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Uh I'm David Pinsov.

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I am David Petrozowski.

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Although I go by Dave on the podcast because it's Dave.

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I'm David.

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Yeah.

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Uh and uh this is Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast.

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In parentheses, yes.

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In parentheses.

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And this is actual evolutionary psychology by actual evolutionary psychologists.

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Forgot the tagline.

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I'm sorry, Dave.

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That's okay.

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I mean, who listens to this podcast anyway?

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Yeah, it's true.

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So I hope you are I hope you listener are one of those people.

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Thank you for being one of those people.

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Um and you know, in defense of David, you know, he has already heard the episode by the

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time it comes out.

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So um, but David, you should be listening.

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Uh David, good to see you.

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Good to see you too, Dave.

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Um today we have a very special and kind of different episode.

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And this is uh Brenda Bowser.

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Brenda Bowser is uh at Cal State Fullerton.

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Um she's professor of um anthropology.

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And this episode is was sort of born out of, you know, we were

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celebrating the life of John Patton, who uh very unfortunately passed

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away.

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And um, and we I attended there was a um uh a

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symposium last October to sort of talk about uh all of the things that John did uh

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John Patton did in his career.

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And today we're very lucky to have his wife and lifelong collaborator Brenda

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Bowser um really just talking about their field site, Canalbo, and um

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and sort of just I don't know about you, David, but if there's one episode we've ever

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recorded that what has been said has sort of stuck in my memory, this is that one.

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Yeah, this one was pretty haunting.

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I uh we should give a disclaimer for listeners.

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Um we get into uh intergroup violence, uh abduction of women,

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uh really uh heavy stuff.

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Yeah.

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Um so maybe maybe not bedtime listening.

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No, but deeply sincere experiences from Brenda and from the field about

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uh about their time in Kanambo.

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And um yeah, I don't know.

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I think like David said, I think this is the I think there was a different uh feel to this

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episode.

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And uh we really appreciated Brenda coming on and talking about her time with John.

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And I think um, you know, I the we'll link to the John

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um John Patton Memorial Symposium content.

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There were so many amazing um scientists who worked with him.

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And uh yeah, I think this is just part of sort of celebrating and thinking about

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his contribution to science.

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And if there were any justice in the world, John Patton, John Q.

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Patton would be very widely known in terms of the anthropology and evolutionary

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psychology of intergroup conflict.

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And every time I ever saw him at, for example, the HBES meeting, it was

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always sort of like, I just felt so lucky to spend time with him and he would tell me

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stories from the field in a place where there was actually group conflict.

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And as a uh experimental lab psychologist, it sort of kept me honest.

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Yeah, this was a really special episode and um I I think you'll enjoy it.

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Okay.

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Uh without further ado, here is Brenda Bowser.

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Welcome everybody.

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We have um another wonderful um guest today.

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Today we have uh Brenda Bowser.

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Brenda, obviously, you know, we miss John a lot.

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And I know you and John really spent a tremendous amount of your

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life in doing this field site in Kanambo.

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And I almost feel sort of silly asking you a question about it to start off with.

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And I know you've been thinking about sort of reflecting on this lifetime of sort of

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doing this thing.

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For those of the people listening who don't know what you've been

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doing, what what would you like to start out by saying about?

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Yeah.

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Why I I did a timeline and I won't go through the whole thing and I barely got through the

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beginning of it.

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But Sean and I met as um PhD students at UCSP.

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And we met in 1983.

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And by 1985, we had

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gotten together, so to speak, and decided that we would do this fieldwork

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together.

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And we were married in 87.

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We planned literally our first child around our field

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work.

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Luckily we had a friend who was a PhD student in anthropology and decided to

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go to medical school.

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And so she counseled us on how to plan to have a child in the field and all the

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weights and ages and immunizations and how to figure all that out.

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So we did that and um John went to

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this is a shortened version, of course, but went to New Guinea when Neil was 11 months old,

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I mentioned, so that was 89, and then came back and um

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applied for had been applying for funding, but the New Guinea

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folks who were reviewing NSF proposals at the time were not particularly enamored

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by Darwinian approaches.

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So Shagnon approached John and said, You should come to

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Yanamamal territory with me, which we planned to do.

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And then there was a military coup.

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And John got a note, a handwritten note from Shagnon in his box saying,

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can't go.

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There's been a military coup.

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The president's mistress is responsible for the permit.

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She's fled the country.

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We don't have military permits.

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By then, John and I had given up our place to live.

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I had taken a leave of absence from my job, and we had to

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rethink where we were going to go.

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And this was really foremost for john's dissertation work at the time um and from

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there really it starts um the search for uh konambo and

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yeah and and and just to like fill in some of the details for folks so john is

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interested in human conflict is this the overarching theme and why he goes to new guinea

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john was interested in

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I'm trying to think of how to put it succinctly.

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I mean, certainly human warfare and the evolved psychology of coalitional

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violence, but particularly as that relates to men's status and the

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question of why men kill, why men engage in warfare, how from a

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Darwinian perspective one can explain that conundrum of altruism.

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And that was sort of the root of John's

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question, but always seated in evolutionary thinking.

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And he studied biology first at USC.

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So he really came to you to anthropology and to UCSB with

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An evolutionary perspective and particularly grounded in

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ecology and behavioral ecology.

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So yeah.

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So yeah, his and his dissertation, you know, was titled Thoughtful Warriors.

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And I think one of the things that was implicit in sort of what I was looking for, and one

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of the things that I just love talking to John so much when I would talk to him about at

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like the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference, or reading his dissertation, was

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the thoughtful warriors was it was that um this thing of

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conflict or killing or being a warrior which I think

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sometimes gets romanticized or demonized either way.

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John was looking at it from this perspective of we have to just um

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respect that it it might be complicated and there's there's a logic

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to it.

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Um and it was neither gratuitously um anti

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or pro.

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It was just sort of dispassionately like this is going to be a complicated psychology.

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But what what what a um you know you mentioned he went to New Guinea 11 months.

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I can't imagine that and and is is is am I correct in understanding that where he

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went and even Kanamo itself, which we'll get into in a second, it's not the

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um, not only is it not, you know, a a four-star hotel, I mean,

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on some level, you know, you're going to a place because of human

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conflict being uh in in the in the air.

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So these are not necessarily the safest places.

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Is that right?

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And sort of how how can you can you elaborate a bit on that?

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And was that part of, you know, yeah, because I I can imagine people listening and saying,

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well, you know, what what do you do?

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You know, um yeah, it it's a really um uh yeah I'll I'll I'll shut up and let you say

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oh I I I I guess I want to kind of free list here a little bit of the thinking and the

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thinkers who influenced John's um the development of his research

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question, and which then led to the choice of field sites.

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And um so certainly uh Robert Wright and the Moral

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Animal, um, Alexander Hamilton on kin selection, Shagnon's work,

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Trivers on reciprocal altruism, Franz DeWall on chimpanzee politics,

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and especially triadic awareness as the foundation of coalitional thinking,

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building from there, right?

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From those compared, those, those dyadic comparisons, then a triadic comparison,

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and to build really a construction of cognitive categories that are

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coalitions and understanding status within that context,

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so not disembedded in any way.

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So there were specific criteria for selecting a field site.

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The first one, which I think is generally the advice that most of us

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give all of our students, right, is your choice of field site should be driven by your

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research question.

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So for John, the first thing was a history of recent or

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ongoing tribal um conflict.

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So coalitional violence, which is the

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the definition of um warfare that John was working with.

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So um so the research question really was the first

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criterion for selecting a place to go and and New Guinea was a great place

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to go and do that um because of the ongoing and

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longstanding um history of um tribal warfare.

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So that was why he went to New Guinea and wanted to do that.

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So um I think that answers that.

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Yeah.

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What was that like?

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I mean, did you guys have a discussion?

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I mean, you know, we you know if you don't want to answer, but what you know, he has an 11

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month old and then he's going to the business.

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What was that discussion like?

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I mean you know he he went for one month and the idea was he would go and

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check it out and then come back and we could um you know work on continue to

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work on getting funding and um and know uh

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what it would be like and plan better.

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So uh but for for me, you know, I I was

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trained as an anthropologist.

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So I was trained and I was in the archaeology program, but I wanted

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to look at really the material correlates of status and alliance, and

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particularly with a focus on women.

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And John and I always joked that before we started to do this work, we divided the

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world into the living and the dead, and he did the living and I did the dead.

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and then once we started this work, we divided the world along gender lines.

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And he worked, you know, mainly with the men, and I worked mainly with the women.

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So I we were, and we often said

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that, you know, it it may have seemed brave for us to do that, but if anything bad had

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happened, and things bad do happen in the field, especially with children, sometimes

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people lose their children in the field.

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Sometimes there are books written on children in the field.

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There are a lot of challenges.

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So we would have just seemed really stupid if anything bad had happened.

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But we were really cautious and we took our time.

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And that was a piece of it.

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what the and we worked with our pediatrician in fact for Neil to know what the

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um what what health challenges we should plan

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for how many pounds Neil would need to be before he could take the medications and the

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immunizations and the same for us um we we recognized an

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additional responsibility for keeping ourselves alive, you know, so that we didn't

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leave a child.

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Um, and we had to make plans for what would happen if something happened to us in the

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field, and that of course involved the support of the community and decisions about who

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would take responsibility for Neil if something happened to us.

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So I think we um we we both felt

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fairly confident in our ability to work in the field.

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You know, I'd done lots and lots and lots of archaeological work in the tropics and

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elsewhere, and for years doing, you know, tough logistics.

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And John also was a really skilled outdoorsman.

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So we felt we felt prepared, we felt confident.

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We had role models who were awesome, you know.

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I mean, Shagnon, Brown, and the plan Shagnon and uh yeah,

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Donald Brown.

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Yeah, Donald Brown.

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Right.

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Yeah.

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Right.

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And, you know, everyone in our world, including graduate students like Barry Hewlett

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was a graduate student when we were at UCSB, all went off to do these

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awesome periods of field work.

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And the expectation, the requirement at UCSB at the time was a minimum of 12 months.

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So we knew that this is what we were to do.

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And um I'm I'm we just had a lot of

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support and a lot of good models and a lot of training and good advice, and we

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felt prepared.

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Yeah.

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Does that answer your question?

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It it absolutely.

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I mean, I think um uh it's I think it's still brave.

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I think so too.

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Looking back, we were not afraid, but not um careless.

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Right.

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It wasn't reckless, yeah.

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No.

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David.

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I'm a kvecher.

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I could not handle uh being in that kind of situation.

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00:17:19,670 --> 00:17:23,430
Um, if it were me and I was choosing a research question, it would be the cultural

246
00:17:23,430 --> 00:17:25,350
semiotics of the Ritz-Carlton.

247
00:17:27,430 --> 00:17:30,470
I'm more comfortable there than I am in Kanambo.

248
00:17:31,670 --> 00:17:33,830
Um uh and we'll get to Kanambo.

249
00:17:33,990 --> 00:17:39,910
Yeah, so Kanambo, and I mean one way to maybe introduce Kanambo, and maybe this is a

250
00:17:39,910 --> 00:17:44,870
cartoonish version, but for me it was in reading John's dissertation, which is incredible.

251
00:17:44,950 --> 00:17:49,190
And we should we'll post a link to John's dissertation probably for this episode.

252
00:17:49,400 --> 00:17:55,400
um, is I think this was like an earlier colonial explorer who

253
00:17:55,400 --> 00:18:01,080
sort of met with the the kind of Ashwar community, but it was about um

254
00:18:01,560 --> 00:18:07,160
this was a community that resisted not only um, you know, was it

255
00:18:07,160 --> 00:18:09,240
Mayan and also Spanish?

256
00:18:09,480 --> 00:18:13,850
I mean, can you give the and there's also an anecdote with uh with molten gold.

257
00:18:14,010 --> 00:18:16,810
Is this the um that was the Spanish?

258
00:18:17,130 --> 00:18:22,970
Yeah, the so the yeah, the the ethnohistory of the region is that the Schwar

259
00:18:23,130 --> 00:18:29,050
and Achwar territories in the sort of flanks of the the the eastern flanks

260
00:18:29,050 --> 00:18:34,490
of the Andes and down into the upper Amazonian watershed that is the Ecuadorian

261
00:18:34,490 --> 00:18:40,240
Amazon, that those folks um successfully resisted um the

262
00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:46,000
Inca incursion, which and and there were others um in Ecuador especially because that was

263
00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:52,000
late in the empire expansion of the Inca um but they were repelled by um by

264
00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:57,440
the Achuar and the Shuar and um and the Achar and the Shuar also

265
00:18:57,440 --> 00:19:03,440
repelled initial um Spanish incursions and the story

266
00:19:03,440 --> 00:19:09,310
is that um there there's gold in the Schwar territory which is up in the hills a

267
00:19:09,310 --> 00:19:10,750
little bit from where we are.

268
00:19:11,070 --> 00:19:16,670
But um but the story is that they poured molten gold down the throat of a

269
00:19:16,670 --> 00:19:22,110
Spanish, you know, um yikes in the church.

270
00:19:22,350 --> 00:19:22,670
Yeah.

271
00:19:23,150 --> 00:19:28,590
John John John would sort of always during the CP, John Tuby would often um sort of recount

272
00:19:28,590 --> 00:19:33,790
John John Patton's uh story of it or just sort of, you know, that they the the men just

273
00:19:33,790 --> 00:19:38,660
sort of surrounded this this guy's hut or his building and sort of was saying, you know,

274
00:19:38,740 --> 00:19:40,740
you wanted this gold, here it is, sort of.

275
00:19:40,820 --> 00:19:45,220
It was uh it was sort of revenge, almost like Hollywood style revenge, but a a true story.

276
00:19:45,620 --> 00:19:49,940
And Michael Hunter wrote about that in his ethnography on the Schwar.

277
00:19:50,260 --> 00:19:54,420
And I haven't actually tracked down those historical sources.

278
00:19:54,580 --> 00:19:57,780
So I don't know how well founded they are.

279
00:19:58,260 --> 00:19:58,580
Okay.

280
00:19:58,820 --> 00:19:59,060
Yeah.

281
00:19:59,230 --> 00:20:05,070
So there's a lip yeah, but I mean in in and I think John in the dissertation um notes

282
00:20:05,070 --> 00:20:06,750
where he got that quote from.

283
00:20:06,830 --> 00:20:08,270
But yeah, it's quite striking.

284
00:20:08,350 --> 00:20:13,150
You don't always come across an academic dissertation with the introduction to the field

285
00:20:13,230 --> 00:20:19,070
site including how the they fended off the the Incas in the Spanish, and there's this story

286
00:20:19,070 --> 00:20:24,750
of the the you know, them going and and pouring molten gold down the throat of the person

287
00:20:24,750 --> 00:20:30,620
who was trying to sort of um basically exploit the the land and the community.

288
00:20:30,700 --> 00:20:36,540
So and and the Achuars still see themselves as fierce

289
00:20:36,540 --> 00:20:36,860
people.

290
00:20:37,500 --> 00:20:40,620
And so I can tell you things that were said.

291
00:20:41,100 --> 00:20:47,020
Um there was a one John actually I was staying in a

292
00:20:47,020 --> 00:20:49,410
community with Neil.

293
00:20:50,290 --> 00:20:56,130
And John was headed downriver in a small canoe where they said, Signora, it's too small for

294
00:20:56,130 --> 00:20:57,250
you, it's too dangerous.

295
00:20:57,410 --> 00:21:00,450
And I'm like, okay, so they went without me and I was sad.

296
00:21:00,690 --> 00:21:06,610
But the first place that they stayed, the traditional greeting from a

297
00:21:06,610 --> 00:21:12,450
person, a Nachoir person in their house is you call up, hoot up

298
00:21:12,820 --> 00:21:18,100
to the houses, which are usually built high on river terraces and defensible locations

299
00:21:18,180 --> 00:21:19,140
traditionally.

300
00:21:19,380 --> 00:21:25,220
And the response, if you're welcome, is don't worry, I will not kill you while you

301
00:21:25,220 --> 00:21:25,780
sleep.

302
00:21:26,340 --> 00:21:32,020
So John got that response, his first um visit going down the river.

303
00:21:32,980 --> 00:21:35,220
I can't imagine that was very reassuring.

304
00:21:35,650 --> 00:21:36,210
Oh okay.

305
00:21:36,290 --> 00:21:36,450
Thanks.

306
00:21:37,810 --> 00:21:39,250
We need to know that's the good answer.

307
00:21:39,570 --> 00:21:40,370
That's the good answer.

308
00:21:40,450 --> 00:21:43,090
You need to do your homework to know that's the good answer.

309
00:21:43,810 --> 00:21:49,730
Or or I there was a a story that you know, I think parts of Dave, but there

310
00:21:49,730 --> 00:21:54,210
was a big fight um among a bunch of senior men.

311
00:21:54,290 --> 00:21:55,810
It was not dignified.

312
00:21:56,050 --> 00:22:01,410
And um, and it's a longer story, of course, about what they were fighting about and such,

313
00:22:01,570 --> 00:22:07,020
but um, but one of the men who um identifies as

314
00:22:07,020 --> 00:22:12,940
Qichwa said, you know, basically threatened to kill one of

315
00:22:12,940 --> 00:22:14,460
the Achwar men.

316
00:22:14,780 --> 00:22:20,620
And this is Isak Pijora, and he stood up and he said, You cannot count kill

317
00:22:20,620 --> 00:22:20,860
me.

318
00:22:21,020 --> 00:22:22,300
I am Achwar.

319
00:22:22,780 --> 00:22:27,100
I will kill you when you go outside to pee at night on the trail.

320
00:22:27,260 --> 00:22:33,190
And that's the standard way that raids are mounted especially against individuals

321
00:22:33,670 --> 00:22:37,190
um when killing is targeted.

322
00:22:37,430 --> 00:22:42,470
So and that's those those threats are real.

323
00:22:43,350 --> 00:22:49,030
In this case, um I think they were it was understood that this was gonna be

324
00:22:49,030 --> 00:22:54,710
resolved, but um without violence, but this is still anyway, so the

325
00:22:54,710 --> 00:23:00,500
threat of violence was there and you know there were

326
00:23:00,500 --> 00:23:06,500
real situations and and um deaths while we were

327
00:23:06,500 --> 00:23:12,260
there and um certainly we heard firsthand accounts

328
00:23:12,260 --> 00:23:18,260
and um and were there for resolutions of some of those things and watched

329
00:23:18,260 --> 00:23:23,990
people's I mean, conflict management strategies, which might just be that

330
00:23:23,990 --> 00:23:29,590
you hop out of the canoe and spend the night sleeping in the forest, you know,

331
00:23:29,750 --> 00:23:32,230
while we went downriver with other people.

332
00:23:32,310 --> 00:23:37,990
And but um, this one man couldn't go because it was his father who had killed the father of

333
00:23:37,990 --> 00:23:39,670
someone who was in that village.

334
00:23:39,830 --> 00:23:42,870
And there's still the obligation for retaliation.

335
00:23:43,270 --> 00:23:45,990
But people have strategies for dealing with that.

336
00:23:46,070 --> 00:23:51,500
And in this case, it was not to be confrontational, not to go into the

337
00:23:51,500 --> 00:23:53,340
community, just to get out of the.

338
00:23:53,820 --> 00:23:59,340
I mean, the canoe stopped and Simone Kuhee has um got out.

339
00:23:59,660 --> 00:24:01,260
And I was like, what's going on?

340
00:24:01,420 --> 00:24:05,820
And it took a while for people to explain because you're not sitting so close to people in

341
00:24:05,820 --> 00:24:07,100
a canoe always.

342
00:24:07,260 --> 00:24:11,100
But um anyway, that was one of those um things.

343
00:24:11,340 --> 00:24:16,250
So there were times when we were worried

344
00:24:17,050 --> 00:24:18,730
about our own safety.

345
00:24:18,970 --> 00:24:24,810
There were times when I was worried about my own safety if there were death threats

346
00:24:24,810 --> 00:24:29,210
against the person whose house I was staying at, for example.

347
00:24:29,530 --> 00:24:34,970
And people would tell me, don't worry, Brenda, it would cause

348
00:24:34,970 --> 00:24:38,820
problems if someone killed you, no one will kill you.

349
00:24:39,860 --> 00:24:42,900
And I just wow, so reassuring.

350
00:24:43,700 --> 00:24:45,860
The consequences after, yeah.

351
00:24:47,380 --> 00:24:53,060
Well, you know, I just I really it was still kind of nerve-wracking, but I

352
00:24:54,340 --> 00:24:56,660
I learned a lot every time.

353
00:24:57,300 --> 00:25:01,060
And and I learned to trust people.

354
00:25:01,540 --> 00:25:07,510
So um, and I trusted that people really watched out for me and

355
00:25:07,510 --> 00:25:13,350
watched out for John and watched out for our kids, because we

356
00:25:13,350 --> 00:25:19,110
eventually had three of them, and they each came to the field at different

357
00:25:19,110 --> 00:25:19,750
times.

358
00:25:21,190 --> 00:25:26,950
So I think that's, and if we're talking about field sites and how to choose field sites

359
00:25:27,030 --> 00:25:32,870
and how to maintain field sites, which is one of the questions that you raised

360
00:25:33,190 --> 00:25:38,800
earlier, Dave, trusting, being able to trust, learning to

361
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:44,320
trust, learning what you don't know, and being able to

362
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:50,800
um follow instructions, you know, that and

363
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:55,760
respect the people who live there, that they have greater knowledge than you do.

364
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:01,830
And it's, it, you know, it's it's a good, it's not only a good way to

365
00:26:02,150 --> 00:26:08,150
live, period, you know, but to live safely, but to live well within

366
00:26:08,150 --> 00:26:13,190
the community and to learn as much as you can possibly learn.

367
00:26:13,510 --> 00:26:17,980
So that was so so listening to people is really important.

368
00:26:18,380 --> 00:26:19,020
Amazing.

369
00:26:19,180 --> 00:26:21,420
Um, we just got to Kanambo.

370
00:26:21,500 --> 00:26:23,260
So we were in New Guinea.

371
00:26:23,420 --> 00:26:26,060
Um, Kanambo, I mean, there's sort of two questions.

372
00:26:26,220 --> 00:26:29,740
One is sort of what was the personal decision to go there?

373
00:26:29,900 --> 00:26:35,100
And then the second thing is that I think most people listening are thinking, well, you

374
00:26:35,100 --> 00:26:38,300
know, this sounds like a very scary, violent place.

375
00:26:38,940 --> 00:26:44,910
Um is is that something that the people

376
00:26:45,230 --> 00:26:50,270
there think of themselves as it being a scary and violent place?

377
00:26:50,430 --> 00:26:56,270
Or is that um something we're sort of painting on here and you know, uh do

378
00:26:56,590 --> 00:26:57,790
you know what I'm sort of getting at?

379
00:26:57,870 --> 00:26:58,190
So yeah.

380
00:26:58,590 --> 00:26:59,150
I do.

381
00:26:59,390 --> 00:27:03,760
Um so there is the

382
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:11,840
latent potential for violence, and that's always managed

383
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:13,440
and always there.

384
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:19,760
So there's a lot of time spent on consensus building, addressing problems when

385
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:25,440
they arise, identifying problems early, and that's really the day to day

386
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:30,800
work of adults in the community is to um

387
00:27:31,770 --> 00:27:36,090
manage politics um because of the potential for violence.

388
00:27:36,250 --> 00:27:40,970
But we went in, you know, when I said it, and I'll tell you a little bit more about how we

389
00:27:40,970 --> 00:27:43,930
got in to Conambo because it really does take a year.

390
00:27:44,170 --> 00:27:49,690
So anybody who thinks that you just pop in, you know, it's not, it's a big time commitment.

391
00:27:49,930 --> 00:27:55,220
So um, but but Conambo and those territories

392
00:27:55,860 --> 00:28:01,060
had a history of endemic rating and

393
00:28:02,020 --> 00:28:07,940
into boy, I figured this out from at one point

394
00:28:08,020 --> 00:28:13,860
because I've written it, but certainly past the 1960s, you know,

395
00:28:14,180 --> 00:28:16,580
into the 1970s.

396
00:28:17,060 --> 00:28:22,810
And we so the older people in the

397
00:28:22,810 --> 00:28:26,970
communities at the time had experienced this.

398
00:28:27,610 --> 00:28:28,890
Had experienced a raiding.

399
00:28:29,290 --> 00:28:34,730
Had experienced raiding, and I mean, literally, you know,

400
00:28:35,050 --> 00:28:40,890
captive women, you know, sisters who were still living in the communities where they had

401
00:28:40,890 --> 00:28:43,450
been taken when they were stolen during raids.

402
00:28:43,930 --> 00:28:48,500
Um, I mean, those were discussions that evoked a lot of emotion.

403
00:28:48,660 --> 00:28:54,420
Um, people who had killed, who would come to our house,

404
00:28:54,500 --> 00:28:55,700
you know, at night.

405
00:28:55,860 --> 00:29:01,860
I can think of one guy, Visually, who came to our house to tell us about the

406
00:29:01,860 --> 00:29:03,060
people he had killed.

407
00:29:03,300 --> 00:29:04,820
I think they were five.

408
00:29:05,060 --> 00:29:07,060
He knew, of course, exactly.

409
00:29:07,300 --> 00:29:10,180
And um, and his children didn't know those stories.

410
00:29:10,420 --> 00:29:10,740
Wow.

411
00:29:11,130 --> 00:29:15,930
And when we went into communities, people would tell the stories that they knew.

412
00:29:16,090 --> 00:29:22,090
You know, so it might be their mother who was a child who hid under the bodies of

413
00:29:22,090 --> 00:29:24,250
her cousins in a canoe.

414
00:29:24,650 --> 00:29:30,570
Um so that and she wasn't killed, but you know, her cousins were.

415
00:29:31,210 --> 00:29:32,170
And um

416
00:29:37,120 --> 00:29:42,880
So I think men, I was John and I were thirty-four,

417
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:45,280
I think, when we went into Conambo.

418
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:51,680
And the so the men and women

419
00:29:51,680 --> 00:29:57,520
who had experienced these big raids, um, and active

420
00:29:57,520 --> 00:29:58,400
rating.

421
00:30:00,310 --> 00:30:04,950
We're married to women my age.

422
00:30:05,190 --> 00:30:06,950
So a little bit older.

423
00:30:07,510 --> 00:30:10,870
So we we and and people referred to this.

424
00:30:10,950 --> 00:30:16,630
There was one senior person in the community of Konambo, not sorry, in

425
00:30:16,630 --> 00:30:19,830
Copatalsa, actually on a different river, but where we went first.

426
00:30:20,070 --> 00:30:24,070
But he referred to it as the time when we were dying.

427
00:30:24,310 --> 00:30:30,220
And it was a time when community, I want to say community leaders, but they

428
00:30:30,220 --> 00:30:31,500
weren't community leaders yet.

429
00:30:31,580 --> 00:30:37,100
They were people who formed communities and then became community leaders because they

430
00:30:37,100 --> 00:30:41,900
invited others in, others joined them, but they they really

431
00:30:42,780 --> 00:30:48,380
intentionally worked on conflict management and

432
00:30:48,380 --> 00:30:52,430
reconstructing um society.

433
00:30:52,590 --> 00:30:58,190
And this was true in many parts of Yamozania, not just in the area where we were, but it

434
00:30:58,190 --> 00:31:04,030
took us a long time, I think, to realize how historically embedded those processes

435
00:31:04,030 --> 00:31:07,950
were throughout that enormous subcontinent.

436
00:31:10,110 --> 00:31:15,600
Well, I I suspect the question that is going through a lot of our listeners' mind, uh in

437
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:17,920
addition to my mind, is why?

438
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:24,000
So whenever there is any kind of violence that takes place, um we want to know

439
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:25,760
why it happened, what were the causes.

440
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:30,640
If we watch a true crime documentary, we want to know what's going on inside the killer's

441
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:30,880
head.

442
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:31,840
Why did he do it?

443
00:31:31,920 --> 00:31:32,880
What was the motive?

444
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:37,440
And so the question that has been eating away at me as you've been describing these um

445
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:43,510
really terrifying uh scenarios with this ambient possibility of violence being

446
00:31:43,510 --> 00:31:45,990
a fact of life is why?

447
00:31:46,150 --> 00:31:51,270
Why what what do you think are the causes of of these killings?

448
00:31:51,430 --> 00:31:53,190
Um are there multiple causes?

449
00:31:53,350 --> 00:31:54,470
How do you partition them?

450
00:31:54,630 --> 00:31:58,070
What is your your understanding here of of what is behind this?

451
00:31:59,510 --> 00:32:05,350
So from a very reduced perspective, I would say, you know,

452
00:32:05,590 --> 00:32:11,380
at the core of almost every story of violence

453
00:32:11,700 --> 00:32:17,380
is um is a conflict over women, and that certainly would have been John's first

454
00:32:17,700 --> 00:32:18,660
response.

455
00:32:19,220 --> 00:32:24,820
Um but to understand that

456
00:32:25,300 --> 00:32:28,750
um it's Conflict conflict over women.

457
00:32:28,910 --> 00:32:31,230
Could you unpack that for us?

458
00:32:31,390 --> 00:32:34,750
Because that that is a pretty striking claim.

459
00:32:34,910 --> 00:32:40,670
Um and I know uh certainly conflicts over women we know what we have some idea of what

460
00:32:40,670 --> 00:32:41,150
that's like.

461
00:32:41,390 --> 00:32:44,990
I mean there's there's you know talk of incels these days, you know, men who are

462
00:32:44,990 --> 00:32:48,750
involuntarily celibate and they're you know sometimes they engage in violence.

463
00:32:48,990 --> 00:32:54,700
Um w what do you what does it mean for uh violence to be

464
00:32:54,700 --> 00:32:57,180
driven by conflict over women?

465
00:32:58,220 --> 00:33:04,140
Well, you know, to take kind of one level um captive women are

466
00:33:04,620 --> 00:33:10,140
you know the women are stolen throughout the world even

467
00:33:10,140 --> 00:33:11,260
today, right?

468
00:33:11,420 --> 00:33:17,370
And um but I think to

469
00:33:17,370 --> 00:33:19,690
contextualize it more,

470
00:33:23,690 --> 00:33:29,130
again, thinking about small scale societies, places where there are no

471
00:33:29,130 --> 00:33:34,650
institutionalized positions or institutions that manage

472
00:33:34,650 --> 00:33:40,650
politics, it's the responsibility of every man and woman to make

473
00:33:40,970 --> 00:33:46,400
decisions, and there are still cultural institutions for who's

474
00:33:46,400 --> 00:33:50,880
responsible for responding to particular incidents.

475
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:57,040
So partly the answer to your question is that there are

476
00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:03,040
long histories, there are long genealogies, there are responsibilities on the parts of

477
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:09,770
sons, especially to avenge the deaths of their fathers.

478
00:34:10,010 --> 00:34:12,330
So that's part of the context.

479
00:34:12,570 --> 00:34:18,410
But if we're talking about conflict over women, um

480
00:34:20,490 --> 00:34:26,250
in these con I'm going to speak now to Konambo and Achar and

481
00:34:26,250 --> 00:34:32,090
Qicha and Sabara, which are the three indigenous um ethnolinguistic groups

482
00:34:32,090 --> 00:34:36,880
represented in that territory, but it's a more general phenomenon.

483
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:37,520
So

484
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:50,160
women are taken in raids.

485
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:53,040
Women are taken individually.

486
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:58,320
And this is more historic than, but not only historic.

487
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:04,630
To be taken, and I asked Napoleon Chagnan about this too if it was true among the Yanumama

488
00:35:04,710 --> 00:35:10,470
when he says it is so to be taken for a woman to be taken can

489
00:35:10,790 --> 00:35:16,630
be um considered true even if she leaves

490
00:35:16,630 --> 00:35:21,910
of her own volition but without the permission of her father.

491
00:35:22,620 --> 00:35:28,620
So there are many circumstances in which women run off with men, but

492
00:35:28,620 --> 00:35:34,220
there are also many historic circumstances where a young girl might be

493
00:35:34,220 --> 00:35:39,980
bathing by the river and a man from another river basin may

494
00:35:40,300 --> 00:35:45,820
observe her over time and then snatch her and run with her.

495
00:35:46,310 --> 00:35:51,350
There may be a retaliatory array, like the Hatfield and McCoy kind of thing, where women

496
00:35:51,350 --> 00:35:52,230
are taken.

497
00:35:52,390 --> 00:35:55,750
And those require vengeance.

498
00:35:57,350 --> 00:36:01,190
If a woman is

499
00:36:03,750 --> 00:36:09,510
married to a man, her father has the right to reclaim her, even when she's a

500
00:36:09,510 --> 00:36:10,070
grandmother.

501
00:36:10,230 --> 00:36:16,000
That right he exists for his entire life, that threat to reclaim

502
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:22,160
one's daughter can often serve to settle disputes at

503
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:26,960
the time, you know, put down the gun or I will take my daughter back.

504
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:32,080
But if he were to do that, that would cause problems.

505
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:37,850
And the family of the daughter, the husband in

506
00:36:37,850 --> 00:36:43,770
this case um could rightfully and would have to make a decision about how they were going

507
00:36:43,770 --> 00:36:49,690
to respond and they could respond by going in a raid to take her back

508
00:36:50,010 --> 00:36:55,290
um and that circumstance is um is

509
00:36:55,610 --> 00:37:01,400
true and documented certainly in the oral histories that I've recorded

510
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:03,640
in the territory where we work.

511
00:37:03,960 --> 00:37:06,120
So, and those are not forgotten.

512
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:08,120
Those things are not forgotten.

513
00:37:08,200 --> 00:37:14,040
And a raid might include, you know, physical assault of other people in the

514
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:15,480
household.

515
00:37:15,720 --> 00:37:21,470
It might include killing of men in houses on the way upriver, downriver,

516
00:37:21,630 --> 00:37:22,830
along the trail.

517
00:37:23,070 --> 00:37:26,830
It just depends on the level of escalation.

518
00:37:27,310 --> 00:37:32,670
So strategies to de escalate violence are part of this

519
00:37:33,630 --> 00:37:35,550
landscape as well.

520
00:37:36,030 --> 00:37:41,560
And people know how to do that, and they have

521
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:46,600
to make decisions about how they're going to respond to

522
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:51,880
circumstances that give them the right and the

523
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:57,800
responsibility to respond, but they have other responsibilities as well, like maintaining

524
00:37:57,800 --> 00:37:58,280
peace.

525
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:04,390
So these are all decisions that are made among people

526
00:38:04,710 --> 00:38:10,710
in coalitions, how they're going to respond, whether they're going to support violence

527
00:38:11,750 --> 00:38:17,270
as a retaliation, as a response, or whether they aren't.

528
00:38:17,590 --> 00:38:23,590
And so those are if that's so there are many ways a woman can

529
00:38:23,590 --> 00:38:24,470
be stolen.

530
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:30,840
um and and that it can be she can be taken back by her family she can be

531
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:36,680
stolen by a complete stranger um she can be um and and

532
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:42,040
that is more historic but to be today to be taken

533
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:48,040
without permission of the father is the one of the more common

534
00:38:48,360 --> 00:38:53,850
affronts and so if so if I'm hearing you correctly, um if a

535
00:38:53,850 --> 00:38:59,210
woman voluntarily uh falls in love with someone in a different community and runs off with

536
00:38:59,210 --> 00:39:05,130
that person, the father will will view this as literally equivalent to her being abducted

537
00:39:05,770 --> 00:39:07,770
forcefully by a neighboring community.

538
00:39:08,090 --> 00:39:08,330
Yeah.

539
00:39:08,570 --> 00:39:14,120
And I asked Napoleon Shagnon, who is of course recorded uh extensive

540
00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:16,040
histories and genealogies of this.

541
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:21,800
And I asked him specifically whether the same linguistic term is used, and he said

542
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:22,360
yes.

543
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:24,760
So there's no distinction.

544
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:25,720
Wow.

545
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:31,960
I mean, I mean, to to a Western mind, that that is pretty uh mind-boggling.

546
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:38,200
It seems like a a a huge chasm of a distinction there, and yet they're not make so w what

547
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:39,320
do you think is behind that?

548
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:41,960
Why why do they view them as equivalent?

549
00:39:42,670 --> 00:39:48,270
So marriage, you know, marriages throughout much of the world are still

550
00:39:48,270 --> 00:39:54,190
arranged, whether we think that or not, we're a peculiar society where we believe

551
00:39:54,190 --> 00:39:58,030
in marriage for love, which fails fairly often.

552
00:39:59,230 --> 00:40:05,040
But I think here it's important to realize the age of

553
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:09,040
marriage and also some of the conventions of marriage.

554
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:14,240
So there's sororal polygyny, so that

555
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:21,440
a man who marries a woman may reasonably expect to

556
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:23,360
also marry her sister.

557
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:28,970
The sister may reasonably expect to run off with or marry her

558
00:40:29,290 --> 00:40:34,410
sister's husband and may want to, but the age of marriage.

559
00:40:39,130 --> 00:40:45,130
The age of marriage, five would be unusual, but is not unheard of.

560
00:40:45,290 --> 00:40:47,370
And that's not considered right.

561
00:40:47,770 --> 00:40:50,570
That's a whole nother s kind of adjudication.

562
00:40:51,050 --> 00:40:57,040
Um, but for a young girl to be married at the age of eight, if her father

563
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:02,560
is really old or really dead, um, then that may

564
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:06,000
girls tend to be married earlier.

565
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:11,520
Um, but the age of eight, the age of 11, and I've recorded the ages of marriage for a long

566
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:13,280
time and going back in time.

567
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:19,520
13, you know, any older than 13, you're kind of getting over the hill.

568
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,870
Um, so for um

569
00:41:26,390 --> 00:41:31,190
for a young woman to choose to run off,

570
00:41:31,830 --> 00:41:36,790
especially at that age, is not so

571
00:41:37,030 --> 00:41:37,990
uncommon.

572
00:41:38,630 --> 00:41:44,630
Um you know, they're they're not always thinking well

573
00:41:44,630 --> 00:41:48,710
in those early adolescent years, no matter where we are.

574
00:41:48,950 --> 00:41:54,320
So um there was there was one

575
00:41:54,320 --> 00:42:00,080
circumstance where an older, a really senior guy who really had been a

576
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:05,520
fierce warrior, which delighted John, of course, had five or six

577
00:42:05,520 --> 00:42:11,280
wives, but he was really old, and his older wives weren't

578
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:16,800
kind to the younger wives, and he took on an additional wife, and she was really young,

579
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:22,730
and she and I don't even remember now, but she ran off with

580
00:42:22,730 --> 00:42:23,690
his son.

581
00:42:24,490 --> 00:42:27,530
And that was we'd only been in the community.

582
00:42:27,610 --> 00:42:31,370
This was a different community, but we'd only been there, you know, maybe a couple of

583
00:42:31,370 --> 00:42:31,770
weeks.

584
00:42:31,930 --> 00:42:34,410
But we saw that drama unfold.

585
00:42:34,730 --> 00:42:39,290
And um, and he he, you know, threatened to go after them.

586
00:42:39,450 --> 00:42:42,970
He was gonna kill both of them and with his gun.

587
00:42:43,050 --> 00:42:48,240
And so but what happens is that there's this sort of, you know, on the trail, the world,

588
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:54,000
the word is past, you know, he's gonna come after you, you'd better keep going, you know,

589
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:56,800
and they run further and further.

590
00:42:57,040 --> 00:43:02,400
Um, and and maybe after a time that will be resolved, or maybe it won't.

591
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:05,920
But um, but she didn't want to be in that marriage.

592
00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:07,360
It was not a good marriage.

593
00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:13,450
And and that's true for a number of women, but leaving

594
00:43:13,450 --> 00:43:19,290
a marriage is something that can cause so much conflict and retaliation

595
00:43:19,290 --> 00:43:21,770
and violence that people don't support it.

596
00:43:21,930 --> 00:43:27,770
So the the women and men who run off have

597
00:43:27,770 --> 00:43:28,730
to run far.

598
00:43:28,810 --> 00:43:34,580
And that's true whether the woman is abducted just cold, you know, by the river, the guy

599
00:43:34,580 --> 00:43:35,300
tends to go.

600
00:43:35,460 --> 00:43:40,100
Warren DeBora did a study of the ethnography and found this to be a pattern.

601
00:43:40,260 --> 00:43:45,540
They tend to go one or two rivers over, you know, so that they they go far.

602
00:43:45,860 --> 00:43:50,820
Um, to and you could think of it as the conflict management strategy, you know, where they

603
00:43:50,820 --> 00:43:52,740
leave town basically.

604
00:43:52,980 --> 00:43:58,790
Um, but it it's that's some of the context for

605
00:43:59,350 --> 00:44:04,550
um I mean there are many contexts in which women are regarded as stolen, but those raids

606
00:44:04,870 --> 00:44:10,150
when they were endemic, you know, almost always involved taking

607
00:44:10,710 --> 00:44:15,430
women and and really incorporating them

608
00:44:15,750 --> 00:44:21,270
violently into the um the community and the household.

609
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:21,960
Wow.

610
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:28,200
I mean, there are so many questions I have here, uh, but before I get into them, I just

611
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:33,160
want to make sure that I'm getting the picture of what's going on here correctly.

612
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:39,000
So it seems to me, based on what you're describing, that the centripetal force of these

613
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:42,440
societies is violent competition between men.

614
00:44:43,080 --> 00:44:49,080
Um and what they are competing over is a limited resource, uh, namely

615
00:44:49,400 --> 00:44:50,040
women.

616
00:44:50,490 --> 00:44:56,250
Um and that has a kind of cold, tragic Darwinian logic, which is that

617
00:44:56,250 --> 00:45:02,250
the men who succeed in capturing women will tend to have a reproductive advantage and

618
00:45:02,250 --> 00:45:07,770
and the genes promoting such behavior will therefore have a selective advantage relative to

619
00:45:07,770 --> 00:45:08,730
alternative genes.

620
00:45:08,890 --> 00:45:13,240
So this has a really uh awful Darwinian logic to it.

621
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:19,080
Um and and because these coalitions of men are competing with one another over this limited

622
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:24,600
reproductive resource, um, the primary motive behind violence in these

623
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:30,280
communities is either uh capturing women or avenging the

624
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,150
capture of women or the killing of other men.

625
00:45:34,230 --> 00:45:38,310
So it's it's it's primarily capturing women or or revenge?

626
00:45:38,470 --> 00:45:42,630
Would would though is that a fair characterization or am I oversimplifying?

627
00:45:43,270 --> 00:45:48,950
No, I think that you are fair in your theoretical assessment

628
00:45:49,270 --> 00:45:50,470
of the situation.

629
00:45:50,630 --> 00:45:55,430
It fits the facts on the ground, it fits the historical facts, it hits it fits the

630
00:45:55,430 --> 00:45:59,110
genealogical facts, the ethnographic facts.

631
00:45:59,510 --> 00:46:05,260
Um, but I wouldn't say that that's the focus of

632
00:46:05,260 --> 00:46:07,580
life today for sure.

633
00:46:07,820 --> 00:46:08,060
Okay.

634
00:46:08,300 --> 00:46:12,860
Um I think it's the focus of our theory um of the moment.

635
00:46:13,260 --> 00:46:18,620
But um I think and I and I've thought about this quite a bit

636
00:46:19,100 --> 00:46:25,020
because I mean that was the focus of the both John and I,

637
00:46:25,260 --> 00:46:25,900
you know.

638
00:46:28,770 --> 00:46:34,530
studied collected data on alliance formation and how those

639
00:46:34,530 --> 00:46:40,530
relationships worked and how they were supported, you know, what greased

640
00:46:40,530 --> 00:46:44,130
the wheels, how decisions were made, all of those things.

641
00:46:44,370 --> 00:46:48,210
But it's still I think,

642
00:46:50,420 --> 00:46:56,420
And even in other parts of Amazonia, as I've been privileged to

643
00:46:56,420 --> 00:47:01,860
work with scholars elsewhere, I've spent a fair amount of time in Brazil now with

644
00:47:02,420 --> 00:47:07,700
anthropologists there and some in the little bit in the

645
00:47:07,700 --> 00:47:13,430
communities, but um I

646
00:47:13,430 --> 00:47:19,430
think we need to turn this narrative on its head, which is that

647
00:47:20,070 --> 00:47:25,910
when things got heated in Konambo, it would not be unusual for

648
00:47:26,150 --> 00:47:31,990
especially one woman in particular who was my one of my main instructors,

649
00:47:32,150 --> 00:47:37,350
um, to come up to me and very quietly put her hand on my um

650
00:47:39,320 --> 00:47:43,640
and say, you know, calm down, Brenda, because I would be upset.

651
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:44,760
Calm down.

652
00:47:46,280 --> 00:47:48,280
We want to live well.

653
00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:54,040
And if people needed to leave, which is a common conflict resolution strategy,

654
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:57,640
you know, and there's a community decision making process.

655
00:47:57,720 --> 00:48:03,160
If there's conflict between parties and the community, there's some consensus built about

656
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:04,360
who should leave.

657
00:48:05,530 --> 00:48:09,290
But the goal is to live well.

658
00:48:09,930 --> 00:48:15,850
And when people are mad, when there's discussion, when there's possibility of a fissioning

659
00:48:15,850 --> 00:48:21,770
event or something, people will say, I'm going to find a place to live well.

660
00:48:22,410 --> 00:48:28,330
And it turns out that the in in Brazil, the

661
00:48:28,660 --> 00:48:33,540
anthropologists and the linguists have done a lot of work with this concept.

662
00:48:33,780 --> 00:48:39,620
And it's deeply rooted in the Tubi Wadani language family, which

663
00:48:39,620 --> 00:48:41,700
covers most of the continent.

664
00:48:41,860 --> 00:48:47,700
And there is a specific term that has a common root in all these different

665
00:48:47,700 --> 00:48:48,580
languages.

666
00:48:48,820 --> 00:48:54,580
And it is basically translated to to find a place to live well.

667
00:48:55,150 --> 00:49:00,670
So people are cautious about violence, they're attentive to the

668
00:49:00,670 --> 00:49:02,430
potential for violence.

669
00:49:02,590 --> 00:49:07,870
They have strategies for avoiding

670
00:49:07,870 --> 00:49:13,710
violence, for considering the multiple responsibilities

671
00:49:13,710 --> 00:49:18,910
that are inherent in conflict, and one's own

672
00:49:18,910 --> 00:49:24,760
responsibility for addressing that as a responsible adult and member

673
00:49:24,760 --> 00:49:26,040
of a community.

674
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:31,800
So I think the piece that we tend to lose sight of in these discussions

675
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:35,080
is that larger context.

676
00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:40,200
And that, you know, John's dissertation was called the thoughtful warrior.

677
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:45,850
And I think that's really, you know, totally embedded in that

678
00:49:45,850 --> 00:49:46,810
concept.

679
00:49:47,370 --> 00:49:51,690
I can give you one of my favorite examples, and this was like really early.

680
00:49:51,930 --> 00:49:57,210
So in Copitasa, which was again the first community we went into, and it was on a different

681
00:49:57,210 --> 00:49:57,610
river.

682
00:49:57,690 --> 00:50:03,130
And we took Don Brown's advice and went for a short period of time, which was almost five

683
00:50:03,130 --> 00:50:08,000
months, to learn how to live well in a community and learn what we needed to do for

684
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:13,920
logistics and you know try out some of the data methodologies and then come back home

685
00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:16,720
and sort of refine all of that and regroup.

686
00:50:16,880 --> 00:50:21,760
But so we went into Copatassa and one of the first things that happened and again it was

687
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:26,800
always so so many things were just a big surprise to us, I think, when they were happening.

688
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:31,600
But there was all this commotion and the man who had loaned us a house who was the senior

689
00:50:31,600 --> 00:50:37,550
man who had said we were looking for a place um because um it was a time when we

690
00:50:37,550 --> 00:50:38,270
were dying.

691
00:50:38,350 --> 00:50:41,790
You know, there were very few people left in the territory.

692
00:50:42,030 --> 00:50:47,950
And but somehow someone had called

693
00:50:47,950 --> 00:50:53,630
a plane to go into multiple communities to collect five

694
00:50:53,630 --> 00:50:59,630
elders, five elder men, and and they were going off to

695
00:50:59,950 --> 00:51:04,830
a little tiny place um and and it

696
00:51:06,020 --> 00:51:11,860
was slowly revealed that there was a man who had been found dead

697
00:51:11,860 --> 00:51:17,780
in his house with blood everywhere, splattered all around the house.

698
00:51:18,100 --> 00:51:23,860
And these five elders were brought, you know, by

699
00:51:23,860 --> 00:51:29,620
plane, coordinated among themselves to go in and evaluate the

700
00:51:29,620 --> 00:51:34,180
situation, determine what had happened, and determine what the appropriate response would

701
00:51:34,180 --> 00:51:34,420
be.

702
00:51:34,770 --> 00:51:40,210
Now if this were a murder, which it, you know, to the Western eye appeared to be,

703
00:51:40,610 --> 00:51:46,210
then it would obligate a response, um, a

704
00:51:46,210 --> 00:51:51,730
retaliatory violent response by one

705
00:51:52,050 --> 00:51:55,970
thread of obligation, which was pretty dominant, you know.

706
00:51:56,530 --> 00:52:01,400
So if if it was a murder, so uh the the norm is the the murder must be avenged.

707
00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:05,640
Are there any exceptions to that rule, or is that always the rule if they determine it's a

708
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:07,000
murder, then it must be avenged?

709
00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:07,880
Is that how it works?

710
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:09,720
There there are ways around it.

711
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:13,720
Um so this is one of the things that I learned in this situation.

712
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:19,880
But you know, if you think of it again, in a place where institutionalized authorities

713
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:25,770
don't exist, there are no police to call in, there are no judges, adults are the ones

714
00:52:25,770 --> 00:52:31,610
responsible for deciding how to address and adjudicate these kinds of violent

715
00:52:31,610 --> 00:52:32,090
actions.

716
00:52:32,250 --> 00:52:37,930
All societies have to make these decisions, and they have institutionalized

717
00:52:37,930 --> 00:52:43,610
decision-making processes for doing that, and people who are responsible for implementing

718
00:52:43,610 --> 00:52:43,930
them.

719
00:52:52,180 --> 00:52:57,620
the five elders, um, one of whom was from the community where we were at

720
00:52:57,700 --> 00:53:03,380
Copatassa, um decided this is we found out when they

721
00:53:03,380 --> 00:53:09,380
came back, decided that it was a phantasm it was

722
00:53:09,700 --> 00:53:15,540
who had killed this man and that no retaliatory

723
00:53:15,540 --> 00:53:17,940
action was obligated.

724
00:53:19,030 --> 00:53:20,470
I I really want to dig into this.

725
00:53:20,630 --> 00:53:21,910
Um that is fascinating.

726
00:53:22,150 --> 00:53:26,870
So who are these people who and what were their connections to to the person who was

727
00:53:26,870 --> 00:53:27,270
killed?

728
00:53:27,430 --> 00:53:31,270
These people who do who were deciding uh that this was a phantasm.

729
00:53:32,150 --> 00:53:38,070
So I don't I don't know and I don't even know if I would have that in my notes because

730
00:53:38,070 --> 00:53:43,350
I was we were so new to the territory and the community at the time.

731
00:53:44,150 --> 00:53:47,640
I don't know if I know the relationship.

732
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:50,200
Um do they usually have no relationship?

733
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:54,760
Are they are they specifically people are related to each other?

734
00:53:55,080 --> 00:54:00,760
So the people who are determining what to do next are people who are usually socially uh

735
00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:03,560
or genetically connected to the victim.

736
00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:04,680
No.

737
00:54:05,080 --> 00:54:10,760
No, not necessarily I mean, everybody in the territory, you have almost no business being

738
00:54:10,760 --> 00:54:13,000
there if you're not related by blood or marriage.

739
00:54:13,240 --> 00:54:16,590
So that's just the tr the case.

740
00:54:16,830 --> 00:54:16,990
Okay.

741
00:54:17,230 --> 00:54:21,870
Um an anthropologist understand us.

742
00:54:22,190 --> 00:54:28,110
We are always thrilled when we get our fictive kinship terms because that gives us a place

743
00:54:28,110 --> 00:54:28,910
in the community.

744
00:54:28,990 --> 00:54:30,350
So I'm grandmother.

745
00:54:30,590 --> 00:54:36,590
Um, on the other hand, was some monkey fictive kinship for those.

746
00:54:36,670 --> 00:54:36,750
Yeah.

747
00:54:37,070 --> 00:54:37,790
A bearded monkey.

748
00:54:39,390 --> 00:54:39,870
That's really funny.

749
00:54:40,110 --> 00:54:40,510
That's really funny.

750
00:54:40,670 --> 00:54:40,910
Yeah.

751
00:54:41,150 --> 00:54:46,900
So um, but um my sense of

752
00:54:46,900 --> 00:54:52,660
it was this was a man who was not closely related

753
00:54:52,980 --> 00:54:54,740
to a lot of other people.

754
00:54:54,900 --> 00:55:00,660
And he may, my memory is that it was that he lived, they and he

755
00:55:00,660 --> 00:55:06,500
must have had a family of some kind, but um maybe just a wife and a mother in law

756
00:55:06,580 --> 00:55:07,620
or something like that.

757
00:55:07,860 --> 00:55:09,460
But I don't know for sure.

758
00:55:09,620 --> 00:55:15,190
But that he lived maybe even in an isolated house on the river

759
00:55:15,350 --> 00:55:21,270
rather than in a larger household cluster or a community, a larger

760
00:55:21,270 --> 00:55:22,150
community.

761
00:55:22,550 --> 00:55:25,430
But this is where status matters.

762
00:55:25,590 --> 00:55:29,750
This is the definition of what makes an important person.

763
00:55:30,470 --> 00:55:35,270
And an important person is someone that others listen to.

764
00:55:36,120 --> 00:55:36,440
right.

765
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:43,080
So the men who went in were senior men from throughout the

766
00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:49,000
territory who were people that others listened

767
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:49,320
to.

768
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:55,880
So they could confer among themselves they were considered, you know, knowledgeable

769
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:59,770
and um right-minded.

770
00:56:00,490 --> 00:56:03,690
And they reached that decision.

771
00:56:03,770 --> 00:56:09,130
And it was so clear to us, you know, to John and I, that this was a

772
00:56:09,130 --> 00:56:12,570
decision to de-escalate.

773
00:56:13,050 --> 00:56:18,890
And one of the strategies that people had in their toolkit that we had

774
00:56:18,890 --> 00:56:21,770
never read about or heard about or imagined, right?

775
00:56:22,010 --> 00:56:27,820
Just to declare that the death was due to supernatural means and a

776
00:56:27,820 --> 00:56:28,540
phantasm.

777
00:56:28,700 --> 00:56:34,540
So a being that wasn't even sent by a shaman, which is a more common way

778
00:56:34,540 --> 00:56:35,180
to die.

779
00:56:35,500 --> 00:56:38,300
Um so that's really fascinating.

780
00:56:38,380 --> 00:56:44,140
Uh so am I correct in saying that it's not so much your social closeness or distance to the

781
00:56:44,140 --> 00:56:48,710
victim that determines whether you get to make this decision, but your status within the

782
00:56:48,710 --> 00:56:50,470
community and your and your political power.

783
00:56:50,550 --> 00:56:56,070
That it's the high status men who are primarily making the decision about whether to avenge

784
00:56:56,070 --> 00:56:57,270
someone's death or not.

785
00:56:57,430 --> 00:56:58,710
Is that correct?

786
00:56:59,750 --> 00:57:02,310
I would say yes, that's correct.

787
00:57:02,470 --> 00:57:07,590
It's respected people, usually respected elders.

788
00:57:07,830 --> 00:57:09,510
It's not always men.

789
00:57:10,880 --> 00:57:16,800
And there too, I think there's so much that still remains to be written

790
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:18,800
about the role that women play.

791
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:24,720
So, you know, the one who has the weapon in their hand, you know,

792
00:57:25,040 --> 00:57:30,640
is not always the man, but probably more often the man than a woman.

793
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:37,490
But women, for example, do a lot of divination and often determine who is responsible for

794
00:57:37,490 --> 00:57:42,370
a death that then leads to an avenge um incident.

795
00:57:43,090 --> 00:57:49,090
So um anyway so so I really want to get into this this phantasm thing

796
00:57:49,170 --> 00:57:51,170
because I find this really fascinating.

797
00:57:51,410 --> 00:57:55,730
Um so they attribute the cause of death to a ghost.

798
00:57:56,060 --> 00:58:01,020
Presumably the reason they're doing this is because it's a socially acceptable way to say

799
00:58:01,180 --> 00:58:03,260
we don't want to avenge this person's death.

800
00:58:03,420 --> 00:58:07,740
We don't want to take on the risk of going into the neighboring community and finding who

801
00:58:07,740 --> 00:58:09,660
did it and risking our lives.

802
00:58:10,540 --> 00:58:11,420
I wouldn't say that.

803
00:58:11,820 --> 00:58:12,460
I wouldn't say that.

804
00:58:12,620 --> 00:58:12,780
Okay.

805
00:58:13,180 --> 00:58:18,460
No, because these men had the right to respond

806
00:58:19,180 --> 00:58:25,110
and um and the responsibility to respond, someone would have had that right

807
00:58:25,110 --> 00:58:27,430
and responsibility to respond.

808
00:58:28,230 --> 00:58:34,150
And what it does is lead to

809
00:58:34,150 --> 00:58:37,110
more retaliatory violence, right?

810
00:58:37,430 --> 00:58:43,270
So it's more, it's less about risk avoidance than it is about

811
00:58:43,910 --> 00:58:47,270
conflict um management.

812
00:58:47,660 --> 00:58:47,980
Got it.

813
00:58:48,140 --> 00:58:54,060
So they're trying to avoid escalating the conflict and and w walking headfirst into a cycle

814
00:58:54,060 --> 00:58:55,100
of violence.

815
00:58:55,500 --> 00:58:55,820
Right.

816
00:58:56,060 --> 00:58:58,780
Or creating a new job.

817
00:58:59,020 --> 00:58:59,180
Got it.

818
00:58:59,660 --> 00:59:02,860
And so and so if so if that's that's their motive.

819
00:59:02,940 --> 00:59:08,380
We don't want to get into a cycle of of violence where we're constantly avenging, you know,

820
00:59:08,540 --> 00:59:10,380
an eye for an eye makes everyone blind.

821
00:59:10,540 --> 00:59:12,540
We don't that's our motive here.

822
00:59:12,700 --> 00:59:14,810
Um Why not just come out and say that?

823
00:59:14,890 --> 00:59:18,250
Why do we have to make up the story about the ghost?

824
00:59:22,650 --> 00:59:28,250
So I just gave a talk at our national conference, and I've

825
00:59:28,250 --> 00:59:31,370
done versions of this talk for a while.

826
00:59:31,770 --> 00:59:37,450
But um and it uh thinking

827
00:59:37,770 --> 00:59:42,000
about Indigenous

828
00:59:42,960 --> 00:59:48,560
ontologies and epistemologies and what constitutes valid evidence and what

829
00:59:48,720 --> 00:59:53,200
logics pertain are very culturally specific.

830
00:59:53,840 --> 00:59:59,760
So and the understanding of the world as it is, as a place where death is

831
00:59:59,760 --> 01:00:02,000
caused by certain things.

832
01:00:02,640 --> 01:00:08,560
People that the explanation of the phantasm fits into that

833
01:00:09,310 --> 01:00:14,750
that native ontology, that understanding of the world and how that comes about.

834
01:00:16,030 --> 01:00:19,470
So so so uh let me reframe the question.

835
01:00:19,790 --> 01:00:25,630
Do you see this uh phantasm story as a way of covering up the uh the real

836
01:00:25,630 --> 01:00:29,870
motive, which is to avoid a cycle of violence, or do you view this belief that it as

837
01:00:29,870 --> 01:00:34,270
sincere, that they truly believe that the person was killed by a ghost?

838
01:00:36,460 --> 01:00:41,980
I think that they carefully considered the evidence at hand and decided

839
01:00:42,300 --> 01:00:47,900
that the a reasonable explanation

840
01:00:48,220 --> 01:00:49,820
was the phantasm.

841
01:00:50,860 --> 01:00:55,910
And whether they Also

842
01:00:56,230 --> 01:01:02,150
considered the fact that this would quell violence, I would say,

843
01:01:02,790 --> 01:01:08,550
of course, you know, and and those men that was of their

844
01:01:08,550 --> 01:01:14,470
generation and and knowing one of them, um actually,

845
01:01:14,710 --> 01:01:18,310
and knowing of actually another one knowing him.

846
01:01:18,550 --> 01:01:22,440
Um that was that was their responsibility.

847
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:28,040
So they they reached that decision, I would say, on balance after considering

848
01:01:28,040 --> 01:01:31,720
multiple um possibilities.

849
01:01:32,040 --> 01:01:34,120
And um, I wasn't there.

850
01:01:34,280 --> 01:01:40,280
I don't know what kinds of evidence they considered, but certainly, you know,

851
01:01:40,360 --> 01:01:45,480
just the blood all over the place was apparently consistent with the killing by a phantasm

852
01:01:45,690 --> 01:01:51,530
and the fact that there were no there seemed to be no obvious um

853
01:01:53,450 --> 01:01:58,970
individuals who would be likely responsible for that

854
01:01:58,970 --> 01:01:59,610
death.

855
01:02:00,010 --> 01:02:05,050
Um there was no blame of others that I heard.

856
01:02:05,130 --> 01:02:10,540
Now there may have been those discussions in other communities, but people would have

857
01:02:10,540 --> 01:02:13,340
discussed a lot of different possibilities.

858
01:02:13,500 --> 01:02:18,700
Um, but the one who pronounces the decision is generally the

859
01:02:19,180 --> 01:02:24,460
higher status person, usually as an outcome of hearing other

860
01:02:24,460 --> 01:02:27,420
perspectives and listening to other perspectives.

861
01:02:27,660 --> 01:02:32,060
So they gathered multiple people together to discuss it.

862
01:02:32,430 --> 01:02:36,350
That that thing you said about being listened to, I mean, one of the things and you know,

863
01:02:36,590 --> 01:02:42,350
that I remember John saying was that um when you go to these

864
01:02:42,350 --> 01:02:47,710
meetings, the um there's all this posturing, especially often young men,

865
01:02:47,950 --> 01:02:52,190
strong men, um, and lots of things are said.

866
01:02:52,270 --> 01:02:57,560
Um, but then at some point somebody starts talking, it's a loud room, and then the room

867
01:02:57,560 --> 01:02:58,520
quiet down.

868
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:04,120
And that's when you know that the person who is with high status is speaking.

869
01:03:04,200 --> 01:03:08,600
And it's not often somebody who's sort of superficially impressive for an outsider.

870
01:03:08,680 --> 01:03:12,760
If somebody just came off the plane or the canoe, they might not pick them out of the group

871
01:03:12,760 --> 01:03:16,120
as being the person who looks quote unquote like the leader.

872
01:03:16,280 --> 01:03:21,630
Um And that really stuck struck me and still does.

873
01:03:22,270 --> 01:03:25,230
And I think, you know, that thing you said about being listened to.

874
01:03:25,390 --> 01:03:31,310
And I think one of the things that people listening also might

875
01:03:31,310 --> 01:03:32,270
think in hearing this.

876
01:03:32,430 --> 01:03:36,910
And obviously, we're focusing on the violence because that's so different from what we, I

877
01:03:36,910 --> 01:03:40,030
mean, most of us were privileged to not be in that kind of context.

878
01:03:40,110 --> 01:03:41,470
And so that's the thing we're focusing on.

879
01:03:41,550 --> 01:03:46,200
And I'm sure most of the day people it's you know people are laughing and playing and

880
01:03:46,200 --> 01:03:49,880
eating and cooking and you know doing things we're focusing on that I mean I think

881
01:03:50,040 --> 01:03:54,200
appropriately enough but also as you said you know we don't want to essentialize what the

882
01:03:54,200 --> 01:04:00,040
culture is like or life is like but I think the other thing people might hear um especially

883
01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:05,880
is this thing of especially with women being taken is sort of women don't have agency.

884
01:04:06,120 --> 01:04:11,750
Um and I know Brenda you you know, you mentioned early on that you guys divided up living

885
01:04:11,750 --> 01:04:14,950
and dead, but also by gender or by sex.

886
01:04:15,030 --> 01:04:20,390
And I think, you know, some of the things John told me, he sort of relayed about that, you

887
01:04:20,390 --> 01:04:21,510
know, he learned it from you.

888
01:04:21,590 --> 01:04:27,110
And you have such a long history in the community that, you know, I think

889
01:04:27,270 --> 01:04:32,440
historically there's been a long, long overlooking of sort of women and women's roles and

890
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:36,280
women's agency and how that gets how that plays out in this context.

891
01:04:36,360 --> 01:04:38,840
And I know I know you've thought a lot about that.

892
01:04:39,080 --> 01:04:40,920
Can you say something about that?

893
01:04:41,080 --> 01:04:46,280
I mean, I think you're you're you have, I can't over um uh

894
01:04:47,320 --> 01:04:53,160
I I sell as the wrong word, but sort of over overemphasize how much you have such a long,

895
01:04:53,590 --> 01:04:59,590
deep knowledge of this field site and and such trust um and obviously don't you don't

896
01:04:59,590 --> 01:05:04,070
have to betray any trusts of in terms of you know like this will be a public thing but yeah

897
01:05:04,150 --> 01:05:07,910
please can you just sort of for those people listening who are sort of thinking you know

898
01:05:08,070 --> 01:05:13,990
women's agency doesn't exist um and this is all about the men and the violence

899
01:05:14,150 --> 01:05:19,590
like can you sort of how how do you how do you how do you think about that yeah

900
01:05:21,430 --> 01:05:27,320
well I was interested in women's status

901
01:05:27,480 --> 01:05:33,240
when we first went in and women's relationships and how and

902
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:40,520
now remembering this is 1992 and the anthropology of women was still

903
01:05:40,520 --> 01:05:42,360
a relatively new field.

904
01:05:42,920 --> 01:05:47,970
So um most of women's

905
01:05:50,130 --> 01:05:54,530
most of studies, most studies in the anthropology of women's status had addressed women's

906
01:05:54,530 --> 01:05:55,650
status relative to men.

907
01:05:55,730 --> 01:05:58,850
And a lot of it was done from a Marxist perspective.

908
01:05:59,090 --> 01:06:03,330
Um, so within, you know, sort of the patriarchy.

909
01:06:03,570 --> 01:06:09,020
And um and I and this was a good opportunity to do that, right?

910
01:06:09,180 --> 01:06:11,660
To look at women's status relative to men.

911
01:06:11,900 --> 01:06:14,780
But the first thing that we found when

912
01:06:17,900 --> 01:06:23,660
starting those tasks, the triadic comparison tasks on status and

913
01:06:23,660 --> 01:06:28,460
alliance, was that men refused to comment on women's

914
01:06:28,970 --> 01:06:30,250
relationships.

915
01:06:30,570 --> 01:06:32,890
And they said it would cause trouble.

916
01:06:33,210 --> 01:06:39,050
And but this was the way it was explained to me, is that,

917
01:06:39,930 --> 01:06:45,530
and when we were talking about, so we began to, you know, investigate separately those

918
01:06:45,530 --> 01:06:49,770
concepts of women's status and alliance and did the tasks separately.

919
01:06:50,490 --> 01:06:56,360
But it was said that women lead among women and men lead among men.

920
01:06:56,760 --> 01:07:02,440
And that's true in a lot of societies where men and women have really

921
01:07:02,440 --> 01:07:04,920
distinctive domains of responsibility.

922
01:07:05,000 --> 01:07:09,880
And it's not all, you know, home versus politics.

923
01:07:10,120 --> 01:07:15,720
So, but women are very active, and I've written about this some,

924
01:07:16,200 --> 01:07:17,720
but uh fair amount.

925
01:07:17,960 --> 01:07:23,530
Um So men and women are very active

926
01:07:23,850 --> 01:07:29,690
in political decision making and

927
01:07:29,690 --> 01:07:34,650
consensus building, but women do um

928
01:07:35,610 --> 01:07:39,610
converse among women, men converse among men.

929
01:07:40,010 --> 01:07:43,850
The difference is that women have access to men's spaces.

930
01:07:44,010 --> 01:07:47,450
I was interested in sort of domestic space.

931
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:53,160
And um, so women have access to men's spaces during these big open

932
01:07:53,160 --> 01:07:53,880
discussions.

933
01:07:54,120 --> 01:07:56,840
Men do not have access to women's spaces.

934
01:07:57,560 --> 01:08:01,640
So women actually have more knowledge of what's going on.

935
01:08:02,040 --> 01:08:07,240
Um, and this is where um women can be and are

936
01:08:07,240 --> 01:08:12,120
effective in um mediating disputes.

937
01:08:12,360 --> 01:08:18,110
They have more sometimes cross-coalitional alliances

938
01:08:18,110 --> 01:08:18,750
than men.

939
01:08:19,150 --> 01:08:24,350
And so they can cross those boundaries and help

940
01:08:25,230 --> 01:08:29,790
develop consensus about what appropriate mediation would be.

941
01:08:31,310 --> 01:08:32,830
I think you may know the story.

942
01:08:32,910 --> 01:08:38,900
They I mean sometimes a woman will just march across know the boundary between the two

943
01:08:38,900 --> 01:08:44,820
factions and Konamo and walk into a house and basically tell the men that they're

944
01:08:44,820 --> 01:08:45,940
behaving badly.

945
01:08:46,180 --> 01:08:49,140
And um and here's what needs to happen.

946
01:08:49,300 --> 01:08:53,540
You know, and that that does happen in this this was one of my favorite stories because it

947
01:08:53,540 --> 01:08:59,460
was a it was a dispute where this is the time when they s uh someone when he sac

948
01:08:59,620 --> 01:09:05,060
said uh you can't kill me I'm a choir I will kill you and um but these guys

949
01:09:05,570 --> 01:09:10,850
they they were, it was a dis it was a dispute over who was the father of a child.

950
01:09:11,090 --> 01:09:17,090
So there was some reproductive um issue at stake and

951
01:09:17,090 --> 01:09:19,650
who was responsible among the young men.

952
01:09:19,890 --> 01:09:24,850
And um and it was it just turned into the and and they'd been drinking because it was a big

953
01:09:24,850 --> 01:09:25,490
event.

954
01:09:25,890 --> 01:09:31,490
And um and the the senior men, as I said, very undignified,

955
01:09:31,650 --> 01:09:35,960
um got into a fist fight, but the floor of the house fell.

956
01:09:36,120 --> 01:09:40,920
And I'm this is Konambo behind me, so you can see that the floors of the houses are raised.

957
01:09:41,080 --> 01:09:45,080
So they broke it broke through, and all the men came crashing through.

958
01:09:45,320 --> 01:09:46,760
And that was the end of the fight.

959
01:09:46,840 --> 01:09:47,640
And everybody went home.

960
01:09:47,720 --> 01:09:53,480
And the next day, um, the dispute was resolved by um by one of the women.

961
01:09:53,770 --> 01:09:55,850
And it was it was so funny.

962
01:09:56,010 --> 01:09:57,530
I I just laughed so much.

963
01:09:57,610 --> 01:10:02,330
And then the story was told to me on the phone because, you know, since when we first went,

964
01:10:02,410 --> 01:10:03,610
that would have been impossible.

965
01:10:03,770 --> 01:10:09,770
But this the woman actually um lived in town, was from Konamo, but so and so I would get

966
01:10:09,770 --> 01:10:10,250
phone calls.

967
01:10:10,330 --> 01:10:14,970
Now I get like Facebook messages almost every day, you know, or you know.

968
01:10:16,520 --> 01:10:21,160
So anyway, but I'm not sure I may have wandered off a little bit in that.

969
01:10:21,320 --> 01:10:24,200
But so women and and this is

970
01:10:28,520 --> 01:10:34,520
women are concerned about anything that

971
01:10:34,520 --> 01:10:40,120
has the potential for violence because it affects their lives too.

972
01:10:40,390 --> 01:10:46,150
And to think that that domain would be left exclusively to men in these small communities

973
01:10:46,150 --> 01:10:52,150
where everybody visits every day and the daily work really is the management of politics,

974
01:10:52,310 --> 01:10:57,750
um, would would just be lacking imagination, you know, an

975
01:10:57,990 --> 01:11:00,710
understanding of how the world works.

976
01:11:00,870 --> 01:11:06,140
I I don't so women to s uh agency is such a funny

977
01:11:06,300 --> 01:11:07,420
concept, right?

978
01:11:07,660 --> 01:11:13,660
Because we often tend to forget that agency specifically has to do with how one

979
01:11:13,660 --> 01:11:18,780
navigates one's life within a particular structure and in of um

980
01:11:19,900 --> 01:11:23,820
community or society or institution or whatever.

981
01:11:23,980 --> 01:11:28,570
But um but I have this uh phrase politics afoot.

982
01:11:28,650 --> 01:11:30,250
You can see politics afoot.

983
01:11:30,330 --> 01:11:36,330
You can see when people are walking to somebody else's house and that it wouldn't be part

984
01:11:36,330 --> 01:11:39,850
of their daily routine, you know something's up.

985
01:11:40,490 --> 01:11:46,410
So it's just and and you know, outside we chose Konambo, who which

986
01:11:46,410 --> 01:11:52,000
has and did had has had continuously, about 200 people, just

987
01:11:52,000 --> 01:11:57,920
slightly under 200, because it was the largest community in

988
01:11:57,920 --> 01:12:03,280
the territory, and because it was divided into these two ethnolinguistic factions, and it

989
01:12:03,280 --> 01:12:03,920
was famous.

990
01:12:04,000 --> 01:12:07,920
I mean, we heard about it long before we were ever invited to go there.

991
01:12:08,080 --> 01:12:12,960
Um, so it was a really good place to study coalitional dynamics.

992
01:12:13,170 --> 01:12:18,770
um and and where we could get a 100% sample while many

993
01:12:18,770 --> 01:12:24,770
psychologists criticize the sample size tell me anyone who you know me really would

994
01:12:24,770 --> 01:12:27,330
be unhappy with a 100% sample.

995
01:12:27,650 --> 01:12:32,450
Um so that was anyway so I hope that helps.

996
01:12:32,690 --> 01:12:38,050
Yeah yeah it was it was the story that um I think John told me about getting the guys drunk

997
01:12:38,210 --> 01:12:43,520
was that also something that actually came from from you that the is that the

998
01:12:43,520 --> 01:12:45,520
apocryphal, or did I get that right?

999
01:12:45,760 --> 01:12:51,120
That there were two men and they were sort of in conflict, and the wives sort of told the

1000
01:12:51,120 --> 01:12:56,320
other, each of them independently, that the other had been sort of considering

1001
01:12:56,880 --> 01:12:58,240
apologizing.

1002
01:12:58,480 --> 01:13:02,720
Um, but they had in fact just talked amongst each other, decided it was a good idea to have

1003
01:13:02,720 --> 01:13:07,760
a resolution, and they just sort of put them in a in a hut together with some uh chicha,

1004
01:13:07,920 --> 01:13:13,390
which is the alcoholic drink, and sort of they men the men quote unquote decided to um

1005
01:13:13,790 --> 01:13:15,310
uh back off.

1006
01:13:15,390 --> 01:13:15,550
Yeah.

1007
01:13:16,430 --> 01:13:17,790
That happened more than once.

1008
01:13:17,950 --> 01:13:18,190
Yeah.

1009
01:13:18,590 --> 01:13:20,030
It's not uncommon.

1010
01:13:20,270 --> 01:13:24,830
And I think for that particular story, I think John and I were both there.

1011
01:13:24,990 --> 01:13:30,910
You know, we we did these daily rounds of houses, and but we would sometimes be involved

1012
01:13:30,910 --> 01:13:35,070
in different conversations because there is kind of a men's side of the house and a woman's

1013
01:13:35,070 --> 01:13:36,030
side of the house.

1014
01:13:36,190 --> 01:13:38,040
Yeah and um But I like that.

1015
01:13:38,120 --> 01:13:43,240
I like the kind of cryptic, or at least from a male centric perspective, which has been the

1016
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:46,120
long default for anthropology and science, right?

1017
01:13:46,200 --> 01:13:51,560
It's just, it's, it looks cryptic, but I think it's the um it's it's a good example of.

1018
01:13:51,640 --> 01:13:55,960
I mean, I think maybe this is too strong, but I think an argument against that is almost

1019
01:13:55,960 --> 01:13:58,840
like the men are the drones and the women are controlling them, right?

1020
01:13:58,920 --> 01:14:01,000
It's sort of like you don't get your hands dirty.

1021
01:14:01,160 --> 01:14:07,090
Um, uh you don't risk yourself, but you're you're really, you know, um, you know, that's a

1022
01:14:07,090 --> 01:14:11,970
different way to look at the power dynamic and the cost and benefit logic.

1023
01:14:12,130 --> 01:14:17,730
Um, and you know, I think it's it's only because what John relayed to me when he when he

1024
01:14:17,730 --> 01:14:23,250
expressed that, that was in the context of saying that you have such this long history of

1025
01:14:23,570 --> 01:14:25,570
of trust in the community.

1026
01:14:25,810 --> 01:14:30,370
Um, you know, he he he he mentioned another anecdote where somebody threatened him at some

1027
01:14:30,370 --> 01:14:34,980
point, and John I think said, I've known you since you were, you know, and he pointed to

1028
01:14:34,980 --> 01:14:36,580
his knee or something, you know.

1029
01:14:36,740 --> 01:14:41,060
Um, and that actually led to this person sort of backing off um a bit.

1030
01:14:41,220 --> 01:14:45,140
Like I remember carrying you, basically, was what John said to this this guy.

1031
01:14:45,460 --> 01:14:47,060
And I may not have been there for that one.

1032
01:14:47,140 --> 01:14:47,940
I don't I don't know.

1033
01:14:48,260 --> 01:14:49,780
Yeah, no, I remember him telling me that.

1034
01:14:49,940 --> 01:14:51,220
Yeah, he probably didn't.

1035
01:14:51,460 --> 01:14:51,940
So yeah.

1036
01:14:52,420 --> 01:14:53,940
But um, but I think that's the point.

1037
01:14:54,180 --> 01:14:59,780
I think like that idea of sort of that um quote unquote cryptic leadership,

1038
01:15:00,090 --> 01:15:05,770
you know, but but from this, but that's only because it's it hasn't been viewed from this

1039
01:15:05,770 --> 01:15:10,170
more quote unquote more objective perspective, which I think would be the argument that,

1040
01:15:10,250 --> 01:15:16,250
you know, the women are um doing a lot, and it's by design that some of

1041
01:15:16,250 --> 01:15:18,970
it looks cryptic from the perspective of the men.

1042
01:15:21,690 --> 01:15:27,210
Certainly if we're talking about the existing literature and anthropology,

1043
01:15:28,040 --> 01:15:33,960
I I was remembering um women if you

1044
01:15:33,960 --> 01:15:39,400
look at the old ethnographies deserve their special category in the index

1045
01:15:39,880 --> 01:15:42,600
because they're mentioned so infrequently.

1046
01:15:42,760 --> 01:15:43,160
Wow.

1047
01:15:43,320 --> 01:15:47,960
And there might be three pages where women are mentioned specifically.

1048
01:15:48,200 --> 01:15:54,070
So I really I really have deep concerns about the current use

1049
01:15:54,070 --> 01:15:55,430
of that literature.

1050
01:15:55,670 --> 01:15:56,070
Yeah.

1051
01:15:56,310 --> 01:16:01,670
Um to call information about women given and and that literature has been so heavily

1052
01:16:01,670 --> 01:16:03,110
critiqued, you know.

1053
01:16:03,590 --> 01:16:09,270
I mean, uh could could it be that this underestimation of women's influence in these

1054
01:16:09,270 --> 01:16:15,040
societies is itself a product of the uh subtlety

1055
01:16:15,040 --> 01:16:20,000
and intelligence with which they influence people covertly, that that is in fact a design

1056
01:16:20,000 --> 01:16:24,080
feature that they are trying to influence without creating common knowledge that the

1057
01:16:24,080 --> 01:16:26,000
influence has taken place.

1058
01:16:27,040 --> 01:16:29,360
I think that's a really important question.

1059
01:16:29,600 --> 01:16:34,320
And I think that the anthropologists who went to the field, if they gave any credit to

1060
01:16:34,320 --> 01:16:35,920
women, assumed that.

1061
01:16:36,240 --> 01:16:41,770
But because they did not have access to or even

1062
01:16:42,090 --> 01:16:46,650
questions about women's participation in political decision making.

1063
01:16:46,810 --> 01:16:51,130
There's so little written that we don't know.

1064
01:16:51,290 --> 01:16:57,130
I I really think it's a an area that's open for more

1065
01:16:57,130 --> 01:16:57,770
study.

1066
01:16:59,130 --> 01:17:04,860
One of the themes, uh um I think my job in this podcast is to say the themes every time

1067
01:17:05,100 --> 01:17:06,700
of the every episode at least once.

1068
01:17:06,780 --> 01:17:11,740
But one of the themes of in our discussions has often been humility and sort of

1069
01:17:11,740 --> 01:17:16,940
appreciating and just sort of listening to people who aren't usually listened to.

1070
01:17:17,020 --> 01:17:19,580
And I think this is a really good example of that.

1071
01:17:19,820 --> 01:17:25,580
The understanding ourselves and the science, this is a really clear case of um

1072
01:17:25,820 --> 01:17:31,510
if people going sort of arrogantly or not respecting the people

1073
01:17:31,750 --> 01:17:36,710
or evolved psychology, um, and that there's going to be you know what kids are doing, what

1074
01:17:36,710 --> 01:17:42,150
women are doing, um, you know, even if you're a male from a you know um you know

1075
01:17:42,310 --> 01:17:48,150
1950s, 60s anthropologist, that um that uh if you're not

1076
01:17:48,550 --> 01:17:52,470
if you're letting your culture's sort of bargaining power blind you to the scientific

1077
01:17:52,470 --> 01:17:55,590
questions you're asking, you're not looking at what children are doing, what women are

1078
01:17:55,590 --> 01:17:58,070
doing, it's bad for the science, right?

1079
01:17:59,760 --> 01:18:05,520
And you know, because John and

1080
01:18:05,520 --> 01:18:11,440
I did our field work initially during a time period when 12 months in the field

1081
01:18:11,440 --> 01:18:17,440
was a minimum, and because we aspired to be deeply immersed in

1082
01:18:17,440 --> 01:18:22,210
that ethnographic context, I think we learned a lot more.

1083
01:18:22,610 --> 01:18:28,530
Um, and so I you know, there's there's discussion now about slow science and

1084
01:18:28,530 --> 01:18:34,370
fast science, but um but but also it I think it

1085
01:18:34,530 --> 01:18:40,450
that we understand that we're sometimes blinded by our

1086
01:18:40,450 --> 01:18:42,120
questions, Right?

1087
01:18:42,600 --> 01:18:47,160
We go in with a particular question that's formulated, we collect our data to address that

1088
01:18:47,160 --> 01:18:53,000
particular question, and we may never learn about these other phenomena if

1089
01:18:53,000 --> 01:18:56,120
we're not there to ask questions about it.

1090
01:18:56,360 --> 01:19:02,040
So the beauty of ethnography and the beauty of anthropology, especially long-term,

1091
01:19:02,200 --> 01:19:07,730
committed, community-based anthropology is that you

1092
01:19:07,730 --> 01:19:13,570
learn um what you may never have asked about and if you listen

1093
01:19:13,730 --> 01:19:19,570
yeah and and that's the to me the great privilege of of being able to

1094
01:19:19,570 --> 01:19:25,410
do this work is to is to is that you know to learn things that

1095
01:19:25,410 --> 01:19:30,260
you might never have have thought about um yeah Yeah.

1096
01:19:30,420 --> 01:19:30,660
Yeah.

1097
01:19:30,820 --> 01:19:35,220
As a psychologist being interested in coalitional psychology, I always think to myself,

1098
01:19:35,780 --> 01:19:38,740
talking to John always kept me honest.

1099
01:19:38,900 --> 01:19:41,140
And it was exactly for this reason, right?

1100
01:19:41,300 --> 01:19:45,780
That um, and I think psychology and the evolutionary behavioral sciences, I mean, David and

1101
01:19:45,780 --> 01:19:46,500
I have talked about this.

1102
01:19:46,580 --> 01:19:52,340
We've had many uh people who are right in the interst in in in between anthropology and

1103
01:19:52,340 --> 01:19:53,380
psychology.

1104
01:19:53,540 --> 01:19:59,490
Um, and uh I think it's so important as psychologists, and I say this as a

1105
01:19:59,490 --> 01:20:04,930
laboratory psychologist, to keep anthropology in the evolutionary behavioral sciences

1106
01:20:05,090 --> 01:20:11,010
because it keeps us honest and we really lose our reality tethering if we don't

1107
01:20:11,010 --> 01:20:16,610
keep talking to and and ultimately it's being grounded in in

1108
01:20:16,850 --> 01:20:19,970
the the local knowledge and what's actually happening.

1109
01:20:20,130 --> 01:20:20,770
Yeah.

1110
01:20:21,560 --> 01:20:27,160
Yeah, and um I understand that next year HBES and the is it the

1111
01:20:27,160 --> 01:20:33,080
Cultural Evolutionary Society are gonna hold joint meetings, and I think a really positive

1112
01:20:34,040 --> 01:20:35,080
um thing.

1113
01:20:35,800 --> 01:20:36,040
Yeah.

1114
01:20:36,280 --> 01:20:41,400
Speaking of uh interfactional conflict, I'm glad that the factions are being united in

1115
01:20:41,400 --> 01:20:43,240
evolutionary social science.

1116
01:20:43,400 --> 01:20:48,850
Um I I I wanna speaking of factions, I wanna um return to something you

1117
01:20:48,850 --> 01:20:54,530
mentioned about w women having more social ties between uh

1118
01:20:54,690 --> 01:21:00,690
the rival factions than uh men had, uh and that because of that women were

1119
01:21:00,690 --> 01:21:06,530
sort of trusted more as impartial mediators and adjudicators of

1120
01:21:06,610 --> 01:21:09,730
uh intra or intergroup conflict.

1121
01:21:09,890 --> 01:21:14,480
Um and I I find that to be a really interesting uh gender divide.

1122
01:21:14,560 --> 01:21:20,160
Um and I'm I'm kind of curious about uh how that divide came to be, uh

1123
01:21:20,720 --> 01:21:26,560
uh why you think it exists, um, and and how women are uh

1124
01:21:26,560 --> 01:21:27,840
navigating that role.

1125
01:21:28,400 --> 01:21:32,640
And I'm not sure that it's so much that they're like trusted more, but rather that they

1126
01:21:32,640 --> 01:21:34,080
have greater access, right?

1127
01:21:34,240 --> 01:21:39,280
Because they formed these relationships that cause they just have more knowledge about

1128
01:21:39,360 --> 01:21:42,480
about the the the situation itself in these conflicts.

1129
01:21:44,550 --> 01:21:46,550
Often that's true.

1130
01:21:47,190 --> 01:21:52,630
And I talked to Lita about this when during the symposium for John in

1131
01:21:52,630 --> 01:21:58,630
October, but you know, John and I collected data over

1132
01:21:58,630 --> 01:22:04,070
many years, and our goal for this time of our lives

1133
01:22:04,390 --> 01:22:10,200
was to um look longitudinally at men's and women's

1134
01:22:10,200 --> 01:22:11,880
coalitional structures.

1135
01:22:12,280 --> 01:22:17,800
And that scenario that I just described really relates to

1136
01:22:19,560 --> 01:22:21,320
two time periods.

1137
01:22:21,640 --> 01:22:27,480
And contrary to my expectations, though, women with

1138
01:22:27,480 --> 01:22:33,370
the greater cross-coalitional ties Were those with

1139
01:22:33,370 --> 01:22:37,610
fewer kin within their own coalition and across the coalition.

1140
01:22:37,690 --> 01:22:43,210
And so my argument was they needed to establish those cross-coalitional ties

1141
01:22:43,530 --> 01:22:49,530
because that gave them really a place to go in the event that they

1142
01:22:50,010 --> 01:22:55,880
lost their place in their own coalition, which again, you know, know, co um conflict

1143
01:22:55,880 --> 01:23:01,480
resolution often involves someone leaving and they being less securely

1144
01:23:01,640 --> 01:23:07,240
um related by kinship to people in their own coalition

1145
01:23:07,480 --> 01:23:12,040
would be the most likely to have to leave if there were some kind of conflict.

1146
01:23:12,120 --> 01:23:17,960
And that did happen um with a couple of women um and their families.

1147
01:23:18,200 --> 01:23:24,110
But so what I wanted to see, so basically the structures looked like men had

1148
01:23:24,430 --> 01:23:28,350
these really cleanly bounded coalitions.

1149
01:23:28,750 --> 01:23:33,790
Um, and you know, they needed to be really clear on where their um

1150
01:23:33,790 --> 01:23:36,430
alliances um were.

1151
01:23:36,830 --> 01:23:41,550
And I'm And Brenda, to just interrupt, is that the the linguistic, is that the the like,

1152
01:23:41,630 --> 01:23:44,430
you know, color, you know, where there's that one hut that's over?

1153
01:23:44,510 --> 01:23:45,710
What can you just explain?

1154
01:23:45,840 --> 01:23:50,400
so just so people have a sense of what is the scale of the coalition for the men?

1155
01:23:50,480 --> 01:23:50,800
Yeah.

1156
01:23:51,200 --> 01:23:51,680
Right.

1157
01:23:51,920 --> 01:23:57,360
So um and this really was, you know,

1158
01:23:57,600 --> 01:24:03,280
John's methodology um to collect um

1159
01:24:03,280 --> 01:24:08,000
quantitative information using cognitive anthropological

1160
01:24:08,480 --> 01:24:14,090
approaches to reconstruct really the political landscape,

1161
01:24:14,250 --> 01:24:16,170
the categories of alliances.

1162
01:24:16,330 --> 01:24:21,850
So, and so men and the whole community really talked about Konambal being

1163
01:24:21,850 --> 01:24:26,730
divided upriver and downriver into Achwa and Qichua factions.

1164
01:24:26,890 --> 01:24:32,570
And that was true, even though each of those factions, in fact, was ethnically

1165
01:24:32,570 --> 01:24:33,210
mixed.

1166
01:24:33,420 --> 01:24:33,740
Okay.

1167
01:24:34,060 --> 01:24:38,060
So by marriage and political affiliation.

1168
01:24:38,140 --> 01:24:43,900
And the one, the one um house that you so so we have this kind of

1169
01:24:43,900 --> 01:24:49,580
iconic figure of, you know, sort of this line, this wavy line that

1170
01:24:49,580 --> 01:24:52,380
represents the river and then houses distributed along the river.

1171
01:24:52,540 --> 01:24:56,540
And you can see that upriver, you know, I think they're coded, I can't remember if it's red

1172
01:24:56,540 --> 01:24:56,780
or blue.

1173
01:24:56,860 --> 01:24:58,780
Yeah, you have the thing I'm looking around.

1174
01:24:58,860 --> 01:24:59,020
Yeah.

1175
01:24:59,420 --> 01:25:00,620
Somewhere in my office here.

1176
01:25:02,410 --> 01:25:04,650
But you can see how clean the divide is.

1177
01:25:04,730 --> 01:25:09,290
And the divide that in that image is based on two things.

1178
01:25:09,450 --> 01:25:14,730
It's based on how people discuss, right?

1179
01:25:15,210 --> 01:25:20,330
How people refer to themselves and how they refer to others.

1180
01:25:21,290 --> 01:25:26,410
And it was a you know, the theory of ethnicity and identity is that it's situational,

1181
01:25:26,490 --> 01:25:26,730
right?

1182
01:25:26,810 --> 01:25:30,440
So you may refer to yourself differently in different situations.

1183
01:25:30,600 --> 01:25:36,360
So one way that it was explained to me wh by a woman is I am with

1184
01:25:36,360 --> 01:25:39,480
the Achwar, but I am Qichua.

1185
01:25:39,880 --> 01:25:44,840
So if that helps clarify That actually just raises more questions.

1186
01:25:45,000 --> 01:25:50,750
So that so there's a distinction between um being

1187
01:25:51,150 --> 01:25:56,030
uh one of a member of the group and being with the group.

1188
01:25:56,190 --> 01:25:57,310
So what is the difference there?

1189
01:25:57,470 --> 01:25:59,790
Because they sound the same to my Western ear.

1190
01:25:59,950 --> 01:26:02,190
So could you unpack that distinction?

1191
01:26:04,110 --> 01:26:06,990
I can tell you how that is viewed.

1192
01:26:07,070 --> 01:26:07,310
Yeah.

1193
01:26:07,470 --> 01:26:12,860
When people talk about um it's usually based on identity.

1194
01:26:13,020 --> 01:26:19,020
If we're talking about, let's say, ethnolinguistic identity, um, then people

1195
01:26:19,580 --> 01:26:25,500
identify usually based on the language that they spoke

1196
01:26:25,500 --> 01:26:26,460
in the home.

1197
01:26:26,620 --> 01:26:28,300
Okay, their first language.

1198
01:26:28,460 --> 01:26:33,980
Now, if their parents spoke different languages and multiple languages,

1199
01:26:34,300 --> 01:26:39,980
then there's a little bit of um complication there in how clean

1200
01:26:39,980 --> 01:26:42,190
those that pattern is.

1201
01:26:42,750 --> 01:26:48,030
But generally, when people talk about the first language that they

1202
01:26:48,030 --> 01:26:52,910
learned, the um the foods they eat, um

1203
01:26:54,830 --> 01:27:00,670
kind of how fierce they are, um, those kinds of

1204
01:27:00,910 --> 01:27:05,790
characteristics that are ascribed to ethnolinguistic groups and that are learned during

1205
01:27:05,790 --> 01:27:07,310
early socialization.

1206
01:27:07,870 --> 01:27:13,140
Um, I mean that is more of what can be called an

1207
01:27:13,140 --> 01:27:17,220
ethno-linguistic dimension of identity, right?

1208
01:27:17,460 --> 01:27:23,380
Um, and then but the political factional affiliation on the

1209
01:27:23,380 --> 01:27:28,660
ground, even though people refer to the upriver people as Achwar and the downriver people

1210
01:27:28,660 --> 01:27:32,980
as Qichua, though now they refer to them as Sapata, which is a whole nother dimension of

1211
01:27:32,980 --> 01:27:38,630
things, but um it's it's a gloss.

1212
01:27:39,030 --> 01:27:44,630
Um and it generally refers to who the founders of

1213
01:27:44,630 --> 01:27:46,870
those places were.

1214
01:27:47,830 --> 01:27:52,710
So the Upriver faction that the founders of that

1215
01:27:53,350 --> 01:27:59,190
household cluster were Achwa people, and then others

1216
01:27:59,190 --> 01:28:00,230
joined them.

1217
01:28:00,440 --> 01:28:06,440
um and the same downriver the founders identified at the time as quichua

1218
01:28:07,000 --> 01:28:13,000
and um and then others joined them so they're known as the atwar above and the quichua down

1219
01:28:13,000 --> 01:28:18,440
below and this is just really classic identity it could conform with classic identity

1220
01:28:18,440 --> 01:28:24,360
theory right that theory of that that identity is multidimensional and that it's

1221
01:28:24,360 --> 01:28:30,230
situational yes um so it's it i i the lovely thing about field work, especially in the

1222
01:28:30,230 --> 01:28:35,590
long term, is that you see theory come to life, you know, and that's that really does in

1223
01:28:35,590 --> 01:28:36,390
Konombo.

1224
01:28:36,470 --> 01:28:39,670
So but it's hard for people to understand that.

1225
01:28:39,830 --> 01:28:41,110
Um sometimes.

1226
01:28:41,590 --> 01:28:41,750
Yes.

1227
01:28:42,470 --> 01:28:43,110
I mean oh sorry.

1228
01:28:44,070 --> 01:28:44,230
Yeah.

1229
01:28:44,390 --> 01:28:44,550
Yeah.

1230
01:28:44,790 --> 01:28:49,260
I mean I I just uh I'm I'm very excited to hear you talk in these terms.

1231
01:28:49,340 --> 01:28:52,620
Um, because you know, I do work in political psychology.

1232
01:28:52,860 --> 01:28:57,660
Um, and I think a problematic tendency is to um

1233
01:28:57,900 --> 01:29:03,660
overexplain uh political beliefs and and political activity in terms of identity as opposed

1234
01:29:03,660 --> 01:29:04,780
to allegiance.

1235
01:29:05,180 --> 01:29:09,260
So these are two different things, and I and I applaud you for highlighting the important

1236
01:29:09,260 --> 01:29:10,620
distinction between these things.

1237
01:29:10,860 --> 01:29:16,220
I think that uh political psychologists too often get caught up in identity and miss out on

1238
01:29:16,220 --> 01:29:17,020
alliances.

1239
01:29:17,290 --> 01:29:23,050
So for example, um, I could be, I don't have to be a police officer to

1240
01:29:23,050 --> 01:29:26,890
feel political allegiance to police officers if I'm a Republican.

1241
01:29:27,050 --> 01:29:32,090
I don't have to be a black person to feel as though I'm an ally of black people

1242
01:29:32,090 --> 01:29:32,970
politically.

1243
01:29:33,210 --> 01:29:38,730
Um and if we focus solely on identity, which group you strictly belong to, rather than

1244
01:29:38,730 --> 01:29:44,490
allegiances and loyalties, we're missing out on the crucial dimension of what politics

1245
01:29:44,490 --> 01:29:45,980
is and how it works.

1246
01:29:46,220 --> 01:29:52,060
So I'm gonna go out on a limb and wager that the I am with this group

1247
01:29:52,220 --> 01:29:57,020
uh is going to matter more politically than the I am a member of this group.

1248
01:29:57,100 --> 01:29:57,820
Is that correct?

1249
01:29:58,140 --> 01:29:58,620
Yeah.

1250
01:29:59,100 --> 01:30:05,020
And and I I looking at material culture, looked at pottery and pottery design and have

1251
01:30:05,100 --> 01:30:07,260
looked in considerable depth.

1252
01:30:07,500 --> 01:30:13,010
But um from the perspective of um Design

1253
01:30:13,330 --> 01:30:15,170
as ethnic marker.

1254
01:30:15,490 --> 01:30:21,250
And one of the things, and really I have to give credit to John for this because the women

1255
01:30:21,250 --> 01:30:23,410
make this beautiful elaborate pottery.

1256
01:30:23,490 --> 01:30:28,930
And I was collecting pottery and I was going to analyze it to see whether their

1257
01:30:28,930 --> 01:30:34,770
political affiliation or political identity was reflected more strongly

1258
01:30:34,770 --> 01:30:40,520
in their designs than their ethnolinguistic identity, really to

1259
01:30:40,520 --> 01:30:46,040
test this idea that well you know pottery is supposed to reflect

1260
01:30:46,040 --> 01:30:51,720
ethnicity and it's supposed to be you know unchanging virtually and um which

1261
01:30:51,800 --> 01:30:57,720
didn't work out so um because it really fits better so

1262
01:30:57,880 --> 01:31:02,600
John said well then why don't you just ask women if they can identify the ethnicity of the

1263
01:31:02,600 --> 01:31:08,600
woman who made the pot based on just showing them the pots so I did that test too and

1264
01:31:08,760 --> 01:31:14,690
um and and women, it fits all the characteristics of

1265
01:31:14,690 --> 01:31:18,050
ethnic markers that we would expect with stereotyping.

1266
01:31:18,290 --> 01:31:24,210
And women certainly were more accurate at identifying what was not made by

1267
01:31:24,210 --> 01:31:29,730
a woman of their group than at identifying what was because they made finer gradations of

1268
01:31:29,730 --> 01:31:30,450
otherness.

1269
01:31:30,850 --> 01:31:35,410
And but um but but to your question, um

1270
01:31:36,520 --> 01:31:42,360
both the design similarities and the women's identification of

1271
01:31:42,360 --> 01:31:47,960
the pottery um was predicted

1272
01:31:48,520 --> 01:31:54,360
significantly more by their political affiliation than by their ethno-linguistic

1273
01:31:54,360 --> 01:31:55,000
identity.

1274
01:31:55,160 --> 01:32:00,730
So my is that they're you know signifying in group and outgroup identity very

1275
01:32:00,730 --> 01:32:06,730
actively in the pottery designs that they're making, which explains really the

1276
01:32:06,890 --> 01:32:10,330
cultural transmission of Wow.

1277
01:32:10,490 --> 01:32:16,170
So the pottery is not uh necessarily signaling which group I

1278
01:32:16,170 --> 01:32:20,010
belong to, but which group I am politically loyal to.

1279
01:32:20,940 --> 01:32:21,180
Right.

1280
01:32:21,340 --> 01:32:24,860
If by which group I belong to, you mean the ethnolinguistic identity.

1281
01:32:25,500 --> 01:32:25,820
Right.

1282
01:32:26,140 --> 01:32:26,380
Right.

1283
01:32:26,460 --> 01:32:32,140
So it's not something that is, you know, static and passive and you know

1284
01:32:32,380 --> 01:32:37,820
learned in early socialization and perpetuated throughout the lifetime of an individual,

1285
01:32:37,980 --> 01:32:43,500
but that these markers are being used actively to signify and and to be

1286
01:32:43,500 --> 01:32:49,390
understood as markers of um group out group identity in a

1287
01:32:49,390 --> 01:32:50,430
political sense.

1288
01:32:50,590 --> 01:32:50,750
Yeah.

1289
01:32:51,310 --> 01:32:52,990
That's so yeah, it's so fascinating.

1290
01:32:53,070 --> 01:32:56,430
I mean I I I I'm sorry I just have to delve deeper into this because I find this so

1291
01:32:56,430 --> 01:32:57,150
fascinating.

1292
01:32:57,470 --> 01:33:03,470
So um the pottery is being used um as as a signal of which

1293
01:33:03,710 --> 01:33:05,150
faction you are loyal to.

1294
01:33:05,230 --> 01:33:10,160
That that if you're trying to predict pottery, um uh loyalty is the right variable to look

1295
01:33:10,160 --> 01:33:10,320
at.

1296
01:33:10,400 --> 01:33:16,400
So I I'm very curious about what it is about pottery that makes it a good way

1297
01:33:16,640 --> 01:33:22,480
of signaling or signifying uh political differences and w why other methods

1298
01:33:22,480 --> 01:33:22,960
aren't used.

1299
01:33:23,040 --> 01:33:24,320
Why can't they just be out in the open?

1300
01:33:24,400 --> 01:33:27,920
I'm loyal to this side, I'm loyal to this side, why do they have to communicate this

1301
01:33:27,920 --> 01:33:29,600
information through pottery?

1302
01:33:30,170 --> 01:33:34,330
There are many markers of affiliation and they're all the time.

1303
01:33:34,490 --> 01:33:34,650
Yeah.

1304
01:33:34,810 --> 01:33:40,410
You know, so it may be who you invite to your house for um

1305
01:33:40,890 --> 01:33:46,170
a work party, you know, to whom you give meat, they're they're that's why um

1306
01:33:47,450 --> 01:33:53,260
i it's hard to and whether it's all understood as signification,

1307
01:33:53,420 --> 01:33:55,180
I think probably so.

1308
01:33:55,340 --> 01:33:59,820
Whether it's all done for purposes of signification, I think probably not.

1309
01:34:00,140 --> 01:34:01,340
I think so.

1310
01:34:02,060 --> 01:34:06,860
So if if not if not signification, then then what would the alternative motive be?

1311
01:34:09,660 --> 01:34:14,220
Well, um so we studied

1312
01:34:14,860 --> 01:34:17,890
relationships in a lot of different ways.

1313
01:34:18,610 --> 01:34:20,610
We studied meat sharing.

1314
01:34:20,930 --> 01:34:26,530
We studied the um sharing of propagules,

1315
01:34:26,690 --> 01:34:32,210
garden propagules, and how that relates to garden richness and women's reproductive

1316
01:34:32,450 --> 01:34:33,090
success.

1317
01:34:34,690 --> 01:34:40,560
The meat sharing it is certainly if you look at

1318
01:34:40,560 --> 01:34:46,560
the pattern signifies alliances, but you also get the pattern where higher

1319
01:34:46,560 --> 01:34:50,880
status men are giving more meat than they're receiving and they um

1320
01:34:52,640 --> 01:34:57,600
um again it all relates to

1321
01:34:57,870 --> 01:35:01,550
reproductive success and strategies of alliance building.

1322
01:35:01,710 --> 01:35:07,310
I mean strategies of alliance building and status building as a um

1323
01:35:09,710 --> 01:35:14,830
yeah so it's not merely a signifying alliance but also a status marker as well.

1324
01:35:15,950 --> 01:35:21,870
Uh in what terms uh uh and so you're you're talking about um meat sharing in

1325
01:35:21,870 --> 01:35:27,720
particular uh is both a a way of signifying status but also a way of forging uh alliances.

1326
01:35:27,880 --> 01:35:28,840
Uh is that right?

1327
01:35:28,920 --> 01:35:34,120
And and is is something similar going on with pottery or are this

1328
01:35:34,280 --> 01:35:39,960
that's this is where I think we're too

1329
01:35:39,960 --> 01:35:45,400
focused, not in this conversation, but in general in the field, maybe more focused on

1330
01:35:45,720 --> 01:35:50,810
status as a goal rather than kind of almost a

1331
01:35:50,810 --> 01:35:51,770
byproduct.

1332
01:35:52,010 --> 01:35:53,690
But um so

1333
01:35:58,170 --> 01:36:03,930
I think building coalitions is more important than building status.

1334
01:36:04,810 --> 01:36:10,570
But people who are best at building coalitions accrue

1335
01:36:10,570 --> 01:36:16,330
status because of the skills that they have in coalition

1336
01:36:16,330 --> 01:36:20,800
building and they become known for

1337
01:36:22,640 --> 01:36:27,360
making wise decisions, speaking well, and um

1338
01:36:28,480 --> 01:36:33,440
the things that give people status.

1339
01:36:33,840 --> 01:36:39,840
Um so meat sharing, I I think it would be really

1340
01:36:39,840 --> 01:36:45,290
hard to say people share meat and give more meat for to build

1341
01:36:45,290 --> 01:36:51,130
status, even though a crew partly it's not highly visible now.

1342
01:36:51,450 --> 01:36:55,450
So it's more of a dyadic relationship.

1343
01:36:55,690 --> 01:37:01,690
Um sending, I mean, you know, for me to go, John and I to go back to our house and find

1344
01:37:01,690 --> 01:37:06,970
a leg of deer slapped onto the table with someone riding in

1345
01:37:07,210 --> 01:37:13,120
charcoal from the fire, you know, from Cilio, Mukushiwa or something, um,

1346
01:37:13,360 --> 01:37:14,720
is not uncommon.

1347
01:37:14,960 --> 01:37:20,880
But um I so I don't see all

1348
01:37:20,880 --> 01:37:24,560
those things as markers, if that's what you know, is as

1349
01:37:26,400 --> 01:37:31,440
signification of status um or status

1350
01:37:31,440 --> 01:37:35,760
striving, but rather as coalition building.

1351
01:37:36,320 --> 01:37:41,190
And I think that's more important, And it's more important to the well-being of people's

1352
01:37:41,190 --> 01:37:45,190
families, which translates into reproductive success.

1353
01:37:45,510 --> 01:37:46,550
And right.

1354
01:37:46,710 --> 01:37:52,710
So I mean the question then in my mind is um what in fact is

1355
01:37:52,710 --> 01:37:56,230
the difference between status and coalitional support?

1356
01:37:56,390 --> 01:37:58,230
Is there a di- Do you see a distinction there?

1357
01:37:58,310 --> 01:38:00,870
Are they the same thing or are they different?

1358
01:38:01,110 --> 01:38:03,500
Um, What is the relationship between them?

1359
01:38:03,660 --> 01:38:09,340
So for for me, uh in this conversation, um there's sort of blurry the difference between

1360
01:38:09,340 --> 01:38:10,060
these two things.

1361
01:38:10,300 --> 01:38:15,660
In my mind, the way I think about status is uh is basically in terms of

1362
01:38:15,660 --> 01:38:16,940
coalitional support.

1363
01:38:17,180 --> 01:38:22,700
So uh my way of thinking about status, you you can feel free to disagree with this way,

1364
01:38:23,020 --> 01:38:28,620
is um common knowledge of a person's relative value as a social partner,

1365
01:38:29,260 --> 01:38:34,210
um, and its downstream consequences on coalitions and alliances.

1366
01:38:34,530 --> 01:38:40,370
So it is a good strategy to favor the high value partners as allies and coalition members.

1367
01:38:40,530 --> 01:38:45,330
And because it is a good strategy to do that, people who are recognized as valuable

1368
01:38:45,330 --> 01:38:51,090
partners, therefore, as a byproduct acquire all this political power because they have all

1369
01:38:51,090 --> 01:38:54,290
these people who are willing to support them and be their allies.

1370
01:38:54,450 --> 01:39:00,180
So I view status as basically what happens when a community gains common knowledge

1371
01:39:00,340 --> 01:39:06,260
that say I'm uh the best and that causes everyone to want to be my ally.

1372
01:39:06,580 --> 01:39:09,860
And uh as as we say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

1373
01:39:09,940 --> 01:39:15,860
So if I uh hate someone, um people are going to uh show support to

1374
01:39:15,860 --> 01:39:16,980
me by hating that person.

1375
01:39:17,270 --> 01:39:20,790
If I love someone, they're going to show support to me by loving that person.

1376
01:39:20,950 --> 01:39:24,790
Um if I take a side, they're gonna try to be on my side, they're gonna try to imitate me,

1377
01:39:24,950 --> 01:39:27,670
uh, to to show uh loyalty to me.

1378
01:39:27,990 --> 01:39:31,670
I view uh all of that as as a kind of status.

1379
01:39:31,750 --> 01:39:36,070
So uh um do what do you think of that way of thinking?

1380
01:39:36,150 --> 01:39:37,510
Do you have a different way of thinking?

1381
01:39:37,750 --> 01:39:43,620
Um and I think um uh I'm gonna go back to the

1382
01:39:43,620 --> 01:39:49,060
pottery and tell you that there's this category I that I created of women

1383
01:39:49,780 --> 01:39:53,220
data that I could see over and over again that I call women in between.

1384
01:39:53,300 --> 01:39:56,260
And they're the women who politically mediate.

1385
01:39:56,420 --> 01:40:01,940
Um they also paint pottery that women can't identify as either Achwa or Qichua.

1386
01:40:02,100 --> 01:40:07,750
They have ambiguous pottery, but they recognize the styles of both above and below.

1387
01:40:07,830 --> 01:40:13,030
And I argue that that's an intentional strategy of political ambiguity.

1388
01:40:13,270 --> 01:40:18,710
But I think of status as influence, and I think of

1389
01:40:18,710 --> 01:40:24,470
status as influence that is wielded in the

1390
01:40:24,470 --> 01:40:30,340
process of political decision making within, and it and it

1391
01:40:30,340 --> 01:40:32,580
has to be embedded within a coalition.

1392
01:40:33,380 --> 01:40:38,420
It's not something that exists independently, you know, as a personal characteristic that

1393
01:40:38,420 --> 01:40:40,260
one carries around with them wherever they go.

1394
01:40:40,900 --> 01:40:46,900
So um I I I don't think that's inconsistent with what you're talking about, but I don't

1395
01:40:46,900 --> 01:40:52,420
think that it is the consensus that's built isn't

1396
01:40:52,420 --> 01:40:57,850
necessarily a single kind of consensus.

1397
01:40:58,010 --> 01:41:03,690
It's really that individual people all tend to consider this person

1398
01:41:03,930 --> 01:41:04,890
in that way.

1399
01:41:05,930 --> 01:41:11,690
But status is, and again, this is the methodology that we used, right?

1400
01:41:11,930 --> 01:41:17,930
So we, you know, spent a fair amount of time doing kind of what our

1401
01:41:17,840 --> 01:41:23,760
are called free listing exercises where you just ask people, what is it

1402
01:41:23,760 --> 01:41:25,280
that makes an important person?

1403
01:41:25,920 --> 01:41:30,800
You know, and they free list those attributes and you find some consensus, and then those

1404
01:41:30,800 --> 01:41:32,640
become attributes of study.

1405
01:41:33,520 --> 01:41:39,360
But and you elicit in this context the indigenous terminology for

1406
01:41:39,360 --> 01:41:45,070
people of of status, of importance, what because status is a meaningless term, you know,

1407
01:41:45,230 --> 01:41:46,590
in most contexts.

1408
01:41:47,470 --> 01:41:51,790
But so um and in

1409
01:41:54,430 --> 01:42:00,430
so I can tell you what those terms are, but in Kichu it's an amo, which really

1410
01:42:00,430 --> 01:42:04,360
translates best into organizer rather than leader.

1411
01:42:04,600 --> 01:42:07,880
Someone who can organize a new community.

1412
01:42:08,120 --> 01:42:11,480
Someone who starts a new community, invites others to join.

1413
01:42:11,640 --> 01:42:14,520
Someone who can organize a fish poisoning event.

1414
01:42:14,760 --> 01:42:17,560
Someone who, when they invite people, they come.

1415
01:42:18,200 --> 01:42:21,720
Someone who when they speak, they're listened to.

1416
01:42:22,120 --> 01:42:25,880
Someone who, when they loan something, they get it back.

1417
01:42:26,120 --> 01:42:31,640
I mean, there are really interesting attributes ascribed to a

1418
01:42:31,810 --> 01:42:33,250
person of status.

1419
01:42:34,290 --> 01:42:39,650
And so in Qichua it's Amu, which best translates into

1420
01:42:39,650 --> 01:42:40,610
organizer.

1421
01:42:41,250 --> 01:42:47,170
And um and then in Achwar,

1422
01:42:47,890 --> 01:42:53,800
I love it, it's it's Hun, which means big and hunri are

1423
01:42:53,800 --> 01:42:56,120
the big people and it's not just men.

1424
01:42:56,360 --> 01:42:57,560
It's women and men.

1425
01:42:57,720 --> 01:43:03,080
If you ask people who the Hunri are, they'll list men and women.

1426
01:43:03,320 --> 01:43:05,880
Men more often leave out the women.

1427
01:43:06,680 --> 01:43:09,880
But um not everyone and certainly not the women.

1428
01:43:10,040 --> 01:43:14,440
So um there are people of

1429
01:43:15,750 --> 01:43:21,430
influence and respect and I think in measured in

1430
01:43:21,430 --> 01:43:25,510
many ways that I think are universally true.

1431
01:43:26,950 --> 01:43:32,950
And then but they are, you know, Hunri or Amu

1432
01:43:33,830 --> 01:43:35,750
within that context.

1433
01:43:36,230 --> 01:43:40,070
And they actively work as

1434
01:43:41,900 --> 01:43:47,820
responsible people to give meat

1435
01:43:48,140 --> 01:43:53,980
to people who might not otherwise have it, which is

1436
01:43:53,980 --> 01:43:57,740
part of how they extend those um

1437
01:43:59,260 --> 01:44:00,460
coalitional ties.

1438
01:44:00,700 --> 01:44:06,430
But it's it's women who don't have a husband, um, a

1439
01:44:06,430 --> 01:44:10,430
new family who doesn't have a lot of other relationships.

1440
01:44:10,830 --> 01:44:15,630
Um the the visiting anthropologists, you know, who do you give meat to?

1441
01:44:15,710 --> 01:44:18,590
And usually you can give more meat because you're a better hunter.

1442
01:44:18,750 --> 01:44:22,030
I mean, there are lots of implications all bound up in that.

1443
01:44:22,830 --> 01:44:28,510
Um people who people respect

1444
01:44:28,590 --> 01:44:30,620
people who work hard, you know?

1445
01:44:30,780 --> 01:44:33,260
Um, women have big gardens.

1446
01:44:33,740 --> 01:44:39,260
Um, there's a relationship between garden richness and

1447
01:44:39,820 --> 01:44:45,820
women's um political centrality and um and their

1448
01:44:45,820 --> 01:44:47,420
reproductive success.

1449
01:44:48,060 --> 01:44:53,910
Um so even though you tend to think sometimes there's not a lot of variation

1450
01:44:53,910 --> 01:44:57,270
in women's reproductive success, there is, and it's very meaningful.

1451
01:44:57,830 --> 01:45:00,790
Um, so I'm not sure.

1452
01:45:00,950 --> 01:45:06,790
I just it's I I think you just can't see status as disembedded

1453
01:45:06,870 --> 01:45:07,670
from coalition.

1454
01:45:07,750 --> 01:45:11,030
And I don't think that everybody's out there status driving.

1455
01:45:11,270 --> 01:45:17,190
I think status is something that's built by this sense of responsibility for others and

1456
01:45:17,990 --> 01:45:23,700
sense of responsibility for conflict resolution, especially in this

1457
01:45:23,700 --> 01:45:24,580
context.

1458
01:45:25,540 --> 01:45:31,460
There's the theory, you know, there's political factionalism, the theories

1459
01:45:31,460 --> 01:45:37,060
of the work done in political factionalism a

1460
01:45:37,060 --> 01:45:42,970
while ago, um, really is helpful, I think, in that respect, because it really

1461
01:45:43,130 --> 01:45:47,770
gives you an idea of the importance of the swing voters, which is certainly important in

1462
01:45:47,770 --> 01:45:53,690
politics today, and how people curry the um the alliance of

1463
01:45:53,690 --> 01:45:54,570
those swing voters.

1464
01:45:54,650 --> 01:45:58,410
And that certainly happens in in this context as well.

1465
01:45:58,570 --> 01:46:04,560
And I think that that's probably universally true in politics that you

1466
01:46:04,560 --> 01:46:10,560
have people that you know may defect or maybe um maybe you can get to

1467
01:46:10,560 --> 01:46:16,160
defect and um and those people tend to get sometimes a little more attention than

1468
01:46:16,480 --> 01:46:19,760
than perhaps they deserve but you need them.

1469
01:46:20,080 --> 01:46:20,480
Interesting.

1470
01:46:20,720 --> 01:46:26,640
So you don't view uh status as separable from from coalitional support or political power

1471
01:46:26,800 --> 01:46:28,640
that they're they're basically the same thing.

1472
01:46:29,070 --> 01:46:30,350
I don't think they're the same thing.

1473
01:46:30,510 --> 01:46:34,990
I think they're two different dimensions of relationships.

1474
01:46:35,310 --> 01:46:41,310
Um, so you can have someone with a really strong coalitional base who doesn't have a

1475
01:46:41,310 --> 01:46:44,510
lot of status, but people will, you know, that's odd.

1476
01:46:44,590 --> 01:46:45,870
That that that's sound that's interesting.

1477
01:46:45,950 --> 01:46:48,110
So uh how how would that work?

1478
01:46:48,270 --> 01:46:54,110
A person who is um say has a lot of influence, coalitional support,

1479
01:46:54,190 --> 01:46:57,150
political power, whatever you want to call it, and yet they're low status.

1480
01:46:57,310 --> 01:46:58,510
How does that work?

1481
01:46:59,700 --> 01:47:05,620
Well, especially in these kinds of communities, status you know is partly

1482
01:47:05,620 --> 01:47:07,140
a factor of age.

1483
01:47:07,460 --> 01:47:13,380
So you may have a young man who's very hardworking, whose status may be a

1484
01:47:13,380 --> 01:47:19,220
little higher than expected for his age, but it's still low in the community overall.

1485
01:47:19,860 --> 01:47:25,620
Um, but if he's well respected and perhaps um, you know, hard working and

1486
01:47:25,780 --> 01:47:31,330
shares a lot of his resources with others, demonstrates his

1487
01:47:31,330 --> 01:47:37,330
commitment to being a good member of the community and the coalition, um, you

1488
01:47:37,330 --> 01:47:43,010
know, supports for young men, his father-in-law, um, when expected to do so, if

1489
01:47:43,330 --> 01:47:49,330
then, then if there is a conflict, then he's more likely

1490
01:47:49,330 --> 01:47:55,170
to be supported in that conflict by others um who do not whole

1491
01:47:55,480 --> 01:47:57,960
have those same attributes.

1492
01:47:58,200 --> 01:48:04,120
So in this study, you know, the question was for status, you know, what

1493
01:48:04,120 --> 01:48:05,800
makes an important person?

1494
01:48:06,840 --> 01:48:09,880
And those are the attributes that I described.

1495
01:48:10,040 --> 01:48:15,560
And then the question about alliance was who would support who

1496
01:48:16,120 --> 01:48:20,440
in the event there were a conflict involving these three people.

1497
01:48:20,680 --> 01:48:25,270
And so that was the triadic task for alliance.

1498
01:48:26,150 --> 01:48:28,310
And were these related?

1499
01:48:30,150 --> 01:48:34,150
So were the important people also the people who would be supported in conflicts?

1500
01:48:34,390 --> 01:48:36,310
Or were they often different people?

1501
01:48:40,790 --> 01:48:42,310
Yeah, they're related.

1502
01:48:42,550 --> 01:48:48,080
Um so I wish I had a graph.

1503
01:48:48,480 --> 01:48:54,160
So there's a we have some really nice diagrams of sort of

1504
01:48:54,160 --> 01:48:59,120
coalitional relationships, the political landscape with the

1505
01:49:00,080 --> 01:49:04,640
excuse me, icons for each individual scale by size according to status.

1506
01:49:04,880 --> 01:49:10,490
So you can see that the higher status people are most well situated within

1507
01:49:10,810 --> 01:49:12,330
their alliances.

1508
01:49:12,650 --> 01:49:18,090
And even for men, the highest status people are tend to be

1509
01:49:18,410 --> 01:49:24,090
more um toward the

1510
01:49:24,410 --> 01:49:29,850
center of the division between the two coalitions.

1511
01:49:30,010 --> 01:49:32,890
For women, it's really clear there are almost three groups.

1512
01:49:33,050 --> 01:49:38,480
So you have like the Achwar Alliance, the Qichua Alliance, and then this

1513
01:49:38,480 --> 01:49:43,840
group, loose group, but still statistically

1514
01:49:43,840 --> 01:49:49,040
significant, where women who have higher status than expected for their

1515
01:49:50,320 --> 01:49:56,000
age are more centrally located between the two

1516
01:49:56,000 --> 01:49:56,720
coalitions.

1517
01:49:56,800 --> 01:50:02,320
So it's really a nice visual representation of their position as mediators

1518
01:50:02,690 --> 01:50:04,530
within the coalitions.

1519
01:50:05,810 --> 01:50:06,130
Okay.

1520
01:50:06,450 --> 01:50:12,370
So it's almost like uh status is the filler for sort of how we have to

1521
01:50:12,370 --> 01:50:16,450
get by and make a living in whatever context we are.

1522
01:50:16,690 --> 01:50:22,130
Um, and in particular in Kanambo, that is, you know, having

1523
01:50:22,130 --> 01:50:26,210
coalitional um uh influence or influence in the community.

1524
01:50:26,370 --> 01:50:30,050
Like um it's um uh yeah.

1525
01:50:30,660 --> 01:50:34,100
I I think you can't disentangle them.

1526
01:50:34,900 --> 01:50:40,580
And you know, if we want to read contemporary social theory, you know, Bordure would tell

1527
01:50:40,580 --> 01:50:44,420
us that in a heartbeat, but that you know that um

1528
01:50:47,620 --> 01:50:52,180
status comes from one's position within those

1529
01:50:53,350 --> 01:50:58,150
uh in this case what we call alliances or coalitions.

1530
01:50:59,350 --> 01:50:59,590
Right.

1531
01:50:59,750 --> 01:51:01,590
It's a relational attribute.

1532
01:51:01,750 --> 01:51:03,270
It's not a a noun.

1533
01:51:03,430 --> 01:51:04,230
It's not a thing.

1534
01:51:04,310 --> 01:51:09,030
It's sort of a um it's like being good at, you know, like if I just said somebody's good at

1535
01:51:09,030 --> 01:51:11,430
something, it doesn't tell you what they're good at, right?

1536
01:51:11,590 --> 01:51:14,390
Like it it doesn't, it doesn't fill in the content.

1537
01:51:14,940 --> 01:51:19,260
It's just sort of a uh an adjectival word, right?

1538
01:51:19,420 --> 01:51:21,900
It's sort of like status is sort of like what that is.

1539
01:51:22,140 --> 01:51:23,580
It's status has that same stat.

1540
01:51:24,380 --> 01:51:26,620
Status has the same status, which is interesting.

1541
01:51:27,660 --> 01:51:29,820
That's a really good way to think about it.

1542
01:51:29,900 --> 01:51:35,580
And and I think this with the shamanism too, where people are looking for the shaman,

1543
01:51:35,740 --> 01:51:41,350
but shamanic power um or ability is

1544
01:51:41,590 --> 01:51:47,590
is often um relational right and it's um it's not a

1545
01:51:47,590 --> 01:51:53,270
role it's it's something that you cultivate and you have more or less of and

1546
01:51:53,430 --> 01:51:59,340
than than others so um yeah Yeah,

1547
01:51:59,420 --> 01:52:00,380
it's it's so interesting.

1548
01:52:00,460 --> 01:52:03,500
I mean, this is and this is again what I can think we're this is real time keeping us

1549
01:52:03,500 --> 01:52:04,060
honest here.

1550
01:52:04,140 --> 01:52:06,220
Like we're we're learning about status.

1551
01:52:06,380 --> 01:52:06,620
Yeah.

1552
01:52:07,180 --> 01:52:07,580
Yes.

1553
01:52:07,820 --> 01:52:13,820
We're both both interested in this topic, and and as uh we've been uh seeing, it's just an

1554
01:52:13,820 --> 01:52:19,100
incredibly rich and complicated topic with with lots of really subtle

1555
01:52:19,100 --> 01:52:21,420
distinctions to be made.

1556
01:52:21,670 --> 01:52:26,470
Um I remember we got into status a lot with um Chris von Ruden who we had on the on the

1557
01:52:26,470 --> 01:52:27,430
podcast.

1558
01:52:27,590 --> 01:52:33,190
Um and um he he told a story that that stuck with me of a

1559
01:52:33,190 --> 01:52:39,110
hunter who was uh exiled from the community for being too good of a hunter

1560
01:52:39,350 --> 01:52:44,390
for being a show off um and and that often being too overt or

1561
01:52:44,390 --> 01:52:49,800
braggadocious in one's uh seeking of status or or

1562
01:52:49,800 --> 01:52:54,600
influence could actually lower your status and influence.

1563
01:52:54,840 --> 01:52:59,880
Um and I'm curious if there are similar dynamics at play uh in the in the in the

1564
01:52:59,880 --> 01:53:01,800
communities that you've worked with.

1565
01:53:02,600 --> 01:53:08,440
You know, and anthropologists have a term for that called leveling mechanisms that

1566
01:53:08,440 --> 01:53:11,720
are commonly found in small-scale societies.

1567
01:53:12,360 --> 01:53:13,640
But let me think.

1568
01:53:14,200 --> 01:53:20,010
Um I

1569
01:53:20,010 --> 01:53:25,450
can't I don't I can't think of any circumstances that would fit that that

1570
01:53:25,450 --> 01:53:26,250
scenario.

1571
01:53:31,530 --> 01:53:36,650
Men, especially young men, tend to be fairly humble.

1572
01:53:37,930 --> 01:53:39,370
They need to be.

1573
01:53:40,570 --> 01:53:45,860
So I I can I guess I can see how that happens.

1574
01:53:46,100 --> 01:53:51,780
But so this territory and this region,

1575
01:53:52,100 --> 01:53:56,660
Indigenous of Indigenous communities, is predominantly

1576
01:53:56,980 --> 01:54:02,900
matrilocal, meaning that you know young men to

1577
01:54:02,900 --> 01:54:08,740
be married need to go and live in the house of their father-in-law and

1578
01:54:08,740 --> 01:54:09,940
mother-in-law.

1579
01:54:10,180 --> 01:54:15,870
And there is a period of bride service where they're really

1580
01:54:15,870 --> 01:54:21,470
obligated to work, um, to do whatever it is that especially their

1581
01:54:21,470 --> 01:54:23,470
father-in-law wants them to do.

1582
01:54:23,710 --> 01:54:29,070
So to tell someone to take a two-day hike, to um go buy a

1583
01:54:29,070 --> 01:54:34,990
cigarette at a military base for a party that's coming up might be a

1584
01:54:34,990 --> 01:54:37,470
task that you would assign to a son-in-law.

1585
01:54:37,630 --> 01:54:42,670
In the old days, it could be a several month trip downriver to get salt.

1586
01:54:43,020 --> 01:54:47,020
And those are tasks for young married and sons-in-law.

1587
01:54:47,180 --> 01:54:53,180
So I I imagine that if a young man were a little too cocky in the house of his father

1588
01:54:53,260 --> 01:54:56,220
in law, he would be set on an even longer trip.

1589
01:54:56,460 --> 01:54:59,020
But um I don't, I don't really

1590
01:55:02,860 --> 01:55:07,970
young men certainly express that they need to

1591
01:55:08,290 --> 01:55:13,410
behave in a certain way while they're married in, um,

1592
01:55:14,210 --> 01:55:15,730
especially at first.

1593
01:55:19,490 --> 01:55:21,490
So I can't.

1594
01:55:23,650 --> 01:55:29,170
There are people who are sort of men who may be kind of a bully, an

1595
01:55:29,170 --> 01:55:33,860
older, you know, a higher status senior man.

1596
01:55:34,660 --> 01:55:40,180
And what I see is that he's had a hard time

1597
01:55:40,180 --> 01:55:44,020
finding husbands for his daughters because they don't want to go live with him.

1598
01:55:44,180 --> 01:55:48,580
And people don't want them to go, their sons to go live there.

1599
01:55:48,820 --> 01:55:54,420
But I I don't so but I can't think of anything that is really overtly kind of a

1600
01:55:54,420 --> 01:56:00,180
leveling mechanism that I've observed, and mostly because I don't see I've

1601
01:56:00,420 --> 01:56:05,950
I can't think of a single example of behavior I've seen that would be

1602
01:56:05,950 --> 01:56:08,110
categorized as braggadocious.

1603
01:56:08,430 --> 01:56:12,110
You know, I I think there's teasing and interesting.

1604
01:56:12,270 --> 01:56:16,590
Is it is it because if it were to happen, it would be penalized and therefore it doesn't

1605
01:56:16,590 --> 01:56:16,830
happen?

1606
01:56:16,910 --> 01:56:22,750
Or is it is the idea of braggadociousness being bad not even uh

1607
01:56:22,910 --> 01:56:23,870
a thing?

1608
01:56:28,180 --> 01:56:34,100
People make fun of people sometimes, you know, which but

1609
01:56:34,100 --> 01:56:39,540
it's a but it's not as an

1610
01:56:39,540 --> 01:56:41,460
outcome of that, I think.

1611
01:56:41,700 --> 01:56:42,580
I I don't know.

1612
01:56:42,660 --> 01:56:44,980
I can't I can't answer the question.

1613
01:56:45,220 --> 01:56:50,740
I don't I can't really think of anything that

1614
01:56:51,140 --> 01:56:55,550
um it Well I mean certain certainly the father who's having a hard time finding husbands

1615
01:56:55,550 --> 01:57:00,430
for his daughters because he's perceived to be a bully, that is a real uh Darwinian

1616
01:57:00,430 --> 01:57:04,030
reproductive consequence for uh being seen as a bully.

1617
01:57:04,110 --> 01:57:10,110
Um and you would expect that that to matter a lot um if if your if your reputation is uh

1618
01:57:10,430 --> 01:57:11,390
that poor.

1619
01:57:11,950 --> 01:57:17,740
Um so that certainly to me suggests at least at least some you know real costs being

1620
01:57:17,740 --> 01:57:23,740
faced uh for for being seen as as too much of a bully um but yeah no it's

1621
01:57:23,820 --> 01:57:29,740
it's it's interesting um because i have

1622
01:57:29,900 --> 01:57:35,710
uh a way of thinking about this that um basically tries to explain the variation

1623
01:57:35,710 --> 01:57:41,470
in status symbols as deriving from the fact that uh revealing them as

1624
01:57:41,470 --> 01:57:45,950
status symbols often negates their status enhancing effects.

1625
01:57:46,110 --> 01:57:51,790
Um and so uh that creates a kind of volatility uh in in our in

1626
01:57:51,790 --> 01:57:57,720
status seeking, um, such that if we if it if if it all comes out in the open

1627
01:57:57,800 --> 01:58:01,960
that we're just a bunch of braggadocious status seekers, then we all have to do something

1628
01:58:01,960 --> 01:58:05,400
different to show that we're more humble or that we don't care about status.

1629
01:58:05,480 --> 01:58:08,680
And that creates uh an incentive to send a different signal.

1630
01:58:08,840 --> 01:58:14,840
And you sort of and this creates um uh a a dynamic that

1631
01:58:14,840 --> 01:58:20,120
that would cause cultural variation in the in the types of status signals being sent over

1632
01:58:20,440 --> 01:58:20,680
time.

1633
01:58:20,920 --> 01:58:23,690
Um Does that sound plausible to you?

1634
01:58:24,010 --> 01:58:29,850
Yeah, I think that the that to consider that more, I

1635
01:58:29,850 --> 01:58:35,530
would think about um what might be

1636
01:58:36,490 --> 01:58:42,250
contexts for status driving that are novel contexts,

1637
01:58:42,410 --> 01:58:47,610
um, and who moves into those positions and that um

1638
01:58:48,490 --> 01:58:54,200
and then and and of course that's happening now because

1639
01:58:54,520 --> 01:59:00,360
the men who were you know the ones at my knee when uh

1640
01:59:00,520 --> 01:59:06,520
we first went in are now president of the indigenous political organization

1641
01:59:06,680 --> 01:59:08,280
and that sort of thing.

1642
01:59:08,520 --> 01:59:14,410
Um and I think in those contexts would probably see some

1643
01:59:14,410 --> 01:59:15,770
status leveling.

1644
01:59:16,010 --> 01:59:18,970
And I haven't thought about that a lot.

1645
01:59:19,050 --> 01:59:24,170
And I haven't um I don't but so and again

1646
01:59:24,330 --> 01:59:30,330
anthropologically, we know that when kind of new opportunities, new context for status open

1647
01:59:30,330 --> 01:59:36,280
up, it's often the young men who move who strive to move into them because it gets

1648
01:59:36,280 --> 01:59:42,200
them out from under the thumb of the elders who otherwise sort of keep their status under

1649
01:59:42,520 --> 01:59:42,840
control.

1650
01:59:43,480 --> 01:59:48,600
So I think probably, you know, in Konamo now

1651
01:59:49,560 --> 01:59:55,370
and in a lot of other traditional societies there's greater articulation

1652
01:59:55,370 --> 02:00:01,130
with outside institutions, you know, with NGOs and the coolness of indigeneity

1653
02:00:01,690 --> 02:00:07,690
and such that we might see more of that at play.

1654
02:00:09,530 --> 02:00:09,690
Yeah.

1655
02:00:10,010 --> 02:00:14,570
Brend Brenda, when you we've asked anthropologists sort of what it's like on a personal

1656
02:00:14,570 --> 02:00:16,090
level being in these communities.

1657
02:00:16,170 --> 02:00:20,480
And I mean, we've talked a lot about the violence, but there's also this principle of life

1658
02:00:20,560 --> 02:00:24,240
that there's no free lunch, or for every con, there's a benefit, you know, for every pro

1659
02:00:24,320 --> 02:00:25,680
there's a con, and vice versa.

1660
02:00:25,920 --> 02:00:31,920
Is there anything about like when you experience sort of switching cultures, and

1661
02:00:32,000 --> 02:00:36,480
you know, you've been so immersed, um, and maybe the blinds are blurred, maybe, you know,

1662
02:00:36,560 --> 02:00:42,550
but um, but uh that you that's sort of unique um, or that's a

1663
02:00:42,870 --> 02:00:47,510
pro because there's all of this conflict, there's actually some something else, you know.

1664
02:00:47,590 --> 02:00:52,870
There's almost like a a piece because everybody is sort of um sh pretty

1665
02:00:52,870 --> 02:00:56,150
coordinated about social relationships, or everybody's really close.

1666
02:00:56,230 --> 02:01:00,550
You know, people talk about closeness when they've been in conflict or combat together.

1667
02:01:00,790 --> 02:01:06,100
Do you find that there are things that for those of us who don't aren't in a culture where

1668
02:01:06,100 --> 02:01:12,100
there is this sort of interpersonal violence that they're sort of part of our evolved

1669
02:01:12,100 --> 02:01:17,620
psychology or part of our experience of social ties that that

1670
02:01:17,860 --> 02:01:23,860
that you have or Kanambo has that you've seen people have or that you have yourself that

1671
02:01:23,860 --> 02:01:29,140
what you see that you know we wouldn't, David and I just would not have that experience.

1672
02:01:29,300 --> 02:01:30,820
Is there anything like that?

1673
02:01:31,930 --> 02:01:37,610
I think I yeah, I I tend to see politics afoot

1674
02:01:37,610 --> 02:01:38,410
everywhere.

1675
02:01:38,970 --> 02:01:43,050
I see coalitions forming everywhere.

1676
02:01:43,210 --> 02:01:49,130
I see people who are better or worse at it, certainly within faculty, you know,

1677
02:01:49,290 --> 02:01:54,570
within the academic senate, um, even within the administration.

1678
02:01:54,810 --> 02:02:00,320
You know, there are ways to um Observe

1679
02:02:00,320 --> 02:02:05,200
coalitions that are forming that may require a little

1680
02:02:06,400 --> 02:02:12,320
concern or ways to understand coalitions and how they

1681
02:02:12,640 --> 02:02:18,560
are formed on the ground to be effective at getting things done.

1682
02:02:19,360 --> 02:02:25,070
I think understanding that I think politics

1683
02:02:25,070 --> 02:02:30,990
and coalitional formation and um respect and status formation

1684
02:02:31,310 --> 02:02:37,070
are always part of the human condition and recognizing that that's true

1685
02:02:37,390 --> 02:02:40,110
in whatever context we're embedded.

1686
02:02:40,430 --> 02:02:42,990
I I think I see that.

1687
02:02:43,230 --> 02:02:49,060
But and I think and I I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but I feel like

1688
02:02:49,060 --> 02:02:54,900
when I step into an indigenous context, I understand better.

1689
02:02:55,140 --> 02:03:00,820
And that's true in there are in people who write in

1690
02:03:00,820 --> 02:03:05,780
native studies and really identify

1691
02:03:06,390 --> 02:03:11,750
common characteristics of um really we are talking about

1692
02:03:11,750 --> 02:03:17,670
epistemology and ontology and and um just an understanding of how the

1693
02:03:17,670 --> 02:03:23,510
world works and the relationships and how important they are um i i feel

1694
02:03:23,510 --> 02:03:28,950
like i get that better than if i wouldn't have had this experience.

1695
02:03:29,430 --> 02:03:34,560
Is that do you think that's because I mean, maybe these are not mutually exclusive, but you

1696
02:03:34,560 --> 02:03:40,000
know, there's the one version where sort of like uh everyone in a modern, I don't know what

1697
02:03:40,000 --> 02:03:45,920
the right adjective is, but you know, in a in a weird society, um we're all

1698
02:03:45,920 --> 02:03:51,920
just sort of like really poorly developed politically and coalitionally because we don't

1699
02:03:51,920 --> 02:03:57,120
have these like evolutionarily valid training life experiences.

1700
02:03:57,280 --> 02:04:02,710
So is it that that everybody, it's sort of like the hunting, you know, like you know, Chris

1701
02:04:02,710 --> 02:04:05,910
talked about how, you know, people are just really good, or everyone we've had on, you

1702
02:04:05,910 --> 02:04:10,630
know, you're good at identifying plants, you're a good hunter, you just have this, you're

1703
02:04:10,790 --> 02:04:15,910
you're healthy, you have this great knowledge base, and you know, and we we are all, you

1704
02:04:15,910 --> 02:04:20,070
know, David and I especially, you know, we're just like bumbling idiots.

1705
02:04:20,310 --> 02:04:26,310
You know, so there's that, so one version is you get it when you show up because you have

1706
02:04:26,310 --> 02:04:31,980
been trained in a crucible of sort of really, you know, you've

1707
02:04:31,980 --> 02:04:37,580
gotten good training in like actually ecologically or evolutionarily valid alliance and

1708
02:04:37,580 --> 02:04:38,460
politics?

1709
02:04:38,700 --> 02:04:44,060
Or is it that it's just that the cues

1710
02:04:44,620 --> 02:04:50,380
for our evolved psychologies, it's just fitting the cue structure better, where it's just

1711
02:04:50,460 --> 02:04:55,340
you're hearing the conversations, you're seeing the people, and and maybe the same appetite

1712
02:04:55,340 --> 02:05:00,890
that people have for sort of you know, TV shows or dramas or fiction is

1713
02:05:01,290 --> 02:05:06,970
this appetite for, you know, um, that's politics for our evolved psychology,

1714
02:05:07,290 --> 02:05:11,370
not current politics of, you know, abstract things.

1715
02:05:11,530 --> 02:05:17,290
So do you think, you know, so this experience that you understand it, and may

1716
02:05:17,370 --> 02:05:19,050
again, maybe these are not separable.

1717
02:05:19,130 --> 02:05:24,440
I mean, it's a hard question, but do you do you get a sense that it's because your evolved

1718
02:05:24,440 --> 02:05:30,440
psychology is responding to that this is just the right Q structure for all

1719
02:05:30,440 --> 02:05:30,840
of us?

1720
02:05:31,000 --> 02:05:35,880
Or is it that the people you're working with are also just like really good at it because

1721
02:05:36,200 --> 02:05:41,400
they have this um face-to-face, like they're just they're just really good at it and we're

1722
02:05:41,400 --> 02:05:42,200
just really bad at it.

1723
02:05:42,280 --> 02:05:43,320
Or maybe, and again, yeah.

1724
02:05:43,640 --> 02:05:45,240
I don't I don't think we are really bad at it.

1725
02:05:45,320 --> 02:05:46,360
I think we're really good at it.

1726
02:05:46,600 --> 02:05:52,040
I think that evolved psychology is is part of the way we all

1727
02:05:52,310 --> 02:05:53,910
perceive the world.

1728
02:05:54,150 --> 02:05:59,750
I think that I perceive it more acutely because of,

1729
02:06:00,230 --> 02:06:05,910
and I imagine that you do both of you also, because you've thought about the

1730
02:06:06,070 --> 02:06:11,430
the theory of it, you know, the principles and the paradigm and and um

1731
02:06:11,830 --> 02:06:17,670
and you'll r recognize the patterns and the behaviors more rapidly and

1732
02:06:17,670 --> 02:06:20,310
more consciously than than others.

1733
02:06:20,550 --> 02:06:26,160
But you know, we all know movers and shakers and it's context dependent,

1734
02:06:26,320 --> 02:06:27,280
I think, you know.

1735
02:06:27,520 --> 02:06:32,800
So it may be, again, the academic senate, it may be the people who can move the

1736
02:06:32,800 --> 02:06:38,720
conversation in a faculty meeting effectively, it may be making

1737
02:06:38,720 --> 02:06:44,560
sure or you know, organizing the joint conference of HBS and the

1738
02:06:44,560 --> 02:06:49,440
Cultural Evolutionary Society, you know, those folks are, you know,

1739
02:06:49,760 --> 02:06:55,390
embedded in structure of alliances and and um and that

1740
02:06:55,550 --> 02:07:01,230
maybe there's a little more status driving going on in in our you know modern world than

1741
02:07:01,390 --> 02:07:07,390
in the um than there is in a small community but I

1742
02:07:07,390 --> 02:07:12,430
don't think anyone would deny that there isn't status driving going on you know everywhere

1743
02:07:12,670 --> 02:07:17,950
and and coalitions being formed everywhere and I think the same the same

1744
02:07:17,950 --> 02:07:19,470
principles apply.

1745
02:07:19,840 --> 02:07:20,160
Yeah.

1746
02:07:20,400 --> 02:07:22,480
Just hunting and giving me.

1747
02:07:22,960 --> 02:07:24,720
It's just different behaviors.

1748
02:07:25,040 --> 02:07:30,960
One of the things that really struck me in the uh October um symposium

1749
02:07:30,960 --> 02:07:36,480
was so many people came up and just talked about how you and John had opened sort of your

1750
02:07:36,480 --> 02:07:40,160
house and your home and your family up to them.

1751
02:07:41,200 --> 02:07:46,690
And uh I'm wondering, is that sort of the flip side of you going to

1752
02:07:46,690 --> 02:07:52,610
Kanambo in the sense of, I mean, the dividing line between work and

1753
02:07:52,610 --> 02:07:58,610
home or home life or family life, um, you know, how

1754
02:07:58,770 --> 02:08:02,850
do you I don't even know what my question is, but I think, you know, like it's just the

1755
02:08:02,850 --> 02:08:08,370
observation that I was really struck with how many students felt like you

1756
02:08:08,860 --> 02:08:12,300
adopted them and really took care of them.

1757
02:08:12,460 --> 02:08:15,740
Um is that something you that you did consciously?

1758
02:08:18,620 --> 02:08:24,460
Well, kind of, but um it wasn't unusual

1759
02:08:24,700 --> 02:08:30,620
to find that one of us independently had invited somebody to come, you know, and stay.

1760
02:08:31,020 --> 02:08:36,620
But I think honestly, I think it's who we both John and I

1761
02:08:37,110 --> 02:08:42,870
are or were, you know, um, in our homes when we grew up,

1762
02:08:43,190 --> 02:08:48,950
we often had uh lots of other people, you know, coming in and living with us for

1763
02:08:48,950 --> 02:08:49,990
periods of time.

1764
02:08:50,150 --> 02:08:55,510
And, you know, it might be in my case, somebody who got thrown out of the house by their

1765
02:08:55,510 --> 02:08:55,750
mother.

1766
02:08:55,830 --> 02:08:59,320
And my mother would say, Well, you know, they can stay here.

1767
02:08:59,480 --> 02:09:04,760
And it would talk to the parents and say, you know, they'll be okay and we'll make sure.

1768
02:09:04,840 --> 02:09:07,560
And a year later they're still there.

1769
02:09:07,720 --> 02:09:11,080
You know, so I mean, that was part of my growing up.

1770
02:09:11,240 --> 02:09:17,080
And then John comes from a really big extended, you know, Mexican

1771
02:09:17,080 --> 02:09:17,720
family.

1772
02:09:17,960 --> 02:09:23,730
And so to have cousins and aunts and his

1773
02:09:23,730 --> 02:09:28,290
mother's sister lived with them almost his entire life.

1774
02:09:29,330 --> 02:09:35,090
And so I think, uh, and

1775
02:09:35,490 --> 02:09:39,330
I don't know, maybe I've not had this conversation with the therapist, but maybe they would

1776
02:09:39,330 --> 02:09:41,380
say we don't have good boundaries.

1777
02:09:41,700 --> 02:09:47,620
But um, you know, I don't, I I think it's maybe that pre-adapted us to field

1778
02:09:47,620 --> 02:09:53,380
work, you know, because there, there, there are boundaries, you have to learn them, but

1779
02:09:53,380 --> 02:09:54,900
they're really different.

1780
02:09:55,060 --> 02:09:59,460
And um and you know, even proxymics are different.

1781
02:09:59,620 --> 02:10:04,820
And um what is your business versus somebody else's business, you know, especially us,

1782
02:10:05,060 --> 02:10:09,990
because you know, there had to be a whole new category of person established for us.

1783
02:10:10,310 --> 02:10:16,150
So um boundaries were um we learned about them because

1784
02:10:16,470 --> 02:10:18,390
we kind of needed to.

1785
02:10:18,550 --> 02:10:24,390
But yeah yeah I mean I think that's the anthropology um is is is

1786
02:10:24,390 --> 02:10:30,310
exactly sitting is is the science of those boundaries right and sort of maybe just sitting

1787
02:10:30,310 --> 02:10:36,150
right on them or pushing through them right yeah yeah and and and that

1788
02:10:36,150 --> 02:10:42,080
was my you know for finding a place to do research

1789
02:10:42,080 --> 02:10:47,760
and maintaining that research site, you know, um, living well within the

1790
02:10:47,760 --> 02:10:52,560
community and contributing a benefit to the community.

1791
02:10:52,960 --> 02:10:57,360
Um and and understanding that you're there.

1792
02:10:58,000 --> 02:11:03,950
Um I'm not even sure I would say as a guest, but you're there by virtue, you're hosted,

1793
02:11:04,110 --> 02:11:09,790
you know, you're there, especially in an indigenous territory where it's we're

1794
02:11:09,790 --> 02:11:13,230
totally dependent on people's permission to be here.

1795
02:11:13,470 --> 02:11:17,310
So um it's by their grace, sort of in a way, yeah.

1796
02:11:17,630 --> 02:11:18,350
Absolutely.

1797
02:11:18,510 --> 02:11:19,070
Yeah.

1798
02:11:19,310 --> 02:11:19,950
Yeah.

1799
02:11:21,560 --> 02:11:22,840
So I think

1800
02:11:28,040 --> 02:11:33,640
one of the one of the things we ask people is um if there's anything we should

1801
02:11:33,640 --> 02:11:39,320
ask you, um, because we we often don't even know enough to ask the right questions.

1802
02:11:39,480 --> 02:11:45,240
Is there anything um that yeah on at

1803
02:11:45,240 --> 02:11:47,640
whatever level that we should have asked?

1804
02:11:51,010 --> 02:11:53,650
Don't think so.

1805
02:11:54,530 --> 02:12:00,450
Um I think, you know, for students and

1806
02:12:00,450 --> 02:12:06,450
others who are thinking about establishing a field site, I think recognizing

1807
02:12:06,450 --> 02:12:12,140
how much time it can take to do that and how important getting

1808
02:12:12,140 --> 02:12:17,820
permissions and building relationships is before you can even go into

1809
02:12:17,980 --> 02:12:19,100
a community.

1810
02:12:20,300 --> 02:12:26,220
So we were over, we were about 11

1811
02:12:26,220 --> 02:12:31,420
months in before we actually started our field work in

1812
02:12:31,420 --> 02:12:32,380
Conambo.

1813
02:12:33,020 --> 02:12:38,610
So um the IRB is a really great process because it

1814
02:12:38,610 --> 02:12:44,610
requires you now to think about what your potential impacts on a community may be.

1815
02:12:44,850 --> 02:12:50,850
And we do have impacts on a community when we go in, it just changes a lot for people.

1816
02:12:51,090 --> 02:12:56,980
We become, you know, kind of, we we need to think about that and

1817
02:12:56,980 --> 02:13:02,980
we need to think about what kind of benefit we can return and how

1818
02:13:02,980 --> 02:13:08,500
we can return a benefit in a way that allows people the choice to

1819
02:13:08,500 --> 02:13:14,100
participate or not participate in the research so we did um

1820
02:13:15,140 --> 02:13:20,980
we did we were basically served as health promoters and um the first aid station

1821
02:13:21,220 --> 02:13:27,070
and facilitated um that um access to

1822
02:13:27,070 --> 02:13:33,070
medical care that people when asked you know that's what they wanted and we

1823
02:13:33,070 --> 02:13:38,910
could do that um a lot of ucsp folks have done that that was a model that we

1824
02:13:38,910 --> 02:13:44,670
followed um you know john could give injections and

1825
02:13:44,670 --> 02:13:50,320
do little sutures because he'd worked in a medical research lab and you know and those

1826
02:13:50,480 --> 02:13:53,120
were and he had worked in a venom lab.

1827
02:13:53,360 --> 02:13:56,320
So and he could fix things like radios.

1828
02:13:56,480 --> 02:14:00,640
So when there was a snake bite and the radio was down, he could gauge.

1829
02:14:00,800 --> 02:14:06,800
And we had brought in anti-venom and um so in communic we so he fixed the

1830
02:14:06,800 --> 02:14:12,560
radio and and you know, and and then so we could call the pilots

1831
02:14:12,720 --> 02:14:18,590
in for the emergency evacuation and could gauge, you know, the point at which it might be

1832
02:14:18,590 --> 02:14:22,510
necessary to administer anti-ven and which you don't want to do if you don't have to

1833
02:14:22,590 --> 02:14:24,910
because of the necrosis that can result.

1834
02:14:25,310 --> 02:14:28,350
Anyway, there's there's so many, so many things, right?

1835
02:14:28,510 --> 02:14:29,470
So many things.

1836
02:14:29,790 --> 02:14:31,630
Ask people what they need.

1837
02:14:31,790 --> 02:14:33,790
That's I think the advice.

1838
02:14:34,030 --> 02:14:38,190
Make sure you ask permission before you go anywhere.

1839
02:14:38,430 --> 02:14:41,790
Don't take a lot of photographs, don't be rude.

1840
02:14:41,920 --> 02:14:45,520
Um, you know good good good life lessons for any context actually.

1841
02:14:45,840 --> 02:14:46,000
Right.

1842
02:14:46,320 --> 02:14:46,560
Right.

1843
02:14:46,720 --> 02:14:50,480
And and we basically didn't go anywhere unless we were invited.

1844
02:14:50,640 --> 02:14:55,280
We waited for invitations and I find that to be good um

1845
02:14:56,240 --> 02:14:56,880
method.

1846
02:14:57,200 --> 02:14:57,600
Yeah.

1847
02:14:57,760 --> 02:14:59,200
So how how long?

1848
02:14:59,520 --> 02:15:00,560
So how long has it been?

1849
02:15:00,640 --> 02:15:05,280
So from the moment you step foot in Kanambo till this day, how many years is that, if you

1850
02:15:05,280 --> 02:15:06,080
don't mind me asking?

1851
02:15:06,160 --> 02:15:06,960
I'm just curious.

1852
02:15:07,360 --> 02:15:13,030
No, we first went in 1992 and

1853
02:15:13,270 --> 02:15:18,390
maybe around April, somewhere around there.

1854
02:15:18,550 --> 02:15:19,750
We went in first.

1855
02:15:19,990 --> 02:15:25,750
Um be and then that was part of our checking out different places and then

1856
02:15:25,750 --> 02:15:29,190
going back to the States and regrouping and coming back.

1857
02:15:29,430 --> 02:15:35,270
So we landed in Konambo Christmas Eve, 1992, with a two

1858
02:15:35,350 --> 02:15:35,990
year old.

1859
02:15:36,230 --> 02:15:41,660
And um, so that's been a few years, right?

1860
02:15:42,140 --> 02:15:47,660
32, 35, yeah, 32, 33, something like that.

1861
02:15:48,060 --> 02:15:53,740
And and and the uh the if you were gonna graph sort of how much knowledge people

1862
02:15:53,820 --> 02:15:59,630
feel giving you, or sort of how much you know about the community, is it that even in

1863
02:15:59,630 --> 02:16:04,270
the last 10 years you've learned so much more or is it trailing off?

1864
02:16:04,350 --> 02:16:10,350
Or, you know, what's the curve of um I haven't been back since John

1865
02:16:10,510 --> 02:16:15,070
and I did our last field trip there in 2018 and then came COVID and

1866
02:16:16,750 --> 02:16:19,950
almost every every anthropologist we've talked to is had the COVID line.

1867
02:16:20,030 --> 02:16:20,270
Yeah.

1868
02:16:20,750 --> 02:16:23,150
So it's it's time to go back.

1869
02:16:23,230 --> 02:16:26,580
And it's not that I haven't been in touch with people.

1870
02:16:26,740 --> 02:16:30,740
Like I said, I get phone calls and I get lots of Facebook messages.

1871
02:16:30,980 --> 02:16:36,900
But um so in that sense, uh I mean the

1872
02:16:36,900 --> 02:16:39,700
world of people in Conambo has changed so much.

1873
02:16:39,940 --> 02:16:43,540
The younger generation speaks Spanish, they're literate.

1874
02:16:43,780 --> 02:16:49,690
We just saw the first um kid born in Konambo get her

1875
02:16:49,690 --> 02:16:50,490
college degree.

1876
02:16:50,730 --> 02:16:51,530
Oh cool.

1877
02:16:52,010 --> 02:16:54,970
And so just there's a lot of changes.

1878
02:16:55,210 --> 02:17:00,970
But I think honestly, I mean John and I started doing what we call tag

1879
02:17:00,970 --> 02:17:06,730
team field work and tag team parenting, and we did a lot of separate trips because somebody

1880
02:17:06,730 --> 02:17:09,530
had the kids back as all that stuff.

1881
02:17:09,770 --> 02:17:13,480
But um, and I learned a lot.

1882
02:17:14,200 --> 02:17:20,040
Um I think of them as pajama parties, just traveling with women and

1883
02:17:20,120 --> 02:17:25,800
um, you know, getting a big hotel room or staying on the

1884
02:17:25,800 --> 02:17:31,480
river and you know a shelter that is built, you know, for the

1885
02:17:31,480 --> 02:17:31,960
night.

1886
02:17:32,200 --> 02:17:36,950
Um but just um I I think I learn stuff all the time.

1887
02:17:37,110 --> 02:17:41,990
Every time I go, I learn something new and um

1888
02:17:44,950 --> 02:17:49,830
so the individual stories, but there's tons of data to be analyzed.

1889
02:17:49,990 --> 02:17:55,430
So there's still work to be done and I gotta go back this summer and even

1890
02:17:55,990 --> 02:18:00,800
touch base and make sure I'm getting, you know, when are you coming?

1891
02:18:01,040 --> 02:18:02,240
Are you coming back?

1892
02:18:02,480 --> 02:18:03,680
You know, all the time.

1893
02:18:03,840 --> 02:18:08,800
So it's time I have responsibilities and people that I care about.

1894
02:18:08,960 --> 02:18:10,080
So yeah.

1895
02:18:10,240 --> 02:18:10,480
Yeah.

1896
02:18:10,560 --> 02:18:16,240
It's such an incredible, I mean, you know, I think we're all I think we're all lucky in the

1897
02:18:16,240 --> 02:18:18,240
evolutionary behavioral sciences to be doing it.

1898
02:18:18,480 --> 02:18:19,440
I feel that way.

1899
02:18:19,600 --> 02:18:25,590
Um and I especially think that, you know, the the anthropology part of

1900
02:18:25,590 --> 02:18:31,590
that is the it's just an incredible, you know, these these societies are changing so

1901
02:18:31,590 --> 02:18:37,110
much and to be the generation that sort of is seeing it,

1902
02:18:37,350 --> 02:18:41,110
um, um, you know, it's it's it's vanishing, right?

1903
02:18:41,270 --> 02:18:46,390
These the the the these different places that are not all h homogeneous.

1904
02:18:46,470 --> 02:18:52,240
Um It's such a um just an incredible opportunity to sort of document this

1905
02:18:52,320 --> 02:18:54,240
this way of living and these people.

1906
02:18:55,520 --> 02:18:56,160
Yeah.

1907
02:18:56,640 --> 02:18:56,960
Yeah.

1908
02:18:57,120 --> 02:19:02,800
And I, you know, on the one hand, I feel like I have some responsibility to say we don't

1909
02:19:02,800 --> 02:19:05,760
want to contribute to the, you know, the myth of the vanishing.

1910
02:19:06,080 --> 02:19:06,640
No, exactly.

1911
02:19:06,720 --> 02:19:06,960
Yeah.

1912
02:19:07,040 --> 02:19:11,200
And I I was even in my humming and hawing, that's I was sort of thinking about saying that.

1913
02:19:11,280 --> 02:19:11,760
Yeah, exactly.

1914
02:19:12,000 --> 02:19:17,910
And and that the these, you know, sort of principles of indigenity are

1915
02:19:17,910 --> 02:19:20,470
found in urban Indian communities.

1916
02:19:20,630 --> 02:19:24,070
And you know, my students on campus who are native.

1917
02:19:24,230 --> 02:19:29,910
You know, there's there's just a a way of thinking about the world that

1918
02:19:30,230 --> 02:19:35,990
is shared and um and and I'm done I don't have to

1919
02:19:36,040 --> 02:19:38,280
declare that as my own insight.

1920
02:19:38,360 --> 02:19:43,320
You know, we can look at lots of writing by native scholars

1921
02:19:44,120 --> 02:19:45,720
and find it there.

1922
02:19:45,960 --> 02:19:51,240
So I don't I'm I'm worried though about going back.

1923
02:19:51,320 --> 02:19:54,920
You know, so many people, including John, have died.

1924
02:19:55,080 --> 02:19:55,400
Yeah.

1925
02:19:55,640 --> 02:20:01,160
There will be observations of all those deaths and um there

1926
02:20:02,040 --> 02:20:07,330
um I don't I don't know what this next generation

1927
02:20:07,890 --> 02:20:09,090
is gonna be.

1928
02:20:09,330 --> 02:20:13,170
That generation though, there are boisterous ones, you know.

1929
02:20:13,250 --> 02:20:19,170
I mean, I think always, but it's when they we talked, we used to

1930
02:20:19,170 --> 02:20:25,090
talk about sorry, UCSB this way when we were graduate students, and there was sort of the

1931
02:20:25,090 --> 02:20:30,360
golden handshake given to a bunch of or offered to a bunch of faculty who retired, and then

1932
02:20:30,360 --> 02:20:34,760
suddenly the ones who had been the junior roosters became the senior roosters, and there

1933
02:20:34,760 --> 02:20:36,920
was a lot of cockfight.

1934
02:20:37,400 --> 02:20:42,760
And um, so I think that that's probably going on right now in Conambo to a certain

1935
02:20:42,760 --> 02:20:43,480
extent.

1936
02:20:43,720 --> 02:20:49,560
Um, I and that would be interesting to see actually those leveling

1937
02:20:49,560 --> 02:20:55,490
mechanisms and what the elders are doing, but they're probably just letting them do it, you

1938
02:20:55,490 --> 02:20:57,730
know, because that's more typical.

1939
02:20:58,610 --> 02:21:00,610
So yeah, I don't know.

1940
02:21:00,770 --> 02:21:01,410
Yeah.

1941
02:21:01,730 --> 02:21:03,890
Things are changing for sure.

1942
02:21:04,210 --> 02:21:04,850
Yeah.

1943
02:21:05,490 --> 02:21:11,330
Well, thank you, Brenda, for uh giving your uh insightful

1944
02:21:11,330 --> 02:21:12,930
theoretical perspective.

1945
02:21:13,090 --> 02:21:19,000
Um, but more importantly the rich empirical reality uh that our theories will

1946
02:21:19,000 --> 02:21:24,760
inevitably collide with as we embark on this mission to try to understand

1947
02:21:24,920 --> 02:21:26,520
uh who we are.

1948
02:21:27,240 --> 02:21:31,800
Uh it was a real pleasure talking with you, and I really appreciate you coming on the

1949
02:21:31,800 --> 02:21:32,200
podcast.

1950
02:21:32,520 --> 02:21:33,320
Yeah, thank you.

1951
02:21:33,560 --> 02:21:39,480
Yeah, and uh and I I will butcher this, but you and John both are Hundri and Amu,

1952
02:21:39,850 --> 02:21:40,570
uh yes.

1953
02:21:40,810 --> 02:21:42,970
So both both big and organizers.

1954
02:21:43,050 --> 02:21:46,010
So thank you for for doing that and and thank you for coming on.

1955
02:21:46,410 --> 02:21:51,770
Thank you for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to reflect on all of this and

1956
02:21:51,770 --> 02:21:53,690
engage with those ideas.

1957
02:21:53,850 --> 02:21:56,730
I I think all these theories are compatible.

1958
02:21:56,970 --> 02:22:00,730
So I think we're on the right track for sure.

1959
02:22:01,880 --> 02:22:03,160
So thank you.

1960
02:22:03,400 --> 02:22:03,720
Yeah.

1961
02:22:03,800 --> 02:22:04,360
Thank you.

1962
02:22:04,680 --> 02:22:05,000
Okay.

1963
02:22:07,560 --> 02:22:10,040
So David, we've completed another episode.

1964
02:22:10,360 --> 02:22:11,080
We sure did.

1965
02:22:11,160 --> 02:22:15,720
Um so what can people do if they're uh enjoying what they're hearing and they want to

1966
02:22:15,720 --> 02:22:18,680
support us and uh give us some encouragement?

1967
02:22:19,160 --> 02:22:22,920
Um they can share our episodes on social media.

1968
02:22:23,160 --> 02:22:27,960
They can give us a rating um on whatever format they listen to.

1969
02:22:28,440 --> 02:22:30,520
They can also leave a positive review.

1970
02:22:30,770 --> 02:22:31,090
Yeah.

1971
02:22:31,250 --> 02:22:32,290
All those would be great.

1972
02:22:32,370 --> 02:22:36,210
And we also have a Patreon page if you're so inclined to support us.

1973
02:22:36,450 --> 02:22:37,090
Yeah.

1974
02:22:37,410 --> 02:22:40,050
So uh yeah, I guess we'll see you next week then.