Traps connect not only predator and prey, but mind and materiality, technology and landscape, and infrastructure and ecology. Through them, bodies, knowledge practices, materials and environments are assembled in transformative encounters which, because of their lethal agency, have emotive and moral force. In this Introduction to the Special Issue, the authors explore the conceptual bridges and disciplinary admixtures invited by ethnographic attention to traps. They review a history of attention to traps, which is in the main a history of neglect and epistemological bias. As humble hunting technologies, traps have been secondary in status to the heroic chase, and the lifeways of trappers at the frontiers of empires have been neglected. Meanwhile traps have featured as archetypes and prototypes in evolutionist discourses focusing on technology, and human crafty intelligence in its invention and advancement. The authors trace these threads from the 19th century to contemporary anthropology and archaeology, and propose conceptual and practical lines for future analysis and research collaboration.
The Enawene are sustained by the Juruena river in central Brazil, where multiple hydroelectric dams are under construction and in planning. The Enawene are fishermen whose highly ritualised economic life centres on feeding the demonic owners of hydraulic resources. In this paper, Nahum‐Claudel takes us through tense negotiations between the Enawene and the para‐state hydroelectric company, observing the former's adroit diplomacy as they repeatedly negotiate ‘wins’ of ever‐larger hand‐outs (motors, boats, petrol, money and even fish) in the lead up to what the company hopes will be a final compensation pay‐out. In the era of hydroelectric ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey D. 2005. The new imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press), the Enawene enrol the state in paying the debt to the demon‐owners, becoming – in a perspectival twist – themselves akin to these demons, engaged in an inflationary ‘potlatch against the state’. Diplomatic relations across this frontier are particular to the Enawene ritual economy, to the very recent onset of their relations with the state, and to the speed of resource capture in this region. Given the massive expansion of hydroelectric generation in Brazil, a nation currently achieving vastly accelerated growth, the analysis is likely to be of broader salience.
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Resumen O artigo considera como uma população Ameríndia, os Enawene‐nawe, dispõem os seus documentos ao lidar com o Estado brasileiro e com empresas construtoras de barragens hidroelétricas. O foco reside na maneira como o uso dos documentos se relaciona com a ideologia linguística existente e com as práticas políticas—consideradas conjuntamente como um estilo de “diplomacia externa”. A troca de documentos é um aspecto de uma dinâmica diplomática mais ampla, de abertura e fechamento, por meio da qual os Enawene demandam reconhecimento dos estrangeiros poderosos. O argumento é o de que a comunicação por meio de documentos é eficaz e desejável para os Enawene por que forjam um canal de reciprocidade delimitado num grande oceano de desentendimento, na medida em que os documentos constituem um mediador ou uma fronteira entre eles mesmos e os de fora. Por isso os Enawene instrumentalizam essa característica do formalismo burocrático que é, normalmente, concebida como a sua limitação: a separação de modos de expressão cotidianos e de entendimentos compartilhados.
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