Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia "ss2.20"

The Encompassment of Gender

Achuar society is indeed gender inflected, but so are classless societies everywhere else, particularly cognatic societies that, for lack of explicit segmentary divisions, tend to use the sexual dichotomy as a basic classificatory device. However, one does not find among the Achuar the obsession with gender separation that is such a striking feature of Melanesia. It is true that the ideology of segregation and hierarchy forcefully enacted in Melanesian rituals of manhood is often contradicted in practice by a remarkably egalitarian and mutually caring relationship between men and women in the domestic sphere, sometimes coupled with ambivalent feelings on the part of the men toward the harshness and brutality displayed in rituals.^[2] Nevertheless, the contrast in the treatment of gender difference is striking: Achuar women are never banned from male domains because their bodies would be polluting, nor are they deemed unworthy of sharing the cosmological and mythical lore that is a patrimony common to all. Achuar men do not obstinately attempt to reproduce themselves and the social order through the ritualized transmission of male substances, nor do they try to exist as an almost separate community, bound by the shared secret of their initiation. The only rite de passage comparable to an initiation, the arutam vision quest, is entirely individual and open to anyone, man or woman, who is willing to try it.

Furthermore, sexual dichotomy seems to be subordinated to, and instrumentalized by, more encompassing social patterns and relationships. One is the opposition between consanguine and affine that, as we have seen, structures every level of relatedness from Ego to the outer rim of the tribal social space. Gender contrasts are subsumed under this elementary opposition in such a way that women are first and foremost defined as signifiers and operators of consanguine links, while men are perceived as signifiers and operators of affinal links. Subjecting gender categories to wider social oppositions goes far beyond the internal constraints of the kinship system, as sex roles acquire their full justification and meaning in relation to the type of behavior proceeding from the preferential assignment of each sex to a specific kinship category. In that sense, warfare or hunting are male affairs, not because men

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would be stronger or braver than women, but because these activities are conceived as expressions of relationships with metaphorical affines, and fall therefore under the jurisdiction of those whose business it is to deal with affinity. Conversely, gardening or child rearing are female prerogatives, not so much because women would be naturally predisposed to produce and manage life, but because these tasks befit their aptitude at dealing with consanguinity.

This encompassment of gender difference by kinship relations is neatly expressed in a small myth recounting the origin of women: while they were bathing in a river, a man changed his sai (sister's husband and male cross-cousin for a male Ego) into a woman in order to satisfy a sexual drive, thus creating the first couple. In mythic discourse, gender relations are thus conceived as originating in a relation of affinity between men, a generative feature by no means restricted to the Achuar: in some Melanesian and Amazonian contexts, as Strathern convincingly argues (Chapter 10), same-sex relations may create the preconditions for cross-sex relations.

It should be obvious by now that my emphasizing the dominance of the consanguine/affine dichotomy over the cross-sex one does not mean that "gender" is an epiphenomenon of "kinship." In much the same way as gender does not refer primarily to reified sexual attributes but is constituted as a function of social positions (Strathern 1988), consanguinity and affinity cannot be reduced, in the Amazonian context, to mere labels subsuming kin terms and marriage categories. As I have tried to make clear, consanguinity and affinity are far-reaching and versatile intellectual templates that may be used to structure every conceivable form of mediation within the sphere of Achuar social life.

This is particularly evident in the daily commerce between humans and nonhumans. Since most plants and animals are viewed as persons to be coerced, seduced, or protected, the frontiers of Achuar society extend far beyond the sphere of humankind and almost coincide with the outer limits of the cosmos. As in any other society, this cosmos is gendered; assigning a sex to nonhumans, however, is not something that appears relevant to most Achuar. Most kinds of spirits, plants, and animals are said to be like humans: they are composed of two sexes and lead a conventional family life, some bordering on the incestuous, such as the dog or the howler monkey. Certain cultivated plants are female, such as the achiote, genipa, sweet potato, squash, and wayus (an Ilex), while others are thought to be male: tobacco, the banana tree, and the two species of fish poison, masu (Clibadium sp.) and timiu (Lonchocarpus sp.). Often based on superficial analogies between certain parts of the plant and human sexual organs, these metonymies are not taken very seriously by the Achuar. Two spirits are definitely gendered, however: Nunkui, the provider and protector of cultivated plants, is a female and a sort of embodiment of maternal care, while Shakaïm, a much lower personage than Nunkui, is said by some to be the husband of the latter and by others to be

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her brother. Shakaïm is the curator of the jungle, which he cultivates like a gigantic garden, and he sometimes appears in men's dreams to reveal the best locations for opening new swiddens in the forest. But the genders attributed to Nunkui and Shakaïm are not altogether surprising in view of their respective dominions over two domains of practice—the garden and the forest—that are preferentially, if not exclusively, associated with the sexes.

The occurrence of gender categories among plants, animals, and spirits, then, is less an indication of a fully gendered cosmos than a product of the technical and symbolic differential engagement of men and women with certain portions of their environment, an engagement that is itself conceived as a result of the predisposition assigned to each sex for successfully managing either a consanguine or an affinal relationship with humans and nonhumans alike. In that sense, being a woman or being a man appears as an overdeter-mination—in the classical Freudian sense—of a set of relations not primarily concerned with sexual dichotomy, rather than as a substantive attribute of personal identities mainly defined by anatomical and physiological peculiarities. Particularly striking in this respect, especially when compared with Melanesia, is the utter lack of concern shown by the Achuar as to the origin of bodily humors, their working mechanisms, and their possible compatibilities and incompatibilities: there are no specific prohibitions linked to menstruation, the postpartum taboo on sexual intercourse is rather short (until the mother's womb "dries up"), and everyone confesses ignorance as to what type of physiological substance may be transmitted by either of the genitors to their offspring. Gender categories among the Achuar thus specify classes of individuals whose characteristics stem not from the elementary components of their organic nature so much as from the range of social interactions that their initial physical idiosyncrasies open to them.