures: The Dilemma of Finding a Wife among the Piaroa of the Sipapo......Page 45
3. To Be Seen or Not to Be Seen! Marriage Choices among Ese Eja of the Bolivian and Peruvian Amazon......Page 64
PART II......Page 80
4. Why Did They Marry? A Very Short Tale of a Lasting Wayù (Guajiro) Marriage......Page 82
5. Beyond the Norms: Marriage and Incest among the Ye’kwana......Page 94
6. Why Do the Ye’kwana Commit Incest So Frequently? A Discussion of Silva’s “Beyond the Norms”......Page 109
7. Why Do Women Run Away? Matrimonial Strategies among the Yanomami......Page 133
PART III......Page 164
8. “Poor Me, I Have No Cousin”: The Pragmatics of Marital Choice in the Northwest Amazon......Page 166
9. Why Was There a Transition from an Elementary Kinship Structure to a Complex One? A Short Ethnography of an Amazonian Village......Page 189
10. Changes in Canela Marriage over 70 Years: From Authorizing to Stealing......Page 230
11. Waorani Marriage......Page 256
Bibliography......Page 280
List of Contributors......Page 300
Index......Page 304
