CIRCULATING COMPONENTS OF PERSONHOOD
Kayapo draw a basic distinction between those relatives who share physical substance, conceived of as a single living essence (ĩpydji), and relatives with whom this connection is not a cause for observing behavioral or alimentary taboos for the protection of mutual health and well-being.[2] The quality of being a Kayapo, however, is not linked to this physical sharedness but with possession, "within one's head," of specific knowledge of cultural traditions. The hallmark of this knowledge (kukradjà) is centered around codes of conduct and health rules, as well as ceremonial knowledge, mythology, and the like. This knowledge, always transferred from different relations, concerns medicines, chants that are efficacious for certain activities or can serve as shields against various sorts of danger, and various kinds of ceremonial ornaments. With the exception of ceremonial ornaments that are associated with certain gender-specific ritual roles, valued knowledge of this sort may be passed from older persons to younger ones, irrespective of gender.
In public or semipublic retransmissions or retellings I witnessed, the relationship between the speaker and the person from whom the knowledge was
Aside from ĩ and kukradjà, components of a person include an essence (karon) unique to each individual. The concept of karon is related to beliefs held by many Amerinds that one's shadow, soul, or ghost is also in some sense a "picture" of oneself without being equivalent to the total physicality of self. The karon is central to the understanding of illness, shamanism, and dreaming, as well as to a person's individual identity and afterlife. At birth, the karon is only loosely associated with a newborn's body. Later the association is stronger, and Kayapo say that the sound of thunder signals a death as the karon definitively disassociates from a body.
While "of the body," ĩ and kukradjà are also involved in circulation and exchange mediated by social institutions, or better, by specific alignments and activities of people. Kayapo stress particular social arrangements because they recognize that circulation of kukradjà and ĩ go far beyond the bounds of the village or territory they inhabit. Kukradjà is often discovered outside of the village among neighboring peoples, wild animals, or even among whites. Ĩ, on the other hand, is a universal source of vitality. It is obvious to the Kayapo that all living things contain ĩ and that it is circulated through something akin to a food chain. It is pointed out that the vegetation consumed by a deer supplies it with ĩ while deer meat when consumed, in turn, infuses Kayapo with new ĩ. At the same time, the deer also has its distinctive karon and, for various reasons, game is dangerous, both ĩ and karon being possible causes of illness for its human slayers and consumers.
The circulatory character of ĩ explains why it is continually depleted and replenished through human or animal activity.[4] A person's bodily state is a product of his personal social state,[5] and ĩ is central to this conception, but not because of any inevitable deterministic model of circulation. Rather, certain states of sociality, including certain activities implicated with these states, channel ĩ in particular ways. There is a certain reversal in the kind of causation that Westerners associate with biology. For example, old age is a condition in which an elder's ĩ is very weak. There are other kinds of typical manifestations of old age as well: one's head, site of knowledge, gradually hardens, and one speaks better than one listens, although, as might be expected, one's karon remains virtually unchanged. Diminished ĩ is evidenced through the flaps of skin, the looseness with which it covers the body. Formerly bursting with ĩ, the skin now hangs empty because old people's appetites are diminished. Old age
Therefore, while the Xikrin Kayapo acknowledge that male and female persons, equipped with penes and vaginas respectively, are opposed to one another in a larger sense, we must be careful of assumptions that make essential transcendental qualities of "maleness" and "femaleness" the basis of this opposition. By way of illustration, we may take a property such as strength, believed by the Kayapo to be associated with a surfeit of ĩ. It would be a mistake to assume that maleness connotes strength. Certainly, it is acknowledged that males from adolescence onward possess greater strength than females in general until the decline in strength experienced during old age. An unmarried boy faithfully observing the full range of food taboos and following a prescribed diet is thought to attain the maximum ĩ. After he marries, and with each additional offspring, his ĩ decreases. Strength, therefore, is not an essential trait of males but is specified in relationship to a series of life stages signaled by age/gender categories. Moreover, a married man will suffer a diminution of ĩ along with his wife during their pregnancy, which is thought to be shared by both partners. That is, his strength covaries in relationship to that of his spouse. Only by ethnocentrically assuming that a particular life stage can be made to represent a range of transformations undergone in male bodily qualities over the course of a lifetime can we talk about strength, or any other characteristic, as the quintessential abstract property of maleness. Women, it should be mentioned, are also admired for their strength and bulky physique.
Perhaps such qualities as fierceness or tameness come closest to characterizing essential qualities of gender irrespective of age. However, any person's ability to speak or act fiercely depends on bodily potency as well. Married women, particularly as they age, may aggressively berate an entire assemblage with no apparent shame, while bachelors in similar contexts are constrained to silence by their unmarried state.
Among the Kayapo, knowledge is closely associated with bodily potency in a manner not immediately apparent to Westerners who invest much significance in the difference between manual and intellectual labor. "Education" and the transmission of kukradjà are thought of in terms of circulation largely controlled by the dictates of kinship relations. Just as kinship is itself a sharing
Age Organization
Kayapo are little interested in why a baby should be born a particular sex. As discussed later, various steps may be taken to produce a child with certain qualities, including gender, but there is something unique about each human birth that escapes social control. While sexual differences are apparent at birth, and everybody inquires whether a newborn is a boy or a girl, only later, with the active participation of the child itself, are steps taken to create the social qualities associated with a gender identity. To pave the way for subsequent development, a male has his lower lip pierced shortly after birth and a little girl is given a bead belt shortly after she is able to walk. Both children have their ears pierced and openings gradually enlarged, and both receive bracelets and leg bands and have their bodies and heads ornamented in identical styles (Turner 1980; Vidal 1977; also Seeger 1975 for Gê-speaking Suyá). As a precaution, both boys and girls are adorned only with plant equivalents of ornaments that later will be replaced with animal feathers when they are able to "walk firmly." At this time additional bodily ornaments appropriate for males and females will be presented.
Male and female babies are considered to be the same social age ("suckling ones," and later "little ones") until they begin to be differentiated in terms of male and female activities consciously undertaken as such. At this time, they begin to be categorized by parallel but separate age/gender terms, me ôkre for boys and me prĩntire for girls. More specialized ritual ornaments associated with same-sex mentor relations begin to be presented from this time until late adolescence, and a boy may begin to have his lower lip perforation gradually enlarged. Ultimately, the final decision as to the size of his lower lip opening will rest with each man himself. Only with the development of a facility for understanding, which includes the ability to observe food restrictions, obedience, and feel shame, are children fully differentiated into age grades[6] for which gender is specified.
Physical qualities such as toughness, running abilities, and the ability to hear implicitly refer to social abilities and potential. For example, "hearing" refers to more than the recognition of sounds through the ear. "To hear" and
When I refer to "qualities" of the body in the course of the present discussion, I am referring to a limited number of abilities that crystallize central aspects of sociality for the Kayapo and other Gê. As abilities—to touch things, hear, see, go without drinking water for long periods, and soft-headedness—all are shorthand for referring to social practices emblematic of activities appropriately exercised by specific age/gender groupings. Thus when adolescent boys are prohibited from eating certain foods because it would cause them to not "see things," this refers to developing the ability to hunt game, which is necessary to support a future wife and children.
Once boys and girls are recognized as being physically independent, selfassured, and able to think for themselves, they begin to cultivate the qualities of fierceness (akrê) and tameness (uabô) that differentiate males from females. Boys of the me bôktire age grade, for example, are the only ones who may eat jaguar meat, an akrê food par excellence. Girls, for their part, enter the corresponding age grade me prĩntire. The focus on diet and behavior as means to shape capabilities becomes increasingly stressed as children are able to take greater responsibility for their own conduct. At this age, children also observe restrictions for their own siblings during times of illness or life crisis transitions. As a quality, uabô (tame) relates to the ability to remain placid and unruffled, accepting of others' desires, and noninvolvement in the games of oneupmanship that characterize interactions between groups of males. The quality akrê (fierce) focuses on the potential for reacting with mindless rage and frenzy.[7] The hallmark of an angry or fierce person is that they put aside all thoughts of their own physical safety; literally, they have no desire to live—tĩn pram ket. This is a socially mandated reaction when one's village is attacked or one's kin, age-mates, or friend is killed. Indeed, the historical practice of Kayapo warfare, according to the villagers, is to kill all men and take all women and children captive. The idea of "domesticating" male captives is difficult or impossible because of a male-cultivated willingness to sacrifice all in the pursuit of revenge. As with male ferocity, female tameness is not innate to sexual identity and must be socially instilled by harnessing the appropriate natural qualities. Individual males or females may display behaviors characteristic of their gender opposites. For example, a girl may be fierce, as explained by a man recounting how his (prĩntire) sister, captured by Brazilians, died in captivity because she refused all nourishment out of pure anger at her captors, a typical male refusal of food when enraged and an index of the state of being without desire to live (tĩn pram ket). As with all social qualities, tameness and fierceness are created through the appropriate eating and behavioral
Among items classified with respect to tameness and fierceness are bees, animals, and parts of animals. Bees that sting are by definition fierce, and consumption of their honey should be limited to men, while stingless bees produce (a rather vinegary) "tame" honey. A man would not want to consume too much honey from stingless bees, because it is part of a diet appropriate for tame people. Women must also avoid nonfood items associated with fierceness. A common example is the mixture of herbs, stinging ants, and urucum smeared on a dog to make it an effective and ferocious hunter.
Human qualities may also be developed through applications of herbal medicines. If a father recognizes a particularly truculent nature in his male offspring or fervently desires a fierce child, he may collect stinging ants and the right herbal concoction to bring out these qualities.[9] Any effort to shape children's qualities is dependent on the conscious adherence to a regimen of correct food and medicine consumption along with other behaviors. That is, for the Kayapo, education is central rather than auxiliary to the physical creation of social qualities through bodily states, since self-transformative actions are necessary corollaries to socially orchestrated actions performed on behalf of children, youths, and new parents.
Food and behavioral restrictions make possible the successful achievement of social activities. When asked what sorts of restrictions applied to an unwed female, one man incredulously replied, "What for? They don't do anything!" By which he meant that they are not undergoing food and behavioral restrictions in order to develop particular personal and social skills. While this is not strictly true, boys are certainly weighed down with more food prohibitions than are girls.
The sort of pollution and taboos that Gê-speakers recognize have little to do with intrinsic characteristics of a Manichaean cosmos of which gender opposition is a master symbol. Pollution is not inherent in any particular natural object. Instead, natural characteristics and qualities are used or avoided in the pursuit of the development of social qualities appropriate to different age/gender states. Avoidance and exposure, blocking and channeling, are the two symmetrical facets of a philosophy of social action that places human sociality both within and against broader cosmological processes that include the circulation of matter and knowledge.
Fabricating Adults: The Natural and the Cultural in Melanesia
We may now begin to note some similarities in Melanesia with the creation of bodily potentials that are at one and the same time biological and social. A common theme of Melanesian ethnography is the ritual creation of adult
Some underlying similarities between indigenous central Brazilians and certain Melanesians are striking. In both areas, essential social attributes of persons are not only grounded in particular bodily qualities, but social action aims to form these qualities by means of behavioral and food taboos as well as through positive injunctions to eat certain foods and cultivate certain behaviors. The creation of social relations depends on a transformation of existing bodily potencies throughout the life cycle.
The essential elements of personhood appear strikingly similar as well. The Sambia tripartite division between soul, body, and consciously held knowledge, along with the social salience of individual volition, is described by Herdt (1987). This underlying notion of personhoods appears by no means uncommon in Melanesia, as attested to by analogous ideas of spirit, life-force, and social wisdom among the Maring (LiPuma 1988, 108). However, the tripartite Gê person is embedded in a series of exchanges with differently aged persons, in contrast to Melanesians, whose prestations seem to focus on transactions with dead ancestors.
Age Alignments
Human sociality among the Gê is, in large part, a product of ordering and transforming ĩ derived from nature. Physically robust and healthy humans endowed with appropriate shares of distinctively Kayapo kukradjà are the result of coordinated actions of different gender/age grades and kin, each with its own distinct physicality or bodiliness. There is no "social" state as opposed to a "natural" state of being. Nor is any gender/age more or less social than any other. Before marriage and childbearing, Kayapo young people develop
After my first stay in the field, I had drawn analogies between growth of plants and animals and human beings. During my second field stint, Kayapo rejected these analogies and stressed that human growth involved transformations from one age to another. While plant growth may be described in terms of size, human growth is always described in terms of being in a particular age grade or making the transition to a subsequent age grade. Human growth is not linear or merely cumulative, because it involves changes in human bodies linked to one another through connections of ĩ and aspects of bodiliness. For this reason, the first birth is both most dangerous and also paradigmatic of subsequent changes: the firstborn may be referred to as the "true child" (kra kumrĩen). Each of the first four children in birth order may be referred to by distinct terms that are generally distinguished according to sex: firstborn (kukamã), second (atãre), third (konetã), fourth (õ'êrê), while the last born is called kutapure. This reflects the fact that the trigenerational transformation of relations is affected over time, and each subsequent child requires fewer restrictions. Moreover, boys and girls
A common pan-Gê outlook discernible in ethnographic descriptions is the linked quality of human age/gender status. Individual age is only comprehensible in terms of relations with people of different age. A glance at Crocker's (1990, 181) exhaustive summary of terms applying to age show that most of the terms are descriptive of actions taken on behalf of others. Such actions encompass both characteristics related to biology and sociality. For example, men of the age set averaging about 55 years are called both "ampoo yii khên khu" ("eat any ‘bad’ meat," that is, they save the good portions for others) and "me hapal-re hapak-khre" ("they advise nephews"). In short, I am making the claim that among Gê peoples, sociality is to be viewed primarily as a sociological order regulating bodily states that are linked to age/gender classes and kin. Food items, natural objects, and sex are social tools harboring both creative potential and inherent dangers. This seems to be the main reason that collective sex, usually in the form of exchanges between age grades or even moieties are so common among Northern Gê peoples (Crocker and Crocker 1994; Turner 1966), and group or sequential sex has also been reported during name confirmation ceremonies (Banner n.d.; Verswijver 1985).
The Use of Sexuality
In his fieldwork among the Canela, W. Crocker, more fully than other Gê ethnographers, has documented sexuality and attendant beliefs. He illustrates a common Gê focus on creating bachelors as an age set: "youths are interned in cells for about three months, where they are supposed to grow strong by avoiding "pollutions' from consuming meat juices and contacting sexual fluids. They eat large quantities of unpolluted special foods" (Crocker and Crocker 1994, 33–34). Among the Canela, unmarried women are subjected to an analogous process for the creation of the required social/bodily state. "After their first menstruation, girls underwent similar dietary restrictions [to bachelors] and were required by their maternal uncles and their paternal aunts to have sex almost exclusively with men in their 40's to 60's to gain their physical and moral strength" (Crocker and Crocker 1994, 34). Two points are important to note. On the one hand, the mode of creating social/physiological states in females is the same as in males. On the other, sexual activity itself, far from being an activity to be avoided, is one which, as in the consumption of certain foods, circulates ĩ in a socially desirable fashion.
Women's monthly cycles are thought to be a result of their self-actualizing activity, namely sexual intercourse. Menstrual blood is not considered to be a danger to men because it is controlled through medicine. Isabel Murphy (personal communication) reports that from the time they are young, Kayapo girls
Although beliefs about the dangers to men of emanations of women's generative powers, especially menstrual blood, are widespread in Melanesia (Keesing 1982), beliefs that adult women do not menstruate are also sometimes encountered. Townsend (1995, 169) reports that menstrual pollution is not an issue after marriage since married women and widows are said not to menstruate. Although it is not clear why this should be so, and there appears to be some sentiment that this is a fiction, married women do not restrict their activities once a month as girls do (Townsend 1990, 378). In other areas of Melanesia, as within the Strickland-Bosavi tribes, menstrual blood is not a focus of concern, and women may not observe monthly restrictions, although they do appear to menstruate (Kelly 1993). Whether an actual cessation of menstruation is involved or merely a diminishing of its frequency because of longer periods of pregnancy and lactation or other factors is an open question. Strassmann (1997) presents evidence that the number of menses experienced in a lifetime may differ greatly within different human populations.
Mature unmarried Kayapo girls form a parallel age grade to the bachelors, and both these groups are thought to be the epitome of vitality. Girls of this age grade have the reputation for maintaining frequent sexual relations, both with bachelors and with older men. As stated previously, the initiation of menarche among females of this age grade is thought to be a result of sexual intercourse and to chronologically follow defloration. Age at the time of menarche and first sexual experience do seem roughly to coincide. However, menstruation is not the basis of overriding concern among the Kayapo. No particular rites mark initial defloration or menstruation since this event is not accorded much significance, consistent with the ideology of blood flow as anomalous. However, during this period of a girl's life she may be symbolically married to a young man of the bachelor age grade in a ceremony referred to as "people of the blood" (me kamrô). This is also an alternative term referring to the unmarried girl's age grade. A girl and her groom are hidden together
The mat marriage symbolizes the creation of a couple as a unit jointly responsible for the health of any resulting children. This joint responsibility will continue throughout their reproductive years, extending until after the time their offspring bear children in turn. For example, after she gives birth, a woman's close relatives, including her parents, collectively undergo a period of food restrictions in order to "make her blood hard" to diminish postpartum bleeding. Although characteristic of females, vaginal bleeding is treated as an illness that responds to the same sorts of safeguards as other illnesses. Postpartum flow may originate from an individual woman, but custody and care is not the exclusive province of her or of other women. All physicality of the body is the province of the community of substance formed by the birth of a child to a woman and one or several husbands. Coordinated actions of people of different social/bodily states resurrect and maintain the field of sociality within which all proper development occurs.
It is in terms of sexual relations that male and female activity obtain vastly different effects. In brief, for males, sexual activity with women has the power to create relations with her other male sexual partners, while the corresponding activity of women results in nothing more than an accumulation of men she calls "husband" (mied), whose offspring with other women are not classified as her children. Institutionalized spouse exchanges are common, although not mandatory, and form an ongoing relationship between married couples. The relationship between the two husbands (aben kadjy ari ku'ê—together/ for/pl./grow erect) is particularly powerful. They become akin to brothers, and their offspring will actually be classified as siblings. Although never stated as such, spouse exchange relationships amount to a male-centered version of the sort of cooperation coordinated by females within uxorilocal households. In nonritual contexts, couples who have traded spouses are organized as a group of brothers and associated wives who cooperate in activities associated with raising each others' children. This effectively inverts the organization of the uxorilocal household based on groups of sisters and their in-marrying husbands. While rules regarding familiarity and avoidance instruct male in-laws, including in-marrying men, to maintain an attitude of reserve within the household, female in-laws are friendly and often joke with one another. Bonds between couples established on the basis of spouse exchange rely on female reciprocity of cultivated foods and cooking tasks and also depend on the agreement of the wives.
By taking multiple husbands as contributing fathers to her child, a woman attempts to create an infant with the qualities of the different fathers (Crocker
Because sexual intercourse is a mechanism for establishing relations between men, sex with older or married women is dangerous for bachelors. This is additional evidence that it is not "feminine pollution" that primarily undermines male development. Rather it is the contact through women with other men of different sociophysical state, particularly of the adjacent ascending age grade, that is deleterious. To engage in uncontrolled sex of this sort is life threatening. During the 1950s, shortly before they were officially pacified, the bachelor age grade suffered an epidemic resulting in many deaths. The Xikrin Kayapo attribute this to a massive breach of the taboo against sexual relations with childbearing women. On the other hand, there is no danger posed to married men who choose young unmarried women as sexual partners. There is no danger to these women either because care is always taken to separate sexual activity in space with meticulous hygiene that prevents mixing of sexual fluids. Such precautions are taken for the sake of offspring rather than sexual partners. Another crucial difference between the sexual activity of males and females is in the power of the smell or fluids from the vagina to cause illness in male sexual partners. In a myth told by the Kayapo, a woman takes a man along with her to collect firewood and water in order to show him that smelly vaginas can be a cause of sickness and death. After this time, both men and women take precautions, and concern with the ill effects of contact during sex does not seem to be very great. The reason why sexual activity is regulated should be clear. Sexual activity itself, as other forms of behaviors, is a mode of social action designed to produce certain social effects conceived of in terms of the bodily qualities appropriate for the creation of persons of different social ages. In this realm the agencies of males and females differ, but bodily qualities of both males and females are equally under the custody of close kin with whom substance (ĩ) is shared.
Age Grade Activities
I have suggested that age/gender grades are distinguished in terms of bodily properties that constitute social positions in relation to other age/genders. The following examples were related to me as illustrations of the social consequences of age grade organization. This is the flip side of the kinds of practices engaged in by kinsfolk on behalf of one another.
In past times the Kayapo spent much of their time trekking through the forest interior away from large watercourses. According to informants, this was a good place to see age grades in action, and it is clear that, as with other activities, trekking itself is a kind of collective production of proper bodiliness. When
This applies equally well to hunting, which is particularly dangerous for bachelors. They principally limit themselves to the collection of land tortoises and thus avoid the dangers associated with the use of weaponry. Mammoth land tortoises, however, should not be eaten by bachelors because it would make it impossible for them to kill an enemy. Butchering of game once it has been killed is even risky for mature married men and, if at all possible, elders should be called on to perform this operation. Whenever game needs to be transported to the village, internal organs and intestines are removed carefully with a forked stick, avoiding any hand contact.
A similar logic holds in the way that wild fruit would be consumed. Some fruits are eaten by all but must be properly processed. The fruit of the bacaba palm, for example, is only eaten roasted. If it were eaten raw, game would prove impossibly elusive. The succulent flesh of the rik palm fruit is eaten by all, as are other fleshy fruits such as kamôk, kamôkti, and the ground fruit of the babassu and Brazil nut. Rik-ti is a large fruit that may only be consumed by elders who also were the only ones to eat the pequi (prĩn) fruit. Mothers would caution sons not to eat these foods because it would diminish their hunting ability and would make it difficult for them to obtain wives. Some fruits, such as bôi rerek, were prohibited only to those with suckling children. Not all food codes define social age, however; the seed of the pitobá (kudjara) is not eaten, because if one gets hit with a stick or a rock, a seedlike lump will spring up in the affected spot. Other plants, such as kêre or mátkrá (pitu), may only be used as medicine or eaten by elders. A similar though less lengthy list of rules applies to cultivated foods. Bachelors, for example, should not eat new sweet potatoes, because they will develop a sickness and their ears and skin may crinkle like a fungus.
On the other hand, pregnant couples are both considered part of a unity that is for all practical purposes a separate age/gender category (me tujarô—pregnant or swollen ones). That is, separate rules of behavior and diet apply, and these rules are cast in the same idiom as rules that apply to other
While avoiding many common foods, pregnant couples also choose foods to foster certain characteristics in their offspring. For example, they may eat noroti, honey, if they wish a tall child, or they may rub some paca fat on their backs in order to create a wide flat forehead. Isabel Murphy (personal communication) points out that while a couple is pregnant, a man who consumes honey from stinging bees would also take the precaution of eating an herbal antidote that would prevent any ill effects from carrying over to his wife or offspring.