Demonic trade: debt, materiality, and agency in Amazonia

Abstract

This article examines Amazonian Urarina engagements with the system of debt peonage in light of the conceptual and ontological premises of the traditional subsistence economy. It argues that to view debt as a mechanism for harnessing indigenous labour is inadequate for comprehending the wilfulness with which Urarina indebt themselves to outsiders today, which should instead be considered in terms of local theories of agency and an aversion to immediate, market‐style exchange. This relational and hierarchically distributed view of agency is further implicated in ideas surrounding industrial goods, which are ascribed to the Devil as their putative maker and owner, and who is seen as the source of their power over people in this life and the next. If this brand of commodity ‘fetishism’ expresses moral ambivalence towards capitalism, it also mediates otherwise contradictory forms of production and exchange, repudiating the possibility of total rupture between persons and things. Résumé L’auteur examine ici l’engagement des Unarina d’Amazonie dans un système de servage pour dettes, à la lumière des prémisses conceptuelles et ontologiques de l’économie de subsistance traditionnelle. Il avance que la vision de l’endettement comme d’un mécanisme visant à capturer la main‐d’œuvre indigène ne convient pas pour comprendre la bonne volonté avec laquelle les Unarina s’endettent aujourd’hui vis‐à‐vis de parfaits inconnus. Au lieu de cela, l’approche doit s’appuyer sur les théories locales de l’agent et sur l’aversion des Unarina envers les transactions non différées, de type marchand. Cette notion d’agency relationnelle, distribuée de façon hiérarchique, se retrouve dans les idées liées aux marchandises industrielles, dont le fabricant et le propriétaire supposé serait le Diable, considéré comme la source de leur pouvoir sur les gens dans cette vie et la vie future. Quoique ce mode de « fétichisme » des marchandises exprime une ambivalence morale à l’égard du capitalisme, il médie par ailleurs des formes de production et d’échange qui seraient sinon contradictoires, réfutant la possibilité d’une rupture totale entre les gens et les choses.

Vertical Love: Forms of Submission and Top-Down Power in Orthodox Ethiopia

“…The possibility of finding virtue in submission has received some attention recently, as an important counterpoint to studies that focus only on the power-resistance dichotomy (Mahmood 2001a(Mahmood , 2001bWalker 2012). As these writers note, to voluntarily submit to a power that is thought moral can be a form of agency or self-possession; we do neither ourselves nor our informants any favours when we think of their relationships of submission purely in terms of subjection and dominance.…”

Traversing the margins of corruption amidst informal economies in Amazonia

“…What might be seen as corruption, as expressed through the idiom of 'aumento', is thus viewed locally as an exchange of favours (Ledeneva 1998(Ledeneva , 2014 and has parallels in colonial and postcolonial debt systems and related patronage arrangements (Quiroz 2008). 9 Whereas the analysis of debt peonage as exploitative is well established, there is also a growing literature that emphasises the mutually beneficial possibilities of the practice (Bauer 1979;Eisenstad and Roniger 1984;Killick 2011;Walker 2012). Extractive economies in Amazonia that have rested upon indigenous knowledge and labour, particularly during and immediately following the first rubber boom of 1879-1912, have been built on the exchange of housing and credit for work and debt, as well as facilitating lenders' access to the forest and labourers' access to the cities.…”

Documents as Displaced Voice: Writing among Amazonian Urarina

“…Paper as a material may have something to do with this; like other materials not found in the local environment, paper is the property of the Devil, or rather a Devil‐like being known as Moconajaera , or “The Burner,” the “Mother” and personification of fire, who burns the souls of Urarina in his celestial fire in accordance with the quantities of commodities consumed during their lifetime. The Burner is said to keep track of this consumption in his notebook, where he diligently writes down people's existential debts, much as fluvial traders themselves record the debts owed to them by their native clients (see Walker ).…”