Making Kin out of Others in Amazonia

Author(s): Aparecida Vilaca

Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 347
-365
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3134479
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 MAKING KIN OUT OF OTHERS IN AMAZONIA

APARECIDA VILA9A

Museu Nacional, UniversidadeFederaldo Rio de Janeiro

This article analyses the process of producing kinship among various Amazonian peoples,
focusing primarily on the Wari', a Txapakura-speaking people living in Western Ama-
zonia (Brazil). It argues that the production of kin cannot be related exclusively to the
domestic or intra-tribal domain, since kinship emerges through a constant dialogue with
non-human entities. By examining the significance of alimentary taboos associated with
couvade practices in a number of groups, it shows that the new-born is made human by
means of the production of its body as a human body in contraposition to animal bodies.

... [la naissance] n'est pas la simple addition d'individu supplementaraire a telle ou
telle famille, mais une cause de desequilibre entre le monde des hommes et l'u-
nivers de puissances invisibles...
(Clastres 1972: 12)

During the same period in which anthropology debated the relationship

between the 'biological facts' of reproduction and the socially recognized ties
of kinship through the works of Durkheim, Malinowski, Rivers, and later
Radcliffe-Brown (an enduring dichotomy according to Schneider 1984: 193),
Levy-Bruhl - exploring the phenomenon of primitive participation - noted
with some surprise that in the most varied ethnographic regions, procreation
was no assurance of kinship with the child. This was not because paternity -
or even maternity - could not be recognized, an important issue in theoreti-
cal discussions at the time, but because the child born to a woman could still
be reckoned to be non-human: the child of an animal. Levy-Bruhl was
not referring to mythic episodes in which such cases were abundant, but to
the facts of quotidian life: 'The idea that a child of normal appearance may
nevertheless not be "human" is a familiar one to the primitives' (Levy-Bruhl
1966 [1927]: 42).
One of the examples which Levy-Bruhl uses to illustrate his point is quoted
from a 1924 issue of the Journal of the African Society:

In Northern Nigeria, 'when a child gets to the age of three or four without being able
to walk, and keeps thin in spite of a large appetite, the case is considered a very serious
one. The parents bring the child to the priest and consult him. He examines the child,
and may inform the parents that it is not "human," but the "offspring of something in
the bush or in the water." If the offspring of something in the bush is indicated, the
parents give the child to a friend to carry to the bush: he does so, leaves the child and
hides to see what happens. The child left to himself will first cry and then, after looking

? Royal Anthropological Institute 2002.

J. Roy. anthrop.Inst. (N.S.) 8, 347-365
348 APARECIDA VILACA

round and seeing that no one is about, will change into a monlkey and vanish among
the trees' (Levy-Bruhl 1966 [1927]: 45).

Looking back at this period, we find ourselves face to face with two sets
of phenomena or objects of study: first, kinship, pertaining to the sphere of
human relations, or more specifically to relations within the same ethnic
group; and, secondly, data on cosmology and religion, where different domains
peopled by humans and non-humans are set in relationship. Despite referring
explicitly to the native concept of filiation, the case reported by Levy-Bruhl
was not correlated with the facts of kinship.' Faced with the same pheno-
mena today, we may observe that anthropologists working directly on kinship
still fail to connect these two sets of data.
At the core of anthropology from its inception, kinship studies underwent
a kind of ostracism in the 1970s, especially after the critiques of Needham
(1971a; 1971b) and Schneider (1965; 1972) threw into question the relevance
of kinship as an area to be studied. In the 1990s, however, kinship surfaced
again, only now with a different range of interests. Instead of terminologies
and marriage rules, analysis focused on native conceptions of bodies and
gender - themes derived from a feminist agenda; instead of the concern with
the relationship between the biological and the social, authors aimed to show
the complexity of the 'biological'. The emphasis was thus on native notions
of body and consubstantiality; rather than being seen as natural givens, these
came to be understood as products of society and culture. Consubstantiality,
located in this new body, was no longer a relation determined by birth, but
a condition being continuously produced through acts of sharing, particularly
of foods (Carsten 1995; Rival 1998) and mutual care (McCallum 1998;
Overing & Passes 2000).
In her introduction to a recent collection of articles on notions of kinship
(now termed 'relatedness'2) in different areas of the world, Carsten (2000)
claims that an important shift differentiating old and new studies lies in the
privilege given by the latter to the domestic sphere (understood as relation-
ships of caring and food sharing between people living in close proximity on
a day-to-day basis). Previously, she says, the domestic sphere had been pushed
into the background by an anthropology in search of grand structures and
syntheses, which presumes the domestic 'to be to a large degree universally
constant or a matter for psychological rather than anthropological study'
(Carsten 2000: 17).
According to Overing (1999: 84; Overing & Passes 2000: 3, 9), although
comprising the main topic of interest for native peoples themselves, everyday
life in the heart of the family and domestic nuclei appeared to be far too
chaotic and commonplace to be a research topic for the anthropologists who
were fascinated by the study of the exotic rather than the mundane. Even
when it did occur to them to pay attention to domesticity, no structures were
found. In place of the domestic they focused on cosmology, eschatology, and
relations with the exterior in general, since 'shamans interacting with canni-
bal gods, warriors lopping off the head of enemies ... are much more excit-
ing prospects than people preparing communal meals or training and caring
for children' (Overing & Passes 2000: 9).
 APARECIDAVILAGA 349

This concern to focus analysis on domestic life, which becomes equivalent

to the social universe (Overing & Passes 2000: 6),3 leads to the same type of
dissociation of ethnographic materials made in Levy-Bruhl's time. The fact
that the relationship between killer and victim (implied in the example of
warfare cited above) or those between shamans and their animal/spirit part-
ners are frequently conceived in Amazonia in terms analogous to those which
connect humans in everyday life, namely filiation and affinity (Fausto 2000;
2001a;Vilaca 1992; 1996; 1998; 2000;Viveiros de Castro 1986; 1993), is not
mentioned in these recent works, whose authors fail to associate the phe-
nomenon with that of domestically produced kinship.
This omission is to be found in cases other than those of kinship deriv-
ing from warfare and shamanism. In a manner similar to the Nigerian case
quoted by Levy-Bruhl, among a wide variety of Amazonian groups the fact
that parents are humans is no assurance of the child's humanity. According
to Gow (1997: 48), at the moment of birth the Piro baby is inspected to
decide whether it is human or not: it could be a fish, tortoise, or other animal.
Among the Piaroa, the baby is called 'the young of animals' (Overing pers.
comm.). Among some groups, such as the Je-speaking Panara (Ewart 2000:
287), the Tupi-Guarani-speaking Arawete (Viveiros de Castro 1986: 442),
Guayaki (Clastres 1972: 16), and Parakana (Fausto 2001a: 396), the body of
the child is literally moulded with the hands after birth, in this way acquir-
ing human form. According to Fausto (pers. comm.), the Parakana explain
that the moulding of the baby's body has the aim of differentiating it from
the bodies of animals.
Despite being highly marked during the post-natal period (which for this
reason I will focus on here), this ambivalence in identity occurs at various
other moments of life. All of infancy and even various periods of adult life
(especially initiation, first menstruation, warfare reclusion, and illness) are par-
ticularly marked as highly susceptible, very often being understood to involve
the possible loss of a properly human identity (Da Matta 1976: 85-8; Lima
1995: 187; Schaden 1962: 85-94;Viveiros de Castro 1986: 474). In the words
of Seeger (1981: 24) writing about the Suya: 'Severe illness, death, weakness,
and sexuality are also transformations of the social human beings into more
animal-like beings.'
Starting out from the native conception of kinship as something to be con-
tinually fabricated, and of alimentary taboos associated with birth as a recog-
nized part of the couvade complex, and based on ethnographic material from
the Wari' (Txapakura, Brazil) and other Amazonian groups, I wish to question
the divisions posited between domestic life and cosmological facts by explor-
ing the notion of an alterity internal to consubstantiality. I argue here that
the exterior is a constitutive part of kinship relations in Amazonia as a con-
sequence of the fact that these relations are constructed from alterity as a start-
ing point. The production of kin is related to the supra-local universe not
only because of the need to capture identities and potencies from the exte-
rior, as numerous Amazonian ethnographies testify,4but also because human-
ity is conceived of as a position, essentially transitory, which is continuously
produced out of a wide universe of subjectivities that includes animals.5
Production of differentiated groups conceived of as kin takes place by means
350 APARECIDA VILACA

of the fabrication of similar bodies from this substrate of universal subjectiv-

ities. Some clarifications are necessary before we can proceed.

The Amerindian body

In the mid-1970s, at a time when native notions of the body did not look
so attractive as they do today to anthropologists working in other ethnographic
regions, researchers of lowland South American indigenous groups had already
called attention to the prominent role assumed by the problematic of the body
in Amerindian thought and its wide-ranging repercussions on cosmological
conceptions and social organization (Overing 1977a; 1977b; Seeger 1980).
Ethnographies of the period devoted much space to theories of conception,
notions of illness, alimentary taboos, and body decoration: a fact pointed out
by Seeger, Da Matta, and Viveiros de Castro (1979: 3) in a seminal article on
the theme. Levi-Strauss's conclusions concerning the central importance of
categories of the sensible in the logic of South American myths, developed
in the Mythologiques(Levi-Strauss 1964; 1967; 1968, 1971), were shown to
apply perfectly to the understanding of social life as a whole.
Organizational principles such as descent and corporate groups modelled
on the basis of African, Melanesian, and Asiatic societies - all better known
to anthropologists at the time - were found to be inadequate when dealing
with South American materials, producing a false idea that we were faced
with amorphic and destructured societies (Overing 1977a: 9; Seeger 1980:
131; Seeger, Da Matta & Viveiros de Castro 1979: 3). In the place of'corpo-
rate descent groups', however, Amerindians presented us with 'corporal descent
groups' (Seeger 1980: 130), understood as groups of persons related by sub-
stance, such as blood, semen, and foods. Thus, while classical anthropology
bequeathed a notion of social structure as a system of relationship between
groups, Amerindians unfolded for us structural principles based on a system
of relations between bodies (Seeger, Da Matta &Viveiros de Castro 1979: 14).
In the apt expression of these authors, 'indigenous socio-logics is based on a
physio-logics' (Seeger, Da Matta &Viveiros de Castro 1979: 13).
Although in some of these analyses the notion of the body was still related
to that of a biological substrate, constituted from birth (Seeger 1980: 130,
implicit in his concept of corporal descent groups; Turner 1971: 105, for
whom social marking is inscribed on the body as a 'social skin'), it is impor-
tant to stress the innovative nature of the analyses of those authors who drew
attention to the role of society in the constitution of this body. Among these,
Viveiros de Castro (1987 [1977]: 32) in his study of the Yawalapiti of the
Upper Xingu, insisted on the idea that 'human nature is literally fabricated,
modelled by culture ... the social is not deposited on the Yawalapiti body as
though onto an inert support: it creates this body'.
Viveiros de Castro has recently returned to the question of Amerindian cor-
poreality in search of a new synthesis, developing the model of perspectivism
or multinaturalism. In this model, various constitutive aspects of the native
notion of the body which were previously noted are now highlighted, espe-
cially its fabricated and mutating character.The main innovation lies in local-
izing the subject's point of view in the body. According to this author, many
 APARECIDAVILACA 351

Amerindian peoples conceive the world to be inhabited by different types of

subjects, all possessing souls, who apprehend the world from distinct points of
view related to their bodies (Viveiros de Castro 1998: 470). He warns that
this is not an instance of what we know as multicultural relativism, which
supposes 'a diversity of subjective and partial representations, each striving to
grasp an external and unified nature, which remains perfectly indifferent
to those representations. Amerindian thought proposes the opposite: ... One
single "culture," multiple "natures"' (Viveiros de Castro 1998: 478). Thus,
instead of multiculturalism we have multinaturalism.
The shaman - with his capacity to adopt other points of view via the trans-
mutation of his body - is testimony to this extended notion of humanity and
the body as the site of differentiation. But although this experience centres
on the shaman, it is not restricted to him: as mentioned above, such muta-
bility can occur at various stages of the life cycle, especially at birth, during
illness, after homicide, and at death. To change identity is to change body, a
capacity that humans share with those animals possessing subjectivity.
What enables this permutability of the body is precisely the equivalence of
spirits: all are equally human, equally subjects. By modifying the body through
alimentation, change in habits, and the establishment of social relations with
other subjects, another point of view is acquired: the world is now seen in
the same way as the new companions, that is, the members of other species.
We shall now see how the notion of kinship as a condition to be fabri-
cated is related to this constant dialogue with other subjectivities.

Making kin
The performative aspects of kinship are present in numerous Amazonian
ethnographies. Notions such as the cognatization of the local group, found in
studies of Guianese groups (Overing 1975; Riviere 1984), and others (Gow
1991: 192), point us to a similar inference: people who live together tend to
be identified as consanguineal kin, whether through the use of consanguineal
terms of reference or through the use of teknonyms.
As Viveiros de Castro (1993) shows, this is not just a feature of those
Amazonian systems classed as Dravidian. The same idea recurs among the
Wari', whose kinship terminology presents a similar configuration to 'Crow'-
type terminologies. This is not a prescriptive terminology: that is, none of the
consanguine terms possesses a positive matrimonial content. The Wari' do not
marry near kin - this group includes cross kin who are conceived of in
Dravidian systems as affines. Thus there is no repeated exchange of real sisters,
frequently seen as the ideal form of marriage in such systems, and we can
observe among the genealogies a large number of marriages between groups
of brothers and sisters, as well as polygyny (especially sororal) and the levirate
(Vilaca 1995). In addition, there is a tendency towards endogamic marriages,
taking place within the same sub-group before contact and within the same
village today.6This trend emerges almost as a norm in the discourse of infor-
mants: the foreigner - as a member of another sub-group is classified - is an
undesirable spouse since he or she (and his or her kin) will sooner or later
prove to be bad affines.
352 APARECIDAVILAQA

Kinsfolk, called ka nari wa, may be classified as true kin, iri nari, and distant
kin, naripira or naripaxi (where iri means true, pira means 'far', and paxi means
'more or less'). Though on some occasions the Wari' say they are all kin, they
tend to classify cohabitants as true kin and those who live at a spatial or social
distance as distant kin. The closest win ma are same-sex siblings, but the term
is usually extended to include all inhabitants of the local group and members
of the sub-group, such that the term win ma, which means 'one who accom-
panies' or 'one who does the same', functions as an antonym of foreigner,
tatirim.Today, the Wari' usually refer to inhabitants of the same post (a village
settlement, equivalent in actuality to a sub-group) as their true kin and on
these occasions may exclude genealogical kin who live in another village. They
refer to all cohabitants by a consanguine kinship term, very often tracing tor-
tuous genealogical paths via kin of kin. Use of affinal terms as vocatives are
avoided in quotidian life and effective co-resident affines are called by their
actual name or by consanguine terms.7
The same type of phenomena was described by Gow in terms of the Piro:
proximity and living together are so decisive in determining kinship that
genealogical kin who live far away may be excluded from the kin circle.
Inhabitants of the village of Santa Clara would very often say: 'we are all kin
here'. And a woman once told the author: 'These are my kin, the people in
this village.You know them all, there are no others.' According to Gow,'her
statement excluded two siblings, two daughters and many other real kin in
other communities, while simultaneously including several people with whom
she otherwise counts no close kin connections at all' (1991: 193-4).
It should be stressed that this is not a purely formal or terminological assi-
milation, but a true process of consubstantialization, generated by proximity,
intimate living, commensality, mutual care, and the desire to become kin. For
many Amerindian groups, the body is a product of particular social acts that
continually transform it. This implies a radical difference in focus: in contrast
to our own ideas, informed (at least from the end of the nineteenth century)
by a genetic conception of kinship in which substance determines social rela-
tions, in Amazonia, social relations determine substance (Viveiros de Castro
2000: 29 n.40, 30).
Seeger reports an illustrative detail from the Suya. A man interested in
increasing his number of near kin 'achieves this by fully observing the dietary
restrictions of certain classificatory kin in relation to whom these restrictions
are not normally observed' (1980: 114; 1981: 149).8 This implies that reckon-
ing oneself to be consubstantial and acting as such effectively constructs this
consubstantiality - not in a fictitious way, as our logic would suppose, but in
a way that is as true and real as that provided by way of living together. At
issue, therefore, is another type of substance, irreducible to bodily fluids cir-
culating between people. This 'substance' contains not just memory and affect,
but above all agency.9 To become kin, it is necessary to desire to be kin and
to act as such: for example, by living together, respecting alimentary taboos,
not eating dead kin (specifically in the Wari' case), calling people by kin terms,
and so on. Without doubt, it was this idea that my Wari' father, Paleto, wanted
to pass on to me when he asked in a surprised tone, after a two-month stay
in my house in Rio de Janeiro, why white people did not simply make them-
selves into kin, too? He seemed to imply it was enough to want this. I quote
 APARECIDAVILACA 353

him verbatim: 'Among ourselves we are kin. We are not like yourselves - you
are related only to your younger brother, Eddie, and to your father and
mother. You just like one another for no reason. Why don't you make your-
selves into kin as well?'.
The notion that shared substance or similar bodies are produced through
social acts applies not only to non-genealogical kin. Americanist studies
inspired by feminist anthropology and focused on the processes of daily life
within the local group have been valuable in demonstrating the importance
of sociability10in the construction of kinship relations as a whole. In a recent
article analysing the couvade among the Huaorani of Venezuela, Rival (1998:
625-6) shows how birth is merely one step in the formation of a baby, a
process which begins in the womb and continues into the post-natal period
for as long as the couvade lasts. The new-born is treated like a house guest
by his parents - his hosts - and he must be gradually incorporated into the
house through specific actions, including the giving of food.
A brief examination of conception theories among some Amerindian
groups amply illustrates Rival's point concerning the socially determined
nature of consubstantiality, which typically defines consanguineal kinship in
Amazonia. It may be noted that these theories are the subject of apparently
varied and contradictory explanations from informants, who also display a
certain lack of interest in precisely describing the process. C. Hugh-Jones
(1979: 115) and S. Hugh-Jones (2001: 255) comment on variations among
Barasana informants when explaining the substances that form a baby, while
Carneiro da Cunha (1978: 101) notes the same phenomenon for the Kraho.11
Whenever I asked the Wari' about the baby's formation in the womb, the
prompt answer was that semen from one or more men was exclusively respon-
sible. However, when I asked directly about the role of menstrual blood, the
response was very often positive. According to Conklin's (2001: 116) infor-
mants, menstrual blood forms the baby's blood while semen makes up the
body (flesh and bones).
As a solution to this apparent confusion, we can accept the futility of trying
to find the 'true' theory of conception and take up C. Hugh-Jones's lead
(1979: 116) by focusing on the more important aims of finding commonali-
ties within the range of variations and trying to understand why they exist.
To do so, we must consider two crucial points in Wari' theory.
The first point is the evident lack of interest in reflecting on the substan-
tive aspects of conception, except when in the presence of ethnographers. The
second point common to all informants - and to almost all Amerindian groups
- is that procreation is a continuous act which lasts virtually up until the
moment of birth or until one or two months before. The Wari' (and other
peoples) say that women who become widows during pregnancy will
inevitably bear small and weak babies unless they have lovers during this
period. This notion of procreation as fabrication has a more important con-
sequence: all the men who have sexual relations with the mother during her
pregnancy contribute to the making of the baby.The importance of this fact
derives not so much from the implied mixture of different substances, but
from the expansion in possibilities for social action. An outcome of this is the
equally widespread notion that the father is the man who socially accepts
paternity, usually the mother's husband. When we relate the idea of multiple
354 APARECIDAVILACA

paternity to the common (but not universal) idea in Amazonia that semen is
the only substance responsible for the formation of the child, the intention
to dissolve any primacy of'substance' becomes clear, annulling any notion that
might correspond to 'genetic essence' and thus allowing space for the actions
of social agents to become decisive.
The absence of a genetic notion of kinship in Amazonia - which this wide
range of ethnographic data only goes to confirm - is not in itself a novel
finding. But the important point to note is that this social process of fabri-
cating consubstantiality is strongly valued as a constitutive attribute of human-
ity and as a site of agency. The Wari' want kin and know how to make them:
they produce children and incorporate strangers and enemies via marriage. As
Gow (1991: 276) showed for the Piro, to be a real person is to be capable of
-
relating kinship to history to be capable of making kin out of strange people,
continuously, through marriage.
It is unsurprising, then, that evidence of the social fabrication of kinship is
fundamental to the evaluation of relationships, such that, as Rival says, 'eating
the same food and sleeping together ... develops a common physicality, which
is far more real than genealogical ties'(1998: 621, my emphasis). Despite the
contradiction implicit in such a statement - which suggests the existence of
a native category of genealogical kinship in opposition to constructed kinship
(while the author maintains that all kinship is constructed) - she touches on
a crucial point: namely, the emphasis on the evidence of action, borne out by
Gow's account of the Piro. Thus, if a baby in the womb and a child adopted
from strangers or enemies are both equally constructed as consubstantials (just
like enemies incorporated as kin), adoption makes it even more apparent that
shared substance is produced in terms of a relation of alterity (among the
Barasana,according to S. Hugh-Jones 2001: 264, the verb 'to adopt' means 'to
make human').
The Wari' ethnography forces us to consider the fabrication of consub-
stantiality, or of bodies, as part of a wider process, which establishes relations
between humans and animals, acts of commensality and cannibalism. Wari'
shamans explain that when animals attack and kill people and the victim is
incorporated into the species of the attacker, they do this because they desire
kin for themselves, people with whom they can share their day-to-day life.
For the Wari', the world is inhabited by a great variety of beings who think
of themselves as humans. Wari'is not an ethnonym, but the inclusive pronoun
'we', with the meaning 'human being' or 'person'. This is above all a position
- that of a human and a predator. Wari'is opposed to karawa,animal, prey,
food, a category that includes enemies, wijam.What matters is that from the
point of view of animals, they are the ones who are human, wari', and that
they in turn see Indians as their prey, animals, or enemies.
This point of view or perspective is given by the body. The Wari' use the
idiom of the body not just to speak of kinship - kinsfolk have the same body
- but also to speak of personality or ways of being: 'Je kwere',which means
'my body is like this', is the usual answer to questions such as: 'Why do you
like this?' 'Why do you do it this way?' The same applies to animals: the
peccary, for example, lives in bands because 'its body is like that'.
My point is that, if we recognize the fact that humanity is not limited to
the Wari', we shall be in a better position to understand that the production
 APARECIDAVILACA 355

of consubstantial kinspeople through the fabrication of identical bodies acti-

vates not only the restricted universe of the local group or the tribe/ethnic
group, but also a wider universe of subjectivities from which the differ-
entiated groups are constructed. A critical examination of dietary restric-
tions associated with birth clearly shows that human bodies are produced
by processes that contrapose them to animal bodies. This does not mean, as
I hope to have made clear, that the human body is a culturalized animal
body. On the contrary, it implies a naturalization or 'speciation', on the basis
of an undifferentiated cultural substrate - or a universe of subjectivities - that
includes animals.

The couvade
As Peter Riviere (1974) observed in an article that has since become a classic
text on the theme, the couvade has been one of anthropology's traditional
problems since its beginnings. The term 'couvade' was coined by Tylor in 1865
on the basis of reports from early travellers to the New World: these writers
had noted the similarity between the attitude of indigenous fathers after birth
of a child (particularly in the Caribbean) and the European custom, denomi-
nated couvade or covada, according to which, in the words of Van Gennep's
1943 Manuel de folklorefran(ais contemporain,'the husband takes the place of
the childbearer in the bed, is cared for in place of her and performs his role
for a variable lapse of time' (cited in Menget 1979: 246).
Menget notes that this symbolic substitution of the mother by the father
is rare or even absent from the American material, and what we actually have
is the observance of a series of post-partum restrictions applicable to the father
just as much as to the mother. The author concludes that the couvade is not
limited to the father, though he may be the most visible subject of the taboos
(Menget 1979: 247). Levi-Strauss, in La pensee sauvage,had already pointed out
the mistake: to say that the man takes the place of the childbearer is erro-
neous; husband and wife are submitted to the same precautions because both
are blended with the child, who is extremely susceptible during the first weeks
or months of life. Following Levi-Strauss, the emphasis on the father's atti-
tudes at the moment of birth relates to native theories of conception and ges-
tation which, for the most part, claim that the father alone is responsible for
the formation of the baby in the uterus (Levi-Strauss 1962: 258-9; see also
Menget 1979: 247).
Rival points out two other reasons for the emphasis given to the behavi-
our of the father in the couvade. The first lies beyond native thought and
derives from a typically Western naturalization of the mother-child relation,
which elides any reflection on the restrictions on maternal behaviour, there-
fore stressing exclusively the attitudes of the father in a context where both
genitors are actually submitted to the taboos. The second reason is based on
a feature common to many Amazonian societies: their uxorilocal character.As
the couvade, in the author's interpretation, is a ritual of'co-parenthood', con-
stituting a couple as such, its implications for the father's social status become
more pronounced, since this is the moment when his full absorption into the
house of his parents-in-law occurs (Rival 1998: 628, 634).
356 APARECIDAVILACA

While the reasons why greater attention is given to the father's behaviour
during the couvade may vary, those authors who have written more recently
on the theme are unanimous in saying that the couvade relates not just to
the father-child relation, but also to that between mother and child, husband
and wife, and close kin in a generic sense. Menget (1979: 260) observes very
opportunely that analysis of the couvade cannot be restricted to the vertical
relations between parents and children, since it 'constitutes a public mode of
confirming, negating or creating classificatory relations, of re-arranging the
cognatic universe by means of an idiom of substances' (see also Rival 1998:
630-1).
Nevertheless, the different interpretations given to the couvade are not con-
fined to their sociological aspects per se. Since Tylor and Frazer, many authors
have sought to accentuate the mystical character of the ritual procedures,
which suppose not only a spiritual connection between parents and children,
but also the possibility of humans being affected by the 'magical' actions of
other beings, such as animals and spirits. As a result, the fulfilment of couvade
restrictions acts not only to define social groupings, but also to protect the
baby - and very often the parents, too - from external influences.12
It is not my aim here to produce a historical survey or critical analysis of
the different interpretations of the couvade found in the anthropological lit-
erature: for this I refer the reader to the articles by Riviere (1974) and Rival
(1998). My interest in the couvade - particularly in the alimentary taboos
related to it- resides specifically in its elucidative value in illustrating the
central argument of this article: social units are defined as an outcome of a
dialogue involving different kinds of beings. And here we can turn to the
ethnographic data.
Among the Wari', certain types of game, fish, and even some fruits are
avoided by the couple during pregnancy and after birth.13 They should not,
for example, eat, kill, or have any type of contact with armadillos, coatis,
anteaters, hawks, and peacock bass fish, among others. If other men have had
sexual relations with the woman during her pregnancy - a fact which is rarely
admitted - they, too, should observe the same restrictions. The Wari' say that
the restrictions protect the child (and only the child) from sicknesses of the
ara maka type, that is, from sickness caused by animals either with or without
spirit/soul (jam, which attests to humanity) but which act in the situation as
simple animals, in other words, as non-humans. Such maladies involve a con-
junction between the sick person and attributes of the animal that, in the case
of children, has been killed or eaten by the father (or another genitor) or by
the mother. For instance, the coati provokes insanity and the shaman must
remove the animal's hairs from the child's eyes; the eagle digs its talons into
the child's head, provoking aches and fevers; the armadillo causes difficulties
in urinating and defecating.
Other animals, such as the tapir, peccary, capuchin monkey, and various
kinds of fish, are not prohibited as foods as long as restrictions concerning
their preparation and ingestion are followed. These are mostly animals with
spirit, or humans in other words, and make up the preferred prey of the Wari'
as a whole, including parents of new-borns. The dead animal should not be
played with or mocked, and should be ingested fully and as quickly as pos-
sible, so that its spirit gains another body and revives, returning to its home
 APARECIDAVILACA 357

and family. In some cases, the animal must be inspected by the shaman before
being cut up for consumption: he removes the objects which confer shamanic
powers and which attest to its humanity.These animals may provoke - in both
children and adults - sicknesses of the kep xirak type, characterized by the
animal acting like a human being, shooting arrows at the body of its victim
and eating his or her internal organs. In the process, the sick person gradu-
ally transforms into the animal: if the patient dies, this transformation is con-
sidered to be complete. In one case I witnessed, the shaman found fur and
larvae, food of the capuchin monkey (which testifies to the importance of
commensality in the creation of consubstantiality), in the child's body and
rebuked the parents for having eaten the monkey inappropriately.According
to the shaman, the child was in the process of turning into a monkey.
The first type of illnesses, ara maka, appears to be similar to those caused
by the failure to adhere to post-partum prohibitions in various Amerindian
groups. In the words of Lima (1995: 180-7) writing on the Juruna, a con-
junction between the child and the animal in question takes place: the child
assumes the characteristics of the animal (or plant food). The post-partum
restrictions among the Tupi-Guarani-speaking Siriono (Holmberg 1985), the
Carib-speakingYekuana (Guss 1989), and various Ge-speaking groups, among
them the Apinaye (Da Matta 1976), the Suya (Seeger 1981), and the Panara
(Ewart 2000), are all explained in similar fashion by the ethnographers. Seeger
says of the Suya: 'If the parents eat the animal, the child will have the animal's
characteristics' and, I should add, dispositions (Seeger 1981: 152).
By observing taboos, the parents avoid this kind of symbiosis while they
finish making the child's body similar to their own. This fabrication occurs
especially through a commensality mediated by the mother's milk and by the
circulation of substances directly between their bodies, as is the case among
the Wari'.
According to most of these ethnographers, such practices suppose a sym-
pathetic transfer of attributes from foods to the child (see Crocker 1985: 51),
by means of the people with whom the child shares bodily substances. This
can only happen because the child is permeable in bodily terms - its 'bio-
logical frontiers' are ill defined.14 In addition, the agency in this process is
attributed exclusively to humans properly speaking.
The Wari' case allows us to complicate the problem and consider animal
agency as part of the illness's process, since some illnesses affecting children
originate in the animal's desire to take him or her with them to live as a
kinsperson. As I previously mentioned, Wari' shamans say that 'human' animals
(those with spirit) attack with the intention of incorporating the victim into
their species: the shaman must go to them and negotiate their return of the
victim, alleging that the latter's true family awaits him or her. In one case, the
shaman Orowam was obliged to negotiate the return of a sick person's soul
from a capuchin monkey's house. The monkey said that the victim was his
son, but Orowam argued that this was untrue, that the person had kin and
needed to return. With this, the kinship relation between the sick Wari' man
and the animal was undone, while the one between him and his Wari' kin
was re-established. The final consequence of aggression is the incorporation
of the sick person into the aggressor's species, corresponding in effect to a
consubstantialization of the victim, who acquires an animal body and is
358 APARECIDA VILACA

referred to by the animal by consanguine terms. Devouring has the aim of

incorporating, and predation by animals is, in effect, a capture of individuals.15
In the Wari' case, we can state that all illness of kep xirak type is an inter-
rupted process of shamanic initiation, since the shaman is characterized pre-
cisely by the establishment of kinship relations with an animal species, initiated
by a predatory act. In some reports of curing, the shaman, attempting to rescue
the spirit of a child accompanying the animal, says to the latter: 'This one is
still too much of a child to be a shaman.' Some illnesses are also interpreted
as having been caused by dead kinspeople, wishing for the company of one
of their own. However, by hurting them, they do not act as kin since cog-
natic kin never hurt each other, and it is not from this point of view that
they see their victims, but from that of a predator, of a wari' who wants to
kill enemies and prey (see Vilaca 1992: 75-90).
In my view, ara maka illnesses comprise a sub-category of illnesses of
the kep xirak type, rather than an exclusive class of illnesses. The continuity
between these two types becomes clear when we take into account the large
variation in the opinions of numerous informants concerning which animals
are non-human (which act, therefore, exclusively via the sympathetic mode,
causing ara maka sicknesses). Additionally, according to most informants,
several animals which are avoided during the couvade, such as the armadillo
and eagle, possess spirit, and it is frequently unclear how they actually cause
sickness: do they provoke affliction by simple contagion or by deliberately
shooting their victim with arrows? There also remains the question of the
victim's post-mortem destiny.According to the shaman Orowam, a child who
becomes a fatal victim of the eagle or giant armadillo may go to live with
these animals after death, acquiring an animal body. This attests to the animal's
active agency. We can conclude that the basic reference for metamorphic
processes is a relation between subjects, and not one between a subject and
an animal without intentionality. Such becomes clear when we examine the
ethnographic data relating to other Amazonian peoples.
Reichel-Dolmatoff's analysis of post-partum restrictions among the Desana
(Tukano) matches my own observations among the Wari'. According to the
author, the Desana explain the restrictions by saying that a woman's pregnancy
and the birth of her child make the 'Keeper of the Game' profoundly jealous,
as he is sexually attracted to women. His jealousy of the husband arouses him
to take revenge on the latter for usurping his sexual privileges. Thus he hunts
him down by sending his animals, specifically those that bite and devour
(Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971: 146-7).
It would perhaps be overly conjectural to deduce that the animals'jealousy
of women equals a desire to have children with these women - or in other
words that their children should be animals and not humans, which takes us
back to the Wari' model - had Reichel-Dolmatoff not himself previously
stated that the number of children a couple has must be limited, as an exces-
sive number is interpreted by the animals as implying a reduction in the
number of their own group (1971: 145).This is also made clear in the ethnog-
raphy of the Barasana,also speakers of a Tukano language:

That an unbornsoul is part of a world that includesanimalsis evidencedby the

fact thattapirsand otherTaking-inPeople... try to suckthe childinto theiranus- a
 APARECIDA VILACA 359

reversal of birth - as they are jealous of the loss of one of their number ... Birth is
thus like a passage from the animal world (nature, He) to the human world (culture) (S.
Hugh-Jones 1979: 141).16

What should be emphasized, and what has become particularly clear in

examining alimentary restrictions, is that we cannot reduce the production of
kinship to acts of sociability, since we must recognize that cannibalism and
predation are equally effective means for producing kin, despite constituting
different kinds of processes. Such is the case with homicides when, via a form
of predation, the killer incorporates the enemy as a kinsperson (a son in the
case of the Wari').
It is puzzling that some anthropologists insist on the radical separation
between processes of sociability, related to daily life within the local group,
and acts of predation and cannibalism, related to contact with the exterior,
excluding an intrinsic aspect from the process of kinship fabrication. Rival
(1998: 635), for example, criticizes the Amazonianists who point to cannibal-
ism, killing, and predation as primary means of social reproduction in
Amazonia, alleging that the Huaroani 'can reproduce themselves without the
intervention of external creators'. My point is that sociability within the local
group exists only in contradistinction to other potential forms of association,
equally social, which all take the construction of bodies as their reference
point. As Viveiros de Castro observed: 'Fabrication is creation of the body, but
of the human body (of the person therefore) and, to this extent, is based on
a negativity: on a negation of the possibilities of the "non-human" body' (1987
[1977]: 32).
Da Matta's interpretation of the Apinaye couvade accords with the one I
propose here, but he takes as his point of departure what seems to me to be
a confusion common to many interpretations. I quote:

The Apinay6 theory of illnesses clearly identifies the patient with the plant or animal
that has been inappropriately ingested ... Here [in pregnancy and at birth] it is necessary
to prevent the child from reverting back to nature and from transforming back into
blood. A potential human being must be 'saved' from the natural world. For this reason,
seclusion after childbirth has a double objective. First, as in other cases, it aims to estab-
lish a discontinuity between the child and nature ... Then it aims to keep the new poten-
tial human being in contact with certain members of human society, those that are
responsible for its transition from nature to culture. Thus to the action of creating dis-
continuity is added an action whose objective is to provoke a continuity between a certain
number of people (Da Matta 1976: 90-1).17

This interpretation would be admissible were it not based on a mistaken

acceptance of the opposition between nature and culture - a premise equally
present in Guss's analysis of the Yekuana (1989: 136-7). The issue is not to
prevent the child from reverting back to nature but rather to affirm a specific
nature by fabricating a body akin to those of its parents, its family, or other
members of the local group. As we have seen, in the process of being created
this body runs the risk of being made like the body of other types of people
(or simply of animals).18Thus, it does not involve a process of culturalization
in opposition to the inverse danger of naturalization (in the sense of animal-
ization), but of a 'specification' realized by means of the body: the desire is to
360 APARECIDA VILACA

create a human nature which is morespecificthan the universal sociality from

where the child originates.
We could say that the couvade restrictions constitute an anti-shamanic
process, in the sense that they avoid 'corporeal' associations with beings of
other species, which constitute the condition of possibility for Amazonian
shamanism. According to Fausto, during the couvade Parakani parents should
avoid any activity related to shamanism. Among the Arawete, when a shaman
is making a child through repeated sexual relations with his wife, he ceases
to sing and dream (Viveiros de Castro 1986: 440). But it is not only his
shamanic activities that cease: all direct interaction with animals is avoided,
and the parents also usually refrain from hunting during the couvade. During
this period, therefore, men are in a position of anti-hunters, anti-warriors, and
anti-shamans.
It is interesting to note that among various populations there is an incom-
patibility between fertile women and shamanism, independent of the couvade.
Fausto (2001b) observes that, among the Parakani, women should not dream
(an activity fundamental to shamanism), or at least not until after the
menopause. The clearest example comes from the Barasana,who see shaman-
ism and the ability to menstruate as mutually exclusive but intimately linked.
Just as shamans are 'open' beings, women are open during menstruation (S.
Hugh-Jones 1979: 125). This openness is related to contact with the He world
of the ancestors whence children originate.'In one sense, the women are seen
as being closer to the He world than the men' (S. Hugh-Jones 1979: 251).
According to S. Hugh-Jones (2001 pers. comm.), we could venture the propo-
sition that, at least in the Barasana case, women are not shamans because they
are already so by means of this contact with the exterior provided by gesta-
tion. This seems to me an interesting point, to be developed on another occa-
sion, and one which again confirms the external origin of humans generated
in the female womb. The Nigerians cited by Levy-Bruhl would certainly
understand this claim.

Conclusion
To conclude, I wish to touch briefly on the question of the body/soul rela-
tion in the couvade. The centrality of the soul in the taboos relating to the
couvade was pointed out by Riviere (1974). For Riviere, the couvade is related
to human duality: body and soul. It is not a ritual for the fabrication of the
body, but the fabrication (sedimentation) of the child's soul, which at birth is
extremely volatile, liable to detach itself from the body with extreme ease. As
it is bound to the soul of its parents, it accompanies them during their treks
in the forest and can be captured by spirits; for this reason, parents should
obey the restrictions (Riviere 1974: 431).This theme is present among various
Amerindian groups.
Riviere concludes: 'The examination of the ethnographic examples indi-
cated that in those societies at least, the couvade is a ritual relating to the
spiritual creation of a newborn child ... Birth:couvade::natural:spiritual'
(Riviere 1974: 432). It is worth noting, though, that despite his particular
interpretation of the couvade, Riviere agrees with the idea - which I have
 APARECIDA VILACA 361

tried to develop here - of the existence of an undifferentiated universe of

subjectivities, from which the child must be individualized. What this involves
for Riviere, though, is a spiritual individualization: 'The couvade is concerned
with the creation of an independent spiritual being, and for this to be achieved
a separation from an undifferentiated spiritual mass is required' (1974: 433).
The Wari' data allow us to think of the problem in another fashion or,
better still, to relocate the body/soul dichotomy in different terms. For the
Wari', the soul (jam) only exists when the body is in some way absent (as
inert): in dreams, in serious illness (and the shaman is therefore chronically
ill), and at death. There is no soul linked to the body, and speaking about
someone's soul is an indelicate act, as though their death were desired or fore-
seen. The soul is above all a potency, related to the capacity to produce another
body.19And it is precisely with a different body that the soul manifests itself
the most fully: after death, the body of a peccary is acquired or, in the case
of death provoked by animals, that of the aggressor species. The soul of
shamans, the only people to have an ever-present soul, is simply an animal
body.
The Wari' data are entirely incompatible with the current model of the
body/soul dichotomy. For example, an illness - very often explained as an
attack on the soul by a particular animal species - is always seen and treated
as a process of bodily transformation. Faced with my recurrent difficulty
in understanding this fusion of entities that to my mind were necessarily
separate, the Wari' used to say that the person's soul was already there in the
animals' house, while the body at home gradually acquired the bodily attrib-
utes of the aggressor species. What seems to be clear here is that illness,
whether of a new-born or an adult, makes up one of these moments when
the human body can be remade and assume another form. This other form
is that of the soul.

NOTES

This article was written in constant dialogue with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2000; 2001).
The reader will also note strong inspiration from the work of Gow (1991; 1997) on Piro
kinship. Preliminary versions of the text were presented as seminar papers at the Departments
of Social Anthropology in the Universities of Cambridge and St Andrews, and at the Institute
of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, between January and March 2001.
I thank the staff and students present for their questions and comments. My special thanks goes
to Carlos Fausto for his valuable suggestions, and to Stephen Hugh-Jones, Peter Riviere, Joanna
Overing, Marilyn Strathern, and Oiara Bonilla for their comments and criticisms. I also thank
the anonymous Journal readers for prompting me to clarify some central points. Field research
among the Wari' was financed by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
and by FINEP The text was translated into English by David Rodgers.
'While in analyses of totemism these two orders of phenomena emerged as related, this was
due less to a focus on immediate descent associated with procreation, as implied in the case
reported by Levy-Bruhl, than to a concern with a more remote or abstract descent of
ancestral humans from animals.
2It is notable that since the 1960s ethnographies inspired by Needham have avoided using
the term 'kinship terminology', opting for 'relationship terminology'. For an Americanist
example, see Maybury-Lewis (1979).
The emphasis on domestic relations receives an emic justification in the introduction to
Overing and Passes (2000: 5-6, 7). Though recognized as a source of life and creativity by these
362 APARECIDA VILACA

peoples, the exterior is none the less considered to be asocial, since 'the human sociableworld
is often understood as distinct from all other agential worlds of the cosmos ... agents of the
exterior are viewed as incapableof sociality until transformations prove otherwise' (Overing &
Passes 200(: 7).
4There are numerous examples focusing primarily on the importance of warfare killing
for the reproduction of the social group. The Jivaro case is well known: women were fertilized
during rites centred upon the head of an enemy (Taylor 1985; 1994). Death is thus essential
to the process of the local group (conceived cognatically as is common in Amazonia) opening
up to the exterior: death outside implies the production of life inside (Viveiros de Castro
1993: 188). My intention is to expand on this insight and to seek to understand the way in
which this monad opens up to the exterior during the different stages in the constitution of
kinship.
'See Viveiros de Castro (2000; 2001) for the general formulation of this idea; Taylor (1996:
209) for this conception among the Achuar; S. Hugh-Jones (1979: 141-2) for the Barasana.
"Until the moment of so-called 'pacification', the Wari' were organized in sub-groups each
with its own inscribed territory. After this, in the 1960s, members of different sub-groups began
to live together in mixed settlements close to the houses of the SPI (Servicode Prote(aoao Indio)
administrators (today FUNAI, Fundafao Nacional do Indio): these posts each corresponded to a
village. However, by retaining a relationship with a particular territory of original occupation,
each of the posts became identified with the sub-group associated with this territory.
7It is on ritual occasions that affinity expresses itself the most clearly. These rituals generally
involve different sub-groups in the position of hosts and guests, who consider each other as
foreigners (distant kin with whom marriage is generally shunned) and address each other by
affinal terms: the same terms which are avoided in day-to-day life when dealing with effective
affines.
8See Menget (1979: 26() for similar information on the Txicao, and Da Matta (1976: 94)
on the Apinaye.
Viveiros de Castro (1986: 439n. 88), in using the notion of'substance group' (altered in the
English version to 'community of abstinence', 1992: 360n. 3) for the Arawete, explains that it
is impossible to specify exactly what substance it is that is characterizing the group: at most, it
would be a 'metaphoric or metonymic substance', defining a sociological group rather than an
(ethno-)physiological group.
'Here we can make use of the distinction drawn by M. Strathern (1999: 169) between
sociality and sociability: while the former concerns social relations in a general sense, includ-
ing for example warfare, the latter (at least in its usual acceptation) relates to the experience
of empathy and community. It is worth noting that in Amazonian ethnology, the term social-
ity is usually employed by various theoretical strains to mean 'social relations'. The difference
lies in what each of them takes to be a social relation.
"See also Holmberg (1985: 170) on the difficulty of extracting information about concep-
tion from the Siriono, and Taylor (1996: 205), who states that the Achuar have 'remarkably
unelaborated theories of procreation'.
'2Riviere (1974: 426), whose explication of the couvade turns on the spiritual constitution
of individuals, observes that native interpretations generally situate the couvade within this order
of phenomena.
'3After starting to live in close contact with whites, the Wari' began to ignore many of these
restrictions. Nevertheless, when a small child becomes ill, the cause may be attributed to the
disregarding of the taboos.
14 refer to Carneiro da Cunha (1978: 107-8) on this notion among the Krah6 and to Turner
(1995: 150) on the Kayap6; see also Carsten (1995: 233) on Malaysia. I feel very uncomfort-
able with this notion of permeable boundaries, since it supposes the existence of something
like a solid or fixed body. In my view, this body is not permeable but mutable - first one thing,
then another. In other words, this body only exists within relations, and changes radically or
otherwise (turns into a tapir or a kinsperson of X) depending on the new relations that it
establishes. See Strathern (1988) for similarities between this idea of a mutable body which
transforms itself as an outcome of relations and her model of the Melanesian person.
1-As an example of analogous incorporation in the opposite direction, we can recall the
adoption of pet animals, very often treated as children. However, I should note this does not
apply to the Wari'.
 APARECIDA VILACA 363

16The relationship posited by Clastres (1972: 15) between the birth of infants and the
emergence of the first Guayaki ('l'acte de naissance des premiers guayaki') seems to me to help
clarify the point. According to the myth, humans originated from subterranean animalized
beings (similar to armadillos), who ascended to earth and became human. The author argues
that the process effects a passage 'from animality to humanity'.
17It is interesting to note that Da Matta (1976: 87) attributes the same objectives to
the killer's seclusion: production of a discontinuity (of 'substance') between the killer and
victim.
18Note also that among some groups the bodies of adults - those of the child's father and/or
mother - may also find themselves at risk. See Lima (1995: 187) on the Juruna. Among the
Guayaki, the father of the new-born lives, in the words of Clastres (1972: 25), a moment of
ambiguity in his ontological state 'between nature and culture', since he runs the risk of ani-
malizing himself by becoming jaguar prey. For the Guarani-Nandeva, a man who fails to remain
at home after his wife gives birth is attracted by the first animal he meets, which he sees as a
person; consequently,'the animal mixes with us and we remain living with the animal for the
rest of our lives' (Schaden 1962: 89).
19Here, it would be interesting to consider the notion of'dividual' as used in studies of
Melanesia (Strathern 1988). However, while there the duplicity of individuals refers to the
domain of sexual identity/gender, in Amazonia duplicity refers to the human/non-human
domains (animal spirits etc.). For a reflection on the notion of'dividual' in Amazonia, see Kelly
(2001).Viveiros de Castro (2000: 19n. 19) suggests that the body/soul relation can be thought
of, in Amazonian cosmologies, in terms of a figure-ground reversal.

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La transformation des etrangers en parents en Amazonie

Resume

Cet article analyse le processus de production de la parente chez plusieurs peuples ama-
zoniens, en concentrant l'attention principalement sur les Wari', un peuple de langue Txa-
pakuara qui vit en Amazonie occidentale (Bresil).Je soutiens que la production de la parente
ne peut etre liee exclusivement au domaine domestique ou intra-tribal, car la parente emerge
a travers un dialogue constant avec des entites non-humaines. En examinant la signification
des tabous alimentaires associes aux pratiques de couvade dans un certain nombre de groupes,
l'article d6montre que le nouveau-ne est humanise grace a la production de son corps en
tant que corps humain contrairement aux corps des animaux.

Programade Pos-Graduacaoem Antropologia Social, Museu Nacional Quinta da Boa Vista s/n?, Sao
Crist6ovo,Rio de Janeiro,RJ, Brazil 20940-040. avilaca@alternex.com.br