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The mak the Makuna and the Guiana system: Transformations of social

structure in northern lowland South America

Kaj ArhemaaUniversity of Uppsala, Sweden

Online publication date: 20 July 2010

To cite this ArticleArhem, Kaj(1989) 'The mak, the Makuna and the Guiana system: Transformations of social structurein northern lowland South America', Ethnos, 54: 1, 5 22

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00141844.1989.9981377

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.1989.9981377

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The Mak, the Makuna and

the Guiana System:

Transformations of Social Structure in N orthern

Lowland South America

by K aj Arhem

University of Uppsala, Sweden

/ /

is argued that the Makuna society in the Colombian V aups is anintermediateform

between two co ntrasting but related types of social organization, represented by the

Carib societies of the Guiana region and the Tukano groups oftheNorthwest Amazon.

The paper suggests that current changes in M akuna society may, in part, be understood

in terms of the underlying structure of exchange, encoded in the asymmetric alliance

system common to all these Amerindian societies ofnorthernlowland South America.

In the early 1970's I spent two years doing anthropological fieldwork

among the Tukano-speaking Makuna Indians of the central Vaups terr i-

tory in the Colombian Amazon.

1

In 1985, almost 15 years later, I returned

to Vaups for a few weeks. Though I was not able to visit the actual

community where I had previously workedit is still rather inaccessibleI

had the opportunity to talk to various people who had had intermittent

contacts with the Makuna since the time of my fieldwork. The account they

gave me of the changes taking place among the Makuna seemed to me to

bear on the more general problem of structural variation among the Indian

societies of northern Lowland South America; a problem which I have

addressed in previous works (Arhem 1981a, 1987), and which recently has

been subject to more extensive treatment by others, notably Riviere (1984)

and Hornborg (1986).

In this paper I would like to present some further comparative reflections

on this theme. Though inspired by my revisit to Vaups, they are grounded

in my earlier fieldwork in the region and my reading of published ethnogra-

phic works on northern Lowland South Am erica in general .

2

Specifically, I

shall attempt to relate the fundamental pattern of social organization of the

Eastern Tukano-speaking groups of the Northwest Amazon to that of the


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Kaj Arhem

Amerindian societies in the Guiana region (what I shall here refer to as the

Tukano and Guiana systems respectively).

3

In this comparative scheme the

Makuna and the enigmatic Makforest-dwelling, non-Tukano speaking

Indians living interspersed among the dominant Tukano groups in the

Northwest Amazonwill be singled out as cases of particular interest. I

shall try to show that the changes currently taking place among the

Makuna may, in part, be understood in the comparative context and

analytical perspective outlined in this paper.

Before embarking on this comparative venture, a note of caution is in

place. This paper is essentially a reconsideration of material published

elsewhere. My ambition is analytical rather than descriptive, and my

treatment of ethnographic data hence schematic. The reader who feels he

needs more substantial documentation of the issues raised and discussed in

the paper is therefore advised to go to the sources (listed in References).

Perhaps I should also state at the outset that the analytical perspective

employed in the paper is purportedly structuralist. I am consequently more

interested in discovering the structura l regularities underlying the em pirical .

diversity of social forms than explaining this diversity in terms of the

generative processes and determinant factors which produce it. This does

not mean that I am uninterested in causal or generative explanations; on

the contrary, I have devoted a recent paper (Arhem 1987) to a detailed

study of individual marriage strategies in order to arrive at a generative

model of the M akuna marriage system. Bu t here my aimand the analyt-

ical procedure I must followis different: to shed light on certain aspects of

social change among the Makuna by relating them to the pattern of socio-

structural variation in northern Lowland South America in general. What

is needed is an analytical procedure which permits me to handle the

problem of structural variation in space (the empirical diversity of social

form) and time (the process of social change) within a single explanatory

framework. Structural analysis offers such a framework.

4

Varieties of So cial Structure: The G uiana and Tukano Systems

Riviere's recent book

Individual

an d

Society

in Guiana(1984) provides a

convenient point of departure for my comparative survey. Riviere here

presents and comprehensively discusses the recent ethnography of the

indigenous societies of the Gu iana region w ith respect to what he takes to be

their fundamental and invariant feature, namely their social structure. This

structu re R iviere defines in terms of a com binatory set of features sh ared by

all Guiana societies: cognatic descent, a preference for settlement endog-

amy, a tendency to uxorilocal residence, and a prescriptive, two-line rela-


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The Mak, the Makuna and the Guiana System

tionship terminology encoding an ideal of direct marriage exchange (sym-

metric al l iance) .

5

The Guiana Amerindians are predominantly Carib-speaking slash-and-

burn cultivators supplementing their diet with hunting, fishing and gather-

ing. Settlements are small and impermanent, ranging in size between 15-50

individuals. Though fluid in composition, settlements generally consist of a

group of closely related kin and affines. Since unilineal descent groups are

absent, settlements take the form of a bilateral kindred. According to

Riviere, all Guiana societies share an idealized notion of the settlement as

an endogamous and undifferentiated kindred group. The preference for

settlement endogamy thus ideally becomes coterminous with kindred en-

dogamy; kinship becomes equated with co-residence.

This ideal notion of the settlement as a self-contained and self-reproduc-

ing body of kinsfolk is however, Riviere tells us, a fiction. In actual fact,

settlements are rarely entirely endogamous. For demographic and political

reasons a considerable degree of intermarriage and movement take place

between adjacent settlements, producing loosely bounded and relatively

autonomous local groupings of settlements. Yet, the fiction of the endoga-

mous and undifferentiated settlement is main tained by a system of pre -

scriptive endogamy , by which marriages are treated as if they conformed

to the ideal. In other words, the facts are made to conform to the fiction by

redrawing social boundaries and reclassifying affines as kin (ibid:72).

T he g eneral picture tha t emerges of Gu ian a society is one of an extremely

atomistic and unformalized society. There are no social groups that survive

the life time of any single individ ual. Riv iere writes: It is this failure to

combine individual sets of dyadic relationships into any higher and more

enduring form of organization that gives the Guiana societies their peculiar

stam p in the Lowland South Am erican contex t (ibid:97). Society is no

more than the aggregate of individually negotiated relationship s (ibid:98).

He contends that the Guiana system represents Lowland South American

social structure in its simplest, logically most elementary form (ibid:102).

This picture of Guiana social structure contrasts almost on every score

with the pattern of social organization characterizing the Tukano Indians of

the Northwest Amazon.

6

The Tukano comprise some 10,000 individuals

(estimates vary; cf. Jackson 1983, and C. Hugh-Jones 1979) distributed,

among roughly 15 language groups belonging to the Eastern Tukano

language family. Subsisting mainly on slash-and-burn cultivation, fishing

and hunting, they live along rivers and streams in the tropical forest in the

eastern Vaups territory of Colombia and adjacent territory in Brazil.

The traditional Tukano settlement is the multi-family long-house

ma-

loca).Th oug h an increasingly large portion of the population today in habit


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8 Kaj Arhem

nucleated villages of single-family housesas a result of more than a

century of contact with missionaries and tradersthere are parts of the

Vaups territory where Indians still live, or lived until recently, in long-

houses, and where the traditional Tukano pattern of social organization

continues largely intact.

7

This typically Tukano social structure is characterized by patrilineal

descent, descent and language group exogamy, virilocal residence, and

symmetric marriage alliance encoded in a two-line relationship terminol-

ogy. Each language group ideally constitutes a territorially bounded and

exogamous descent group, identified with a distinct language and inhabit-

ing a specific river system or section along a river.

8

In this way, descent

group (lineal) exogamy ideally becomes coterminous with both linguistic

and territorial exogamy.

9

T he language group is internally sub-divided into

a hierarchically ordered set of ribs (lower-order descent groups) classified in

terms of mythical birth order as elder and younger bro the rs .

10

The lowest-order descent unit is the local descent group (sib-segment)

inhabiting a single longhouse. Typically consisting of a group of closely

.related and virilocally residing male agnates and their families, the long-

house is a root model of the Tukano descent system. Each longhouse, today

comprising some 3-6 families, replicates the ancestral society of a set of

brothers born by the same mythical father and originating from the same

mythical birth place, the waking-up house of each Tukano language

gr ou p. Descent, then, in the Northwest Amazonian context involves the

stipulated patrilineal descent from a mythical ancestor and the patrilineal

inheritance of a distinct language (as well as shared control over ritual

property, including a set of personal names recycled in alternate genera-

tions within the descent group ).

12

T he rule of virilocal residence, finally , is

consistent with this strong emphasis on the unity and solidarity of male

agnates and the rule of descent group exogamy. It is ideologically expressed

in a preference for (ritualized) brid e captu re whereby wives, who interms of Tukano ideology are stran gers and outsiders , are abducted

from distant groups of affinables (i.e. the mem bers of which are classified as

marriageable; cf. Riviere 1984).

An Intermediary Type: The Wild Mak

In important respects, then, the Tukano societies are the very opposite of

the cognatic, endogamous and uxorilocal societies of the Guiana region.

Only the structure of the relationship terminology and the symmetric

alliance system it codifies is common to the two systems. Nevertheless, the

Guiana system app ears curiously familiar to the ethnographer of the North-


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The Mak, the Makuna and the Guiana System

west Amazon, for it is strikingly similar to the way the Tukano groups

describe the non-Tukano speaking Mak, inhabiting the interfluvial forests

of the Northwest Amazon. In other words, the Guiana system sounds very

much as a Tukano characterization of the Mak society.

The term Mak is generic and (probably) of Geral origin ( the Tupi-

Brazilian lingua franca introduced to the Amazon centuries ago by mission-

aries, traders and sett lers) .

1 3

It has multiple referents. In its most precise

senseand as used in the recent ethnographic l i terature on Northwest

Amazoniait refers to three linguistic groups of Indians: the Cacua (or

Bar Ma k), the Ju pd a (Ub de or Hu pdii) , and the Yohop (Yhup) (Jack-

son 1983:149).

I4

They all rely predominantly on hunting-and-gathering and

characteristically enter into various kinds of sym biot ic relationsh ips with

Tukano groups in which they play a subordinate role. These can be

relatively temporary relationships involving occasional exchanges of meat,

labou r, or various forest produ cts for cultivated foods and w hi te trade

items. Or they can involve long-term servant-master relationships between

Mak families and a specific Tukano settlement (ibid:1489).

As used by local traders or sett lers, or by the Tukano when comm unicat-

ing with wh ites , the term M ak has a derogatory connotation. For the

former it loosely designates wi ld Indian s those least con tacted, least

clothed, who are said to have no houses, to practice no cultivation and to

lead a nomadic existence in the forest. For the latter, the term (and its

various Tukano counterparts) generally alludes to the relationship of super

and s ub-ord ination between the two groups (ibid: 149).

Du e to their elusive existence in the forest away from the rivers, the M ak

are ethnographically relatively little known. It is not clear whether they

consti tute remnants of an original population of hunters-and-gatherers of

the interfluvial forest, or have devolved from previously more complex

riverine and horticultural societies. The difficulties in accounting for the

complex ethnic situation in the Northwest Amazon is further enhanced by

the fact that various Mak groups are reported to have been assimilated

into part icular Tukano groups, thus adopting the status of low-ranking

Tukano sibs (cf. Goldman 1963, Koch-Grnberg 1906, Silverwood-Cope

1972,

cited in Jackson 1983:149).

Until recently, the l i t t le we knew about the Mak in Northwest Amazon

derived from the Tukano (and a few fragmentary reports by missionaries

and travellers) . The Tukano describe the Mak society very much in

contrastive terms to their own: they say that the Mak lack longhouses and

have no proper clans, that they ( the Mak) marry within the language

group, and that kin and affines live together in the same settlements. Mak

men are even said to ma rry their sisters (which is probably anothe r way

9


7/19


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The Mak, the Makuna and the Guiana System 11

related kin and affines. In other words, settlements seem to be organized

around a core of coresiding affines, or sets of agnates related by marriage.

Marriages occur most frequently within or between adjacent settlements in

the locality (circumscribed region). There is thus a tendency to local

(regional) endogamy. Men of distant local groups are feared as women

hunters and sorcerers (Jackson 1983:150). Indeed, even lineal exogamy

seems not to be strictly adhered to. Frequent marriages within the descent

grou p are reported (Jackson 1983, C. Hug h-Jon es 1979:58).

From this review of fact and fictions about the Mak we can draw two

immediate conclusions: First, the Mak actually share features of both the

Guiana and the Tukano systems of social organization. With the former

they share the tendency towards local endogamy and the emphasis of the

alliance bond in the formation of settlements and local groups; with the

latter the categorical division into patrilineal descent groups, and with both,

the prescriptive symmetric relationship system.

Secondly, there is a notable discrepancy between the Mak social reality

and the Tukano view of this reality. This discrepancy is significant. To the

Tukano, the Mak represent a negatively evaluated counterpoint model of

social reality. It constitutes a normative model in the negative sense that it

provides an image of inhuman society, what happens when the rules

governing proper, human behaviour are ignored. In this way, the Tukano

image of the Mak defines the boundaries of the Tukano social world and

thereby serves to affirm the Tukano identity (cf. Jackson 1983:162).

The Makuna Anomaly

This brings us to the Makuna, the Tukano-speaking group which I studied

between 1971-74. In the same way that the Mak evidently mediate

between the Guiana and Tukano systems, the Makuna can be said to

mediate between the Maku and the prototypical Tukano pattern of social

organization. Inhabit ing the Pir-Paran area in the watershed between the

Vaups and Apaporis Rivers in the Colombian Amazon, they share with

other riverine Tukano groups the typical Tukano features of patrilineal

descent, descent group exogamy, virilocal residence and the two-line rela-

t ionship terminology. Th e Ma kuna are thus divided into shallow patr i l ineal

sibs,

hierarchically ordered into exogamous phratr ic groups. They inhabit

longhouses scattered along rivers and streams, each longhouse forming a

local descent group (sib-segment) . Like other Tukano groups the Makuna

subsist on slash-and-burn cultivation, fishing and hunting, the staple being

bit ter manioc.

But in two crucial respects the Makuna differ conspicuously from the


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12 Kaj Arhem

prototypical Tukano pattern. Firstly, they do not practice language group

exogamy. Th e Mak una language group is in fact composed of two interm ar-

rying sets of sibs (p hratric segmen ts), each conforming to the Tuk ano model

of a hierarchically ordered set of sibs, related as elder and younger bro th-

ers .

16

Secondly, the descent system is not spatially articulated in the

typical Tukano manner, where sets of patrilineally related longhouses tend

to form exogamous and descent-ordered local and territorial groups.

Among the Makuna, in contrast, adjacent longhouses tend to be linked

through multiple marriages, forming alliance-ordered localities and territo-

rial groups of intermarrying sib-segments. In other w ords, while the long-

house is strictly exogamous, local clusters of adjacent longhouses tend to be

highly endogamous.

These two features of the Makuna marriage system have a further

important consequence at the level of social organization. Since most

marriages take place between close affines (allies) within the local group of

adjacent longhouses, marriages rarely take the form of bride capture or

direct exchange. Local marriages are rather modelled on the principle of

generalized reciprocity: allied men are engaged in the unconditional giving

and receiving of women as wivesa form of marriage which I have termed

gift m arria ge (Arhem 1981a, 1981b, 1987). In this type of ma rriage,

where the productive labour of a kinswoman given away is not immediately

reciprocated by a wife received, postmarital residence is often temporarily

(occasionally permanently) uxorilocal, in stark contrast to the Tukano ideal

of virilocality.

Yet, the Makuna subscribe to the Tukano ideals of language group

exogamy and virilocal residence in the sense that they maintain that these

ideals should properly apply also to themselves. In other words, the Ma-

kuna accept the Tukano model of the social world where the exogamous

descent group is identical with a territorial and linguistic unit and where

men ideally marry women from far away and belonging to different lan-

guage groups. But they also admit that they deviate from this normative

ideal. They recognize that they are different, that their social behaviour is

an anomaly in terms of the ideal Tukano pattern. And this conscious

recognition of their own anomaly, I suggest, helps us to understand their

particular relationship with the Maku.

Th e two featuresthe (statistical) tendencies towards linguistic and local

endogamythat set the Makuna off from most other Tukano groups in fact

bring them close to the Mak. As was noted above it is precisely the

tendency to marry people speaking the same language and to live together

with one's affines w hich the Tukano single out as typical for the M ak . Is it

too farfetched, then, to suggest that it is in fact this objective similarity


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The Mak, the Makuna and the Guiana System 13

between the Makuna and the Mak forms of social organization which in

part is responsible for the curious similarity between the names by which

the two groups are known? Both names, it is true, are given them and

mainly used by others, indians and non-indians. The Makuna and the

Mak themselves use sib names as auto-denominators, and in the case of

the Makuna there exists no generic name for the entire language group.

However, the terms Makuna and Mak have been used in the region for at

least two centuries and are, in fact, the terms used by Spanish-speaking

Indians themselves when comm unicating with non-Indian outs iders .

1 7

Consequently, it is these names that have entered into the ethnographic

literature of the region. Acco rding to M artius (1867:547), the term M a-

cun means black M ac . I do not know the etymology or original

meaning of any of the terms, and Martius gives us no clue, but I offer the

tentative hypothesis that the terminological contiguity implied by the two

names in fact stands for the objective similarity in terms of social organiza-

tion between the two groups.

Less speculative, and perhaps more important, is the evidence that

suggests that the Makuna recognize their closeness to the Mak. While the

Tukano in general , as we have seen, consider the Mak as marginal and

sub-human, the Makuna explicitly reject this derogatory view of the Mak.

They maintain that the Mak are people like themselves. Mak sibs are

equated with low-ranking sibs within the Makuna language group, not to

stress their sub-ordinate position but to emphazise their place within their

own social universe, alongside low-ranking sibs of other, Tukano, language

groups with whom the Makuna interact and intermarry. Indeed, during my

fieldwork I was told of various cases of Makuna men having (or having

had) Mak wives. All in all, it is as if the Makuna were aware of the

objective similarities between the two groups, and that this awareness in a

sense had brought them subjectively closer to one another.

Transformations of Social Structure: Further Reflections on a

Familiar Them e

The significance of the Mak and the Makuna in the context of a compara-

tive analysis of Lowland South American social structure is that they allow

us to see the Guiana and the Tukano systems as variat ions on a theme,

transformations of a single, underlying structure of exchange encoded in the

prescriptive, two-line relationship terminology. In this perspective, the

Mak and the Makuna form intermediary varieties of social organization

linking the societies of the Guiana region to those of the Northwest Amazon


11/19

14-

Kaj Arhem

in a transformational set defined by the structure of direct exchange (sym-

metric alliance) common to them all.

In its general outline, this line of reasoning seems to be implied in the

writings of various authors (cf. for example, Riviere 1973, 1984; Overing

Kaplan 1975; Dreifus 1977; Ramos and Albert 1977). Recently the perspec-

tive has been substantially developed by Hornborg (1986) in his ambitious

survey of Lowland South Am erican social structure . In a couple of previous

works (Arhem 1981a, 1987) I have myself argued that the Guiana and

Tukano patterns of social organization can be seen as different organiza-

tional realiz ation s of logical possibilities inherent in the symm etric alli-

ance structure. According to this argument, the two systems socially em-

ploy, or organizationally develop, different logical possibilitiesout of a

limited range of such possibilitiesoffered by the struc ture of exchange

common to both. Th e Guiana societies have chosen, as it were, to stress the

alliance bond and the unity of co-residential affines, resulting in a cognatic,

endogamous and uxorilocal system, while the Tukano have chosen to

emphasize unilineal affiliation and the unity of co-residential ag nates,

resulting in a patrilineal, exogamous and virilocal system.

In short, the different societies of northern Lowland South America

represent so many varieties of the same underlying social structure. As I

have expressed it elsewhere (Arhem 1981a), they represen t the set of logical

transformations defined by this structure laid out in space, projectedas it

wereonto the ethnographic m ap of northern Lowland South America. In

the same work I further suggested that the different organizational possibili-

ties defined by the structure could also be (and in various cases probably

have been) realized in the same society over time; i.e. as temporal varieties

in an ongoing process of social transformation. Hornborg (1986) has ad-

duced evidence for this type of historical trajectories of social structure from

other parts of Lowland South A merica. There is, in other words, inscribed

in the sym metric alliance structure a dynam ic, temporarily or only ap par-

ently frozen in each mom ent of time, but potentially activated in trajec-

tories of change defined by the limits and possibilities of the structu re

itself:

Here I would like to follow th is line of reasoning a bit further and suggest

that the different logical possibilities offered by the symmetric exchange

structure may be realized, not only in different societies, or in the same

society over time, but in the same society at the same time as parallel or

alternative social models, consciously elaborated and operative in particular

social contexts.

18

In other words, I am saying that some (if not all) of the

societies exam ined here are aware of the alterna tive possibilities offered by

their basic structure, and that they actively employ these alternative models

in the reproduction of their own society.


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The Mak, the Malcuna and the Guiana System li

Consider, for example, the case of the Piaroa. Their social organization

closely follows the stereotypical Guiana pattern with cognatic and ideally

endogamous set t lements and no permanent groups of any kind beyond the

personal kindred. Yet we are told by their ethnographer (Overing Kaplan

1975, 1981) that the Piaroa have a notion of patrifileal clans and moieties

which is operative in cosmogonic myths and eschatological beliefs. These

clans and moieties are associated w ith the mythical b irth place of the P iaroa

as a people, and the mortuary homeland to which all Piaroa are believed to

return after death. Clans and moieties among the Piaroa exist, as it were,

only before birth and after death in a sort of spiritual, super-human

society where the memb ers of each clan are supposed to l ive together in a

single settlement, separated from all other clans, from affines, animals and

all other beings separated from self (Overing Kaplan 1981:162). This

society of spirits is absolutely static, timeless and sterile. H um an society

only emerged, according to Piaroa myths, when clans and moieties inter-

mingled and intermarried, and their social and spatial distinctiveness be-

came blurred and ultimately abolished (ibid. 1975:205).

The Piaroa concept of clans and moieties are thus exclusively cosmologi-

cal categories. They play no organizational role in Piaroa social behaviour.

Indeed, the society of spirits is the very opposite to the society of human

beings; instead of spatially dem arcate d clans and m oieties, we find in reality

endogamous, cognatic settlements of co-resident kin and affines. While the

integration and intermingling of kin and affines are associated with human

life and social reproduction, differentiation and separation into clans and

moieties are associated with death and infertility.

The notion of the mortuary homeland among the Piaroa, then, plays a

role similar to the image of the Mak among the Tukano. To the Tukano,

the Makjust l ike the Piaroa notion of their mo rtuary hom eland articu-

late the boundaries of the social universe. By providing negative social

models, contrasted to actual social reality, both imagesone associated

with the super-human domain of spirits and the afterlife, the other with the

sub-human margins of the inhabited worldserve to affirm the normative

order of the societies which produce them.

The theoretical point of interest here is that both the Piaroa notion of the

mo rtuary h omeland and the Tukano view of the Mak in fact can be seen as

alternative representations, in two different social contexts, of the same

underlying social structure. They are conscious elaborations, at the level of

ideology, of logical possibilites enco ded in the re lationship system of the two

societies. It is as if the Piaroa and the Tu kan o were aw are of the transform a-

tional set of logical possibilities defined by their symmetric alliance struc-

ture. By choosing one possibility as the normative model, each society has


13/19

16 Kaj Arhem

relegated its logical complement to the realm of ideology and turned it into

a highly negatively charged counterpoint model, a model of non-human

societyindeed, of anti-society. In this way, the counterpoint models serve

to demonstratemuch like myths in structuralist thinkingthe practical

impossibility of alternative social models and the necessity of the existing

normative order. By presenting the other organizational possibilities offered

by the symmetric alliance structure as inhum an, the Piaroa and the Tukano

negate them and thereby justify the present social order.

In this light the Makuna anomaly takes on added significance. Among

the Makuna the patrilineal descent ideology and the rule of exogamy are

still categorically effective. The Tukano system is recognized as the norma-

tive ideal. Yet, the Guiana system is vaguely present in the actual working

of the Makuna marriage system. Consistent with the pronounced dichot-

omy between categorical ideal and social practice, which sets the Makuna

apart from other Tukano groups and brings them closer to the Mak, they

do not share the derogatory view of the M ak held by other Tukano groups.

In other wo rds, the consciously a rticulated relationship between norma tive

social order and its negatively charged counterpoint model, which we

discovered among the Guianese Piaroa and the Tukano in general, is

conspicuously lacking among the Makuna. And, in view of the intermediary

position occupied by the M akuna in the socio-structural space bounded by

the Guiana system a t one extreme and the Tukano system a t the other, this

is only to be expected. In the absence of a negative counterpoint model,

there is among the Makuna no ideological barrier to change along the

trajectories of social transformation offered by the symmetric alliance sys-

tem

itself.

Theoretical Implications and Em pirical R elevance

Stretching this line of reasoning to its limit, one could say that the Tukano

image of the Mak is there to inhibit the Tukano system from changing into

a G uianese one, jus t as the m ortuary homeland of the Piaroa prevents them,

as it were, from becoming Tuka no . The counterpoint images are ideo-

logically elabora ted precisely bec ause there exists a potentiality for this type

of reversible transformations to take place, for the trajectory of logical

possibilities to materialize into social reality. And since the potentiality for

change exists, inscribed as it is in the very structure of exchange, the

ideological barrier to change implied by the counterpoint image is also

liable to disappear when the circumstances so demand, as has happened in

the case of the Makuna.

These somewhat speculative reflections have a concrete bearing on the


14/19


15/19

18 Kaj Arhem

Arhem 1981a). New social and territorial groupings thus emerged which

differed considerably from the idealized, descent-based s tructure . How ever,

the Makuna social system apparently easily accommodated the changes. It

contained in itself the seeds of change . It w as as if the external p ressures set

the Makuna social system in motion along a trajectory of change already

present in the system as a latent potentiality. In this light, the current

changesactivated by the recent cocain boom and the intensified mission-

ary activities in the arearepresent but another step along the same

trajectory. It crystallizes and solidifies a trend present in Makuna society

for decades, and certainly visible at the time of my fieldwork in the early

1970s.

With the imminent disappearance of the longhousethe very root model

of the Tukano descent structurethere is little left of the typically Tukano

features of the Makuna social system. Perhaps we are beginning to discern

among the Makuna the outlines of a post-Tu kano society where the

longhouse and, ultimately, the notion of descent are relegated, as among the

Piaroa, to the realm of mythic thought and eschatological beliefs?

20

It may be appropriate thus to end a rather speculative paper: with an

imaginary scenery of a possible future Makuna reality. Certainly the paper

has raisedand left unansweredother, grander, questions, such as why

the same structure of exchange appears in different cultural forms among

the various groups of northern Lowland South America, and why, and

under what circumstances, one form transforms into another. If I have not

attempted to answer these questions here it is partly because I don't have

the data required to do so, but also because they seem to me to belong to a

quite different line of enquity, and hence to deserve separate treatment.

They demand answers phrased in terms of a different explanatory frame-

work than that presented here; explanations phrased in terms of cause-and-

effects, and generative models based on the detailed analysis of ecological

variation and historical processes.

21

What I have attempted in this paper is rather to develop an analytical

perspective which allows us to handle the problems of social change and

socio-structural variation within a single explanatory framework. In this

vein I have tried to show that the Guiana and Tukano systems are related

as logical variants of a single structure (or transformational set), and that

the different logical possibilities implied by this transformational set are

ideologically recognized and evaluated by (some of) the societies examined.

Finally, I have argued that the structural change currently taking place

among the Makuna can be seen as a temporal translation of this transfor-

mational set, a translation into social process of the set of logical possibili-

ties contained in the structure of symmetric exchange shared by the various


16/19

Th e Mak, the Makun a and the Guiana System 19

societies of northern Lowland South America. If I have succeeded in

convincing the reader that the theoretical study of social structure is

relevant for the empirical understanding of social change, then my aim is

achieved. In a limited bu t significant sense I thin k we are justified in saying

that the historical destiny of the Tukano is inscribed in their social struc-

ture.

NOTES

1. My fieldwork was carried ou t in the Pir-P aran area of the Colom bian Va ups territory

between 1971 and 1974. Published results, relevant to the them e of this pap er, are listed in

the references below. I would like to acknowledge the constructive comments on an earlier

draft of this paper by T. Gerholm, D. Heinen, A. Hornborg, and P. Riviere.

2. See list of references.

3. I use the term Tukano here to refer to the totality of the Eastern Tukano-speaking groups.

These groups share a similar culture and pattern of social organization (sec below).

4.Let it also be said that my co ncern with the formal prop erties of the social systems

examined here is partly due to a lack of the precise data required for constructing

generative models of structural variation and change. Yet I think that a comparative,

structu ral analysis such as th e one attem pted here needs no justification. After all,

structural and causal explanations are complementary and equally necessary in the

development of anthropological theory.

5.Th e sum ma ry acco unt of the Guian a system which follows is based entirely on Riviere

(1984). An insightful review of the book is offered by Ho rnbo rg (198 7). Since the pap er w as

written, another useful review of the Guiana societies has appeared in printthe collection

of papers edited by Butt Colson and Heinen (1983-84).

6. In the description of the Tukano system I rely on my own field work as well as the writings

of, principally, Goldman (1963), C. Hugh-Jones (1979), S. Hugh-Jones (1979), Jackson

(1983) and Reichel-Dolmatoff (1968). Let it be stressed again that I use the term Tukano

here to refer to the totality of Eastern Tukano-speaking groups and not to the specific

exogamous group, known by the same term, which constitutes one of the 15 or so language

groups making up this totali ty.

7. Th e Pir-P anan area wh ere I carried out fieldwork is such an ar ea. How ever, along the

Vaups River, and particularly near the large settlement of Mit, the regional capital,

indigenous life has changed dramatically and the traditional Tukano pattern of social

organization is largely shattered. Here settlements invariably take the form of nucleated

villages of varying social composition, determined by missionary and administrative

dictates rather than endogenous developments.

8. I have borrowed the term language group from Jackson (1983). C. Hugh-Jones (1979) uses

the concept of Exogamous Group for the same unit of Tukano social structure.

9. I t should perhaps be p ointed out that the Cube o (and the M akuna, w hich will become

apparent in the course of the paper) deviate from this ideal pattern. The Cubeo constitute a

language group divided into three exogamous phratries which intermarry among them-

selves (Goldman 1963).

10 .The hierarchical structure of the exogamous group is furthermore articulated in terms of an

idealized set of specialist role s so that sibs are arran ged in order of seniority, from the

first-born to the last-born, in a series of five specialist ro les : chiefs, chanter s, warriors,


17/19

20 Kaj Arhem

shamans, and servants. To each of these categories corresponds a set of personal names

recycled among its members in alternating generations.

11 .The notion of people waking-up house (masa yuhiri wi in both Barasana and Makuna

languages) denotes the mythical birth place of an exogamous descent group as well as the

ancestral home to which the souls of its members return after death.

12 . Cf. C. Hugh-Jones (1979:31) and note 10 above.

13.

Alternatively it has been su ggested that the term M ak might be of Arrawakan origin

(Ortiz 1986).

14 .The information on the M ak presented here derives essentially from Jackson (1976, 1983).

Jackson's accounts of the Mak are largely based on material published by others, and

exhaustive bibliographies on Mak ethnography are given in her works.

15 .

At the time of writing I did not have access to these works, but they are both summarized

in Jackson (1976, 1983), and I have had the opportunity to discuss some of the issues raised

here personally with Howard Reid.

16 .

As noted above (note 9) , this also applies to the Tukano Cubeo. However, the Cubeo have

all the other typical Tukano features of social organization, and differ sharply from the

Makuna in their strong emphasis on territorial exogamy.

17. The term Mucunas appears as a name of a group of Indians living on the Apaporis River

(most probably the present-day Makuna) in the late 18th century. At the same time the

Mak of the Vaups Region are mentioned for the first time in the chronicles of Sampaio

(1775) and Ferreira (1878); cf. S. Hugh-Jones 1981:31, 43).

18. In the con text of general theoretical an thropology this idea of multiple or alternative,

coexisting models is, of course, not new at all; cf. for example, Leach (1954) and Salzman

(1978). An example immediately relevant to the present ethnographical context is Overing

Kaplan's (1973) examination of alternative models of marriage exchange among the

Piaroa.

19. As me ntioned ear lier, in other parts of Vau ps, nucleated villages predo minate. Their

composition is highly variable and tends to be predicated on missionary influences and the

migrant labour pattern evolving in the most acculturated parts of Vaups. It has, for

example, been a pronounced policy on the part of the Catholic mission to mix various

language groups together in missionary settlements. Nevertheless, nucleated settlements in

Vaups tend in general to follow the Tukano pattern of agnatic/patrilateral rather than

uterine of affinal extensions (Chernela 1985, but cf. Jackson (1983:69).

20 .

It may be relevant in this context to point out that in Mak mythology the founding fathers

of the Mak sibs inhabit huge ancestral longhouses to which the souls of the living

generations of people return after death (just as among the Tukano and the Piaroa) (Reid

1978:10). Amon g the living M ak, though, there are no longhouses. The world of the dead

constitute an inversion of the world of the living.

21 . In a subsequent paper I hope to come back to these questions. At the present moment

(1988) I am carrying out renewed field research among the Makuna, focussing precisely on

the theme of cultural change.

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arhem, kaj - the maku, the makuna and the guiana system, 1989

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