Compare and Contrast different propositions regarding the importance of gender among Amazonians.

Comparatively, gender tends to occupy a greater importance in many small-scale, tropical rainforest societies. This can been seen in many forms through social relations, institutions, spatial patterns, division of labour, ritual, cosmology and kinship. Lindenbaum (1987, 222 as cited in Thomas and Tuszin 2001, 8) in her discussions on gender in Melanesia, goes so far as to describe these societies gender inflicted. However, among Amazonian scholars there have been different propositions raised over whether this is a category which is important to Amazonians themselves, rather than in comparison to other contrasting types of societies. Some Amazonian scholars have proposed that gender is an important category to Amazonians by showing how it permeates and influences various significant areas of Amazonian life such as the sphere of social interactions, the cosmological and ritual spheres and Amazonians ideas of personhood. However, there are other scholars who propose that in fact for Amazonians gender falls under more significant categories, such as kinship, concepts of alterity and natural characteristics and predispositions and therefore in itself is not as important as these overarching categories. Some anthropologists propose that the structural divisions between the sexes in social sphere through, economic organisation as well as spatial and political separations substantiate the importance of gender to Amazonians. This proposal is mainly centred on the distinctive engendered division of labour that is prominent throughout the Amazon. Peter Roe strongly supports the proposition that gender is highly significant among Amazonians; the most meaningful distinction in these [Amazonian] societies are those between male and female (1982, 265) and justifies this point through his description of labour divisions among the Shipibo tribe of the Peruvian Montana. This tribe have a strict system of labour division; womens tasks include cooking, pottery, textiles, designs and basketry and mens work consists of hunting, making tools and wood carving (1982, 266). Roe discusses how the Shipibo do not maintain these divisions due to beliefs that either gender are incapable of performing certain tasks, but because its social importance. For example men will cook for themselves on canoeing trips, however, as soon as they reach a village they will find a woman to impose their demands on (Roe, 1982, 267). He suggests that these divisions are based on gender symbolism; associations of the hut and the hearth with women and the forest and the river for men (1982, 266) and he shows how this can induce other forms of social behaviour. For example no Shipibo man would help his wife carry water if it was contained in a chomo container due to its shape, which has associations with the female form and he would not want his peers to think him effeminate (Roe, 1982, 267). The division of labour means that men and women are often found in different places, following different schedules and engaging in different tasks group (Gregor, 1985, 22). This is exasperated by the gendered spatial separation in many Amazonian village lay outs, such as those of the G groups, which consist of a circle of outer peripheral houses and a central mens house. In his work on the Suy (1981 as cited in Ewart, 2003, 262) Seeger also explains this pattern through gender symbolism; men associate with social/ceremonial centre whereas the outer is the more natural/domestic female space, this is a common analysis of spatial divisions. This spatial separation also directly links to the political separations with the politics within the village and with outsiders being played out in the mens houses away from female attention. The separation within these social structures means that 1

in many Amazonian societies women and men live strikingly separate lives meaning that the majority of an Amazonian social interaction is within their gender groups. Roe (1982; 265) suggests that this is so prominent that these groups should be understood in the form of as not just one society but two; one for each gender. Therefore, anthropologists such as Roe suggest that gender is important to Amazonians because of how prominently it pervades the social sphere and therefore social relations and interactions. A common topic in gender discussions is that of ritual and myth, which throughout the Amazon are characterised by the sexual imagery, language and divisions. They often emphasise the differences between men and woman and pitch the genders against each other. Gregor, in his study of the Mehinaku, discusses how many rituals have a dimension of aggression between the sexes in what he terms as gender wars (1985, 120). An example of this antagonism is the Mehinaku rituals of the pequi harvest, where the central theme is the opposition of the sexes (1985, 121). This practice consists of a series of individual rituals relating to different pequi spirits and alternate between aggression from one sex towards the other. For example in the Hopa (scorpion) ritual the men impersonate the scorpion by spitting water, or deadly Hopa venom, at the women. However, in the next ritual of Alukaka, the snake spirit, women attack the men, who are impersonating the snake spirit in two long lines, by grabbing at each until they are brake away from their formation and then wrestling them to the floor where they are poked, tickled, dragged across the ground, pushed into the ground etc. until reduced to tears of laughter, pain and embarrassment (1985, 128). Gregor also puts a lot of emphasis of male domination in rituals and myths, in his theory of the universal male (Gregor, 1985, 201), with the most prominent example being that of the origin of male cults, a common myth in the Amazon. The myth commonly tells of a primordial time when women possessed the secret and powerful objects/instruments and used these to dominate men but the men tricked/forced the women to give up the instruments which resulted in the patriarchal structure and male cults of the present (Gregor and Tuzin, 2001, 14). This structure is kept in place by the threat of gang rape if a woman were to see the sacred objects or enter into the mens house. Gregor and Tuzin also point out that there are many examples of women and men having different mythical origins. Anthropologists such as T.Gregor and J.Bamberger see the content and themes of rituals and myths to be highly relevant to Amazon society, Bamberger (1974, 274 as cited in McCallum, 1994, 94) stating that these should be seen as part of a complex set of cultural laws establishing behaviours of everyday life. DisagreeMcCall..Therefore, for these anthropologists the sexual antagonism and domination in rituals and myth show not only that gender is important cosmologically but also in everyday life as well. Anthropologists such as Celia McCallum dislike tendencies to use the social institutions and ritual as reason for gender importance. She believes that gender can not be portrayed as simple structural and static relations and disagrees with the use of myths and rituals as blue prints for social relations, which she argues through discussion on the disparity between the male domination of the Alto Xingu mens house myth and the actually relations between men and women (McCallum, 1994, 91). McCallum and other anthropologists propose that instead gender is of considerable importance to Amazonians because it is so interlinked to ideas of human identity and personhood. For most Amazonian communities the body is separate from the social being and has to be socialised by an array of rituals and practices performed

by a person and their kin. Gender is seen as an essential quality to be gained in order to becoming a social, and therefore, real human being (McCallum, 2001, 48). In McCallums work on the Cashinahua she discusses the Nixpo Pimpa ritual, which marks the first step in a childs life towards growing up and becoming a social being. A major element of this ritual is that it is the start of a continual process of the deliberate creation of gender differences (2001, 48). Before the ritual boys and girls are referred to as children, whereas after they are referred to by gendered terms such as young man and unmarried girls (2001, 48). It is also only after this ritual that they start to take on gender specific tasks and are taught the skills and knowledge associated with male and female gender. Grandparents are given the important task of producing the gender differences in the bodies of the children and so enabling them to learn their relative gendered skills, such as weaving and cooking for girls and hunting, fishing and gardening for boys. This responsibility of the bodily production of adulthood is described by McCallum as of greater (2001,49) importance than that of the parents initial responsibility to produce a childs body through the correct feeding. For the Cashinahua the process of gendering a child is very important because only gendered adults are complete persons (McCallum, 2001, 48) that can participate in consumption and production and so be involved in social interactions. For this tribe gender identities are so linked to that of humanity that they previously thought that children that did not go through the ritual would die (Abreu 1941 as cited in McCallum, 2001, 42). A parallel example is that of the response of the Mehinaku tribe to hermaphrodites; they see male and female as the only classes of respectable humanity and therefore hermaphrodites are killed (Gregor, 1985, 40). Therefore, anthropologist such as McCallum propose that gender is important Amazonians because it is a necessary to engendered a body in order for that person to be a full and social human. The process and maintenance of personhood are associated with ideas of the human body and corporeal transformations such as growth, adolescent maturation, and birth/pregnancy. Some anthropologists argued that gender is important because these corporeal transformations can only take place through transactions with different types of persons (Strathern, 2001). These transformations are linked with the flow of substances such as blood, semen and breast milk between bodies, which cause changes to body composition and have related social transformations (Conklin, 2001, 145). Both the corporeal and social effects are necessary for personhood and fulfilling self-capacities. Conklin (2001) discusses these transformations through her study of the Wari people of Western Brazil. For the Wari, in order for a girl to mature she needs the cross-sex transfer of bodily fluid, semen, this strengthens and increases the amount of blood in her body, enabling her to menstruate, grow and fulfil female capacities such as reproduction the participation in female work (2001, 153). Men are said to grow (2001, 154) girls with their semen, in parallel to this is the idea that substantial quantities of semen is needed to mix with a womans menstrual blood to grow foetuses. Therefore female fecundity and identity is a cross-sex product (2001, 149). Male puberty is also linked to changes in blood in order to develop masculine capacities, however, it is believed to be less natural than in females and so needs human intervention which comes in the form of men making rituals such as the Wari warrior seclusion (Conklin, 2001, 147). Wari believe that if a person kills, or witnesses a killing of another person, the enemys blood/spirit swells up in the killers abdomen and if not controlled properly will cause the death. To prevent this warriors partake in a seclusion in order to control the spirit/blood and absorb its vitalising

properties. This was done by drinking huge amounts of sweet maize Chicha, which tames and establishes a kinship relation with the spirit (2001, 157). During seclusions the warriors female kin have to put a great effort to create the copious amounts of the sweet maize chichi, this substance is vital to the civilising of the enemy blood/spirit and the warriors accept that the ritual could not be performed successfully without this cross-sex transaction. The completion of a warrior seclusion takes men to highest of manhood status. Therefore, for these transformations which are necessary in order it is necessary for the input from beings that are different from the self, and so the differentiation between the sexes in gender is highly significant.poss include fem repro themes and neg towards menst blood male dom by some. - One of the main ways this is done is through blood management, for blood is a key elementin the regulation of individual growth, health and productivity (Conklin, 2001, 147). . Gender important because need mix of both equal but different gender substances to make full men and womencombo both gender only way grow and matre -Gender is very important to keeping this balance as it constructs how and what a person needs to regulate. Blood is also engendered and this is used to explain why men and women are suited to different tasks. Some Amazon scholars suggest that gender capacities are so intrinsic to sex identities and distinctions that they are simple not discussed or considered important to Amazonians. Lorraine (2001) argues this point using division of labour among the Kulina people of the South Western Amazon. In Kulina tribe men take the role of the main provider; clearing and planting gardens, providing the main protein sources of fish and meat, and making houses, canoes and market goods. In practice however, both genders acknowledge that men can be lazy, unsuccessful in hunting or fishing, preoccupied or drunk (2001, 268). Such behaviour has often caused periods of hunger and, due to the lack of attention to gardens, led to the whole village relocating and relying on neighbouring villages until the next year. Lorraine suggests that this division is held up by symbolic violence towards women expressed in rituals, myth and shamanic practices and to a lesser extent every day life in the form of infrequent domestic violence, as well as the symbolic association of male gentials with fishing and hunting projectiles. For other than the forbidden use of hunting snuff womens activities are not constrained, they could go out and hunt, fish and make gardens in order to not go hungry or be forced to relocate. However, unlike men who often partake in female activities, no amount of hunger (2001, 270) will make women participate in these activities in order to improve their situation. Lorraine discusses how, unlike other groups, the Kulina do not relate this labour division to female reproductive systems, sexual dimorphism or gender incapacities to perform certain tasks they simple find it does not need any explaining. She explains this through the ideological effectiveness of symbolism, which in this group has transformed social differentiations into natural distinctions. Therefore these labour differences are commonsensical and intrinsically unquestionable (2001, 271) and so, Lorraine argues, not an important topic to Amazonians.

Lindenbaum, Shirley. 1987. The Mystification of Female Labors . In J. F. Collier and S. J. Yanagisako, eds., Gender and Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis, pp. 221243. Stanford: Stanford University Press Strathern 2001 mel and ama book