Women Have no Affines and Men no Kin: The Politics of the Jivaroan Gender Relation
Author(s)
Seymour-Smith, Charlotte
Abstract
This article examines Amazonian ethnographic material in the light of some issues raised more generally in feminist anthropology and the anthropology of gender. It calls for more detailed study of the variability of the gender relation in Amazonian groups, and particularly of its political and historical dimensions which have been largely neglected published studies so far. Drawing on the Juvaroan case, the article examines the vision presented by several writers of Amazonian women as predominantly concerned with the internal constitution and reproduction of community, while men assume the role of representing the group vis-a-vis the outside. This is seen as itself an ideological representation which, in the Jivaroan case, frames a discourse of male dominance. This ideology of male dominance, although it is contested and limited in practice, has very real consequences for the autonomy and participation of women both within their communities and in interaction with non-indigenous society.
