WEBVTT

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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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Um, if it were me and I was choosing a research question, it would be the cultural

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semiotics of the Ritz-Carlton.

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I'm more comfortable there than I am in Kanambo.

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Um uh and we'll get to Kanambo.

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Yeah, so Kanambo, and I mean one way to maybe introduce Kanambo, and maybe this is a

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cartoonish version, but for me it was in reading John's dissertation, which is incredible.

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And we should we'll post a link to John's dissertation probably for this episode.

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um, is I think this was like an earlier colonial explorer who

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sort of met with the the kind of Ashwar community, but it was about um

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this was a community that resisted not only um, you know, was it

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Mayan and also Spanish?

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I mean, can you give the and there's also an anecdote with uh with molten gold.

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Is this the um that was the Spanish?

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Yeah, the so the yeah, the the ethnohistory of the region is that the Schwar

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and Achwar territories in the sort of flanks of the the the eastern flanks

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of the Andes and down into the upper Amazonian watershed that is the Ecuadorian

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Amazon, that those folks um successfully resisted um the

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Inca incursion, which and and there were others um in Ecuador especially because that was

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late in the empire expansion of the Inca um but they were repelled by um by

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the Achuar and the Shuar and um and the Achar and the Shuar also

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repelled initial um Spanish incursions and the story

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

00:19:09.310 --> 00:19:10.750
little bit from where we are.

00:19:11.070 --> 00:19:16.670
But um but the story is that they poured molten gold down the throat of a

00:19:16.670 --> 00:19:22.110
Spanish, you know, um yikes in the church.

00:19:22.350 --> 00:19:22.670
Yeah.

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

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

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,

00:19:38.740 --> 00:19:40.740
you wanted this gold, here it is, sort of.

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.

00:19:45.620 --> 00:19:49.940
And Michael Hunter wrote about that in his ethnography on the Schwar.

00:19:50.260 --> 00:19:54.420
And I haven't actually tracked down those historical sources.

00:19:54.580 --> 00:19:57.780
So I don't know how well founded they are.

00:19:58.260 --> 00:19:58.580
Okay.

00:19:58.820 --> 00:19:59.060
Yeah.

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

00:20:05.070 --> 00:20:06.750
where he got that quote from.

00:20:06.830 --> 00:20:08.270
But yeah, it's quite striking.

00:20:08.350 --> 00:20:13.150
You don't always come across an academic dissertation with the introduction to the field

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

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

00:20:24.750 --> 00:20:30.620
who was trying to sort of um basically exploit the the land and the community.

00:20:30.700 --> 00:20:36.540
So and and the Achuars still see themselves as fierce

00:20:36.540 --> 00:20:36.860
people.

00:20:37.500 --> 00:20:40.620
And so I can tell you things that were said.

00:20:41.100 --> 00:20:47.020
Um there was a one John actually I was staying in a

00:20:47.020 --> 00:20:49.410
community with Neil.

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

00:20:56.130 --> 00:20:57.250
you, it's too dangerous.

00:20:57.410 --> 00:21:00.450
And I'm like, okay, so they went without me and I was sad.

00:21:00.690 --> 00:21:06.610
But the first place that they stayed, the traditional greeting from a

00:21:06.610 --> 00:21:12.450
person, a Nachoir person in their house is you call up, hoot up

00:21:12.820 --> 00:21:18.100
to the houses, which are usually built high on river terraces and defensible locations

00:21:18.180 --> 00:21:19.140
traditionally.

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

00:21:25.220 --> 00:21:25.780
sleep.

00:21:26.340 --> 00:21:32.020
So John got that response, his first um visit going down the river.

00:21:32.980 --> 00:21:35.220
I can't imagine that was very reassuring.

00:21:35.650 --> 00:21:36.210
Oh okay.

00:21:36.290 --> 00:21:36.450
Thanks.

00:21:37.810 --> 00:21:39.250
We need to know that's the good answer.

00:21:39.570 --> 00:21:40.370
That's the good answer.

00:21:40.450 --> 00:21:43.090
You need to do your homework to know that's the good answer.

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

00:21:49.730 --> 00:21:54.210
was a big fight um among a bunch of senior men.

00:21:54.290 --> 00:21:55.810
It was not dignified.

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,

00:22:01.570 --> 00:22:07.020
but um, but one of the men who um identifies as

00:22:07.020 --> 00:22:12.940
Qichwa said, you know, basically threatened to kill one of

00:22:12.940 --> 00:22:14.460
the Achwar men.

00:22:14.780 --> 00:22:20.620
And this is Isak Pijora, and he stood up and he said, You cannot count kill

00:22:20.620 --> 00:22:20.860
me.

00:22:21.020 --> 00:22:22.300
I am Achwar.

00:22:22.780 --> 00:22:27.100
I will kill you when you go outside to pee at night on the trail.

00:22:27.260 --> 00:22:33.190
And that's the standard way that raids are mounted especially against individuals

00:22:33.670 --> 00:22:37.190
um when killing is targeted.

00:22:37.430 --> 00:22:42.470
So and that's those those threats are real.

00:22:43.350 --> 00:22:49.030
In this case, um I think they were it was understood that this was gonna be

00:22:49.030 --> 00:22:54.710
resolved, but um without violence, but this is still anyway, so the

00:22:54.710 --> 00:23:00.500
threat of violence was there and you know there were

00:23:00.500 --> 00:23:06.500
real situations and and um deaths while we were

00:23:06.500 --> 00:23:12.260
there and um certainly we heard firsthand accounts

00:23:12.260 --> 00:23:18.260
and um and were there for resolutions of some of those things and watched

00:23:18.260 --> 00:23:23.990
people's I mean, conflict management strategies, which might just be that

00:23:23.990 --> 00:23:29.590
you hop out of the canoe and spend the night sleeping in the forest, you know,

00:23:29.750 --> 00:23:32.230
while we went downriver with other people.

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

00:23:37.990 --> 00:23:39.670
someone who was in that village.

00:23:39.830 --> 00:23:42.870
And there's still the obligation for retaliation.

00:23:43.270 --> 00:23:45.990
But people have strategies for dealing with that.

00:23:46.070 --> 00:23:51.500
And in this case, it was not to be confrontational, not to go into the

00:23:51.500 --> 00:23:53.340
community, just to get out of the.

00:23:53.820 --> 00:23:59.340
I mean, the canoe stopped and Simone Kuhee has um got out.

00:23:59.660 --> 00:24:01.260
And I was like, what's going on?

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

00:24:05.820 --> 00:24:07.100
a canoe always.

00:24:07.260 --> 00:24:11.100
But um anyway, that was one of those um things.

00:24:11.340 --> 00:24:16.250
So there were times when we were worried

00:24:17.050 --> 00:24:18.730
about our own safety.

00:24:18.970 --> 00:24:24.810
There were times when I was worried about my own safety if there were death threats

00:24:24.810 --> 00:24:29.210
against the person whose house I was staying at, for example.

00:24:29.530 --> 00:24:34.970
And people would tell me, don't worry, Brenda, it would cause

00:24:34.970 --> 00:24:38.820
problems if someone killed you, no one will kill you.

00:24:39.860 --> 00:24:42.900
And I just wow, so reassuring.

00:24:43.700 --> 00:24:45.860
The consequences after, yeah.

00:24:47.380 --> 00:24:53.060
Well, you know, I just I really it was still kind of nerve-wracking, but I

00:24:54.340 --> 00:24:56.660
I learned a lot every time.

00:24:57.300 --> 00:25:01.060
And and I learned to trust people.

00:25:01.540 --> 00:25:07.510
So um, and I trusted that people really watched out for me and

00:25:07.510 --> 00:25:13.350
watched out for John and watched out for our kids, because we

00:25:13.350 --> 00:25:19.110
eventually had three of them, and they each came to the field at different

00:25:19.110 --> 00:25:19.750
times.

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

00:25:27.030 --> 00:25:32.870
and how to maintain field sites, which is one of the questions that you raised

00:25:33.190 --> 00:25:38.800
earlier, Dave, trusting, being able to trust, learning to

00:25:38.800 --> 00:25:44.320
trust, learning what you don't know, and being able to

00:25:45.200 --> 00:25:50.800
um follow instructions, you know, that and

00:25:50.800 --> 00:25:55.760
respect the people who live there, that they have greater knowledge than you do.

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

00:26:02.150 --> 00:26:08.150
live, period, you know, but to live safely, but to live well within

00:26:08.150 --> 00:26:13.190
the community and to learn as much as you can possibly learn.

00:26:13.510 --> 00:26:17.980
So that was so so listening to people is really important.

00:26:18.380 --> 00:26:19.020
Amazing.

00:26:19.180 --> 00:26:21.420
Um, we just got to Kanambo.

00:26:21.500 --> 00:26:23.260
So we were in New Guinea.

00:26:23.420 --> 00:26:26.060
Um, Kanambo, I mean, there's sort of two questions.

00:26:26.220 --> 00:26:29.740
One is sort of what was the personal decision to go there?

00:26:29.900 --> 00:26:35.100
And then the second thing is that I think most people listening are thinking, well, you

00:26:35.100 --> 00:26:38.300
know, this sounds like a very scary, violent place.

00:26:38.940 --> 00:26:44.910
Um is is that something that the people

00:26:45.230 --> 00:26:50.270
there think of themselves as it being a scary and violent place?

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

00:26:56.590 --> 00:26:57.790
you know what I'm sort of getting at?

00:26:57.870 --> 00:26:58.190
So yeah.

00:26:58.590 --> 00:26:59.150
I do.

00:26:59.390 --> 00:27:03.760
Um so there is the

00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:11.840
latent potential for violence, and that's always managed

00:27:12.080 --> 00:27:13.440
and always there.

00:27:13.760 --> 00:27:19.760
So there's a lot of time spent on consensus building, addressing problems when

00:27:19.760 --> 00:27:25.440
they arise, identifying problems early, and that's really the day to day

00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:30.800
work of adults in the community is to um

00:27:31.770 --> 00:27:36.090
manage politics um because of the potential for violence.

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

00:27:40.970 --> 00:27:43.930
got in to Conambo because it really does take a year.

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.

00:27:49.930 --> 00:27:55.220
So um, but but Conambo and those territories

00:27:55.860 --> 00:28:01.060
had a history of endemic rating and

00:28:02.020 --> 00:28:07.940
into boy, I figured this out from at one point

00:28:08.020 --> 00:28:13.860
because I've written it, but certainly past the 1960s, you know,

00:28:14.180 --> 00:28:16.580
into the 1970s.

00:28:17.060 --> 00:28:22.810
And we so the older people in the

00:28:22.810 --> 00:28:26.970
communities at the time had experienced this.

00:28:27.610 --> 00:28:28.890
Had experienced a raiding.

00:28:29.290 --> 00:28:34.730
Had experienced raiding, and I mean, literally, you know,

00:28:35.050 --> 00:28:40.890
captive women, you know, sisters who were still living in the communities where they had

00:28:40.890 --> 00:28:43.450
been taken when they were stolen during raids.

00:28:43.930 --> 00:28:48.500
Um, I mean, those were discussions that evoked a lot of emotion.

00:28:48.660 --> 00:28:54.420
Um, people who had killed, who would come to our house,

00:28:54.500 --> 00:28:55.700
you know, at night.

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

00:29:01.860 --> 00:29:03.060
people he had killed.

00:29:03.300 --> 00:29:04.820
I think they were five.

00:29:05.060 --> 00:29:07.060
He knew, of course, exactly.

00:29:07.300 --> 00:29:10.180
And um, and his children didn't know those stories.

00:29:10.420 --> 00:29:10.740
Wow.

00:29:11.130 --> 00:29:15.930
And when we went into communities, people would tell the stories that they knew.

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

00:29:22.090 --> 00:29:24.250
her cousins in a canoe.

00:29:24.650 --> 00:29:30.570
Um so that and she wasn't killed, but you know, her cousins were.

00:29:31.210 --> 00:29:32.170
And um

00:29:37.120 --> 00:29:42.880
So I think men, I was John and I were thirty-four,

00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:45.280
I think, when we went into Conambo.

00:29:45.760 --> 00:29:51.680
And the so the men and women

00:29:51.680 --> 00:29:57.520
who had experienced these big raids, um, and active

00:29:57.520 --> 00:29:58.400
rating.

00:30:00.310 --> 00:30:04.950
We're married to women my age.

00:30:05.190 --> 00:30:06.950
So a little bit older.

00:30:07.510 --> 00:30:10.870
So we we and and people referred to this.

00:30:10.950 --> 00:30:16.630
There was one senior person in the community of Konambo, not sorry, in

00:30:16.630 --> 00:30:19.830
Copatalsa, actually on a different river, but where we went first.

00:30:20.070 --> 00:30:24.070
But he referred to it as the time when we were dying.

00:30:24.310 --> 00:30:30.220
And it was a time when community, I want to say community leaders, but they

00:30:30.220 --> 00:30:31.500
weren't community leaders yet.

00:30:31.580 --> 00:30:37.100
They were people who formed communities and then became community leaders because they

00:30:37.100 --> 00:30:41.900
invited others in, others joined them, but they they really

00:30:42.780 --> 00:30:48.380
intentionally worked on conflict management and

00:30:48.380 --> 00:30:52.430
reconstructing um society.

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

00:30:58.190 --> 00:31:04.030
took us a long time, I think, to realize how historically embedded those processes

00:31:04.030 --> 00:31:07.950
were throughout that enormous subcontinent.

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

00:31:15.600 --> 00:31:17.920
addition to my mind, is why?

00:31:18.160 --> 00:31:24.000
So whenever there is any kind of violence that takes place, um we want to know

00:31:24.000 --> 00:31:25.760
why it happened, what were the causes.

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

00:31:30.640 --> 00:31:30.880
head.

00:31:31.040 --> 00:31:31.840
Why did he do it?

00:31:31.920 --> 00:31:32.880
What was the motive?

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

00:31:37.600 --> 00:31:43.510
really terrifying uh scenarios with this ambient possibility of violence being

00:31:43.510 --> 00:31:45.990
a fact of life is why?

00:31:46.150 --> 00:31:51.270
Why what what do you think are the causes of of these killings?

00:31:51.430 --> 00:31:53.190
Um are there multiple causes?

00:31:53.350 --> 00:31:54.470
How do you partition them?

00:31:54.630 --> 00:31:58.070
What is your your understanding here of of what is behind this?

00:31:59.510 --> 00:32:05.350
So from a very reduced perspective, I would say, you know,

00:32:05.590 --> 00:32:11.380
at the core of almost every story of violence

00:32:11.700 --> 00:32:17.380
is um is a conflict over women, and that certainly would have been John's first

00:32:17.700 --> 00:32:18.660
response.

00:32:19.220 --> 00:32:24.820
Um but to understand that

00:32:25.300 --> 00:32:28.750
um it's Conflict conflict over women.

00:32:28.910 --> 00:32:31.230
Could you unpack that for us?

00:32:31.390 --> 00:32:34.750
Because that that is a pretty striking claim.

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

00:32:40.670 --> 00:32:41.150
that's like.

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

00:32:44.990 --> 00:32:48.750
involuntarily celibate and they're you know sometimes they engage in violence.

00:32:48.990 --> 00:32:54.700
Um w what do you what does it mean for uh violence to be

00:32:54.700 --> 00:32:57.180
driven by conflict over women?

00:32:58.220 --> 00:33:04.140
Well, you know, to take kind of one level um captive women are

00:33:04.620 --> 00:33:10.140
you know the women are stolen throughout the world even

00:33:10.140 --> 00:33:11.260
today, right?

00:33:11.420 --> 00:33:17.370
And um but I think to

00:33:17.370 --> 00:33:19.690
contextualize it more,

00:33:23.690 --> 00:33:29.130
again, thinking about small scale societies, places where there are no

00:33:29.130 --> 00:33:34.650
institutionalized positions or institutions that manage

00:33:34.650 --> 00:33:40.650
politics, it's the responsibility of every man and woman to make

00:33:40.970 --> 00:33:46.400
decisions, and there are still cultural institutions for who's

00:33:46.400 --> 00:33:50.880
responsible for responding to particular incidents.

00:33:51.200 --> 00:33:57.040
So partly the answer to your question is that there are

00:33:57.040 --> 00:34:03.040
long histories, there are long genealogies, there are responsibilities on the parts of

00:34:04.080 --> 00:34:09.770
sons, especially to avenge the deaths of their fathers.

00:34:10.010 --> 00:34:12.330
So that's part of the context.

00:34:12.570 --> 00:34:18.410
But if we're talking about conflict over women, um

00:34:20.490 --> 00:34:26.250
in these con I'm going to speak now to Konambo and Achar and

00:34:26.250 --> 00:34:32.090
Qicha and Sabara, which are the three indigenous um ethnolinguistic groups

00:34:32.090 --> 00:34:36.880
represented in that territory, but it's a more general phenomenon.

00:34:37.200 --> 00:34:37.520
So

00:34:47.040 --> 00:34:50.160
women are taken in raids.

00:34:50.640 --> 00:34:53.040
Women are taken individually.

00:34:54.320 --> 00:34:58.320
And this is more historic than, but not only historic.

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

00:35:04.710 --> 00:35:10.470
when he says it is so to be taken for a woman to be taken can

00:35:10.790 --> 00:35:16.630
be um considered true even if she leaves

00:35:16.630 --> 00:35:21.910
of her own volition but without the permission of her father.

00:35:22.620 --> 00:35:28.620
So there are many circumstances in which women run off with men, but

00:35:28.620 --> 00:35:34.220
there are also many historic circumstances where a young girl might be

00:35:34.220 --> 00:35:39.980
bathing by the river and a man from another river basin may

00:35:40.300 --> 00:35:45.820
observe her over time and then snatch her and run with her.

00:35:46.310 --> 00:35:51.350
There may be a retaliatory array, like the Hatfield and McCoy kind of thing, where women

00:35:51.350 --> 00:35:52.230
are taken.

00:35:52.390 --> 00:35:55.750
And those require vengeance.

00:35:57.350 --> 00:36:01.190
If a woman is

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

00:36:09.510 --> 00:36:10.070
grandmother.

00:36:10.230 --> 00:36:16.000
That right he exists for his entire life, that threat to reclaim

00:36:16.320 --> 00:36:22.160
one's daughter can often serve to settle disputes at

00:36:22.160 --> 00:36:26.960
the time, you know, put down the gun or I will take my daughter back.

00:36:28.320 --> 00:36:32.080
But if he were to do that, that would cause problems.

00:36:32.160 --> 00:36:37.850
And the family of the daughter, the husband in

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

00:36:43.770 --> 00:36:49.690
to respond and they could respond by going in a raid to take her back

00:36:50.010 --> 00:36:55.290
um and that circumstance is um is

00:36:55.610 --> 00:37:01.400
true and documented certainly in the oral histories that I've recorded

00:37:01.400 --> 00:37:03.640
in the territory where we work.

00:37:03.960 --> 00:37:06.120
So, and those are not forgotten.

00:37:06.760 --> 00:37:08.120
Those things are not forgotten.

00:37:08.200 --> 00:37:14.040
And a raid might include, you know, physical assault of other people in the

00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:15.480
household.

00:37:15.720 --> 00:37:21.470
It might include killing of men in houses on the way upriver, downriver,

00:37:21.630 --> 00:37:22.830
along the trail.

00:37:23.070 --> 00:37:26.830
It just depends on the level of escalation.

00:37:27.310 --> 00:37:32.670
So strategies to de escalate violence are part of this

00:37:33.630 --> 00:37:35.550
landscape as well.

00:37:36.030 --> 00:37:41.560
And people know how to do that, and they have

00:37:41.800 --> 00:37:46.600
to make decisions about how they're going to respond to

00:37:46.600 --> 00:37:51.880
circumstances that give them the right and the

00:37:51.880 --> 00:37:57.800
responsibility to respond, but they have other responsibilities as well, like maintaining

00:37:57.800 --> 00:37:58.280
peace.

00:37:58.600 --> 00:38:04.390
So these are all decisions that are made among people

00:38:04.710 --> 00:38:10.710
in coalitions, how they're going to respond, whether they're going to support violence

00:38:11.750 --> 00:38:17.270
as a retaliation, as a response, or whether they aren't.

00:38:17.590 --> 00:38:23.590
And so those are if that's so there are many ways a woman can

00:38:23.590 --> 00:38:24.470
be stolen.

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

00:38:30.840 --> 00:38:36.680
stolen by a complete stranger um she can be um and and

00:38:36.680 --> 00:38:42.040
that is more historic but to be today to be taken

00:38:42.280 --> 00:38:48.040
without permission of the father is the one of the more common

00:38:48.360 --> 00:38:53.850
affronts and so if so if I'm hearing you correctly, um if a

00:38:53.850 --> 00:38:59.210
woman voluntarily uh falls in love with someone in a different community and runs off with

00:38:59.210 --> 00:39:05.130
that person, the father will will view this as literally equivalent to her being abducted

00:39:05.770 --> 00:39:07.770
forcefully by a neighboring community.

00:39:08.090 --> 00:39:08.330
Yeah.

00:39:08.570 --> 00:39:14.120
And I asked Napoleon Shagnon, who is of course recorded uh extensive

00:39:14.120 --> 00:39:16.040
histories and genealogies of this.

00:39:16.200 --> 00:39:21.800
And I asked him specifically whether the same linguistic term is used, and he said

00:39:21.960 --> 00:39:22.360
yes.

00:39:23.080 --> 00:39:24.760
So there's no distinction.

00:39:25.320 --> 00:39:25.720
Wow.

00:39:26.040 --> 00:39:31.960
I mean, I mean, to to a Western mind, that that is pretty uh mind-boggling.

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

00:39:38.360 --> 00:39:39.320
do you think is behind that?

00:39:39.480 --> 00:39:41.960
Why why do they view them as equivalent?

00:39:42.670 --> 00:39:48.270
So marriage, you know, marriages throughout much of the world are still

00:39:48.270 --> 00:39:54.190
arranged, whether we think that or not, we're a peculiar society where we believe

00:39:54.190 --> 00:39:58.030
in marriage for love, which fails fairly often.

00:39:59.230 --> 00:40:05.040
But I think here it's important to realize the age of

00:40:05.040 --> 00:40:09.040
marriage and also some of the conventions of marriage.

00:40:09.200 --> 00:40:14.240
So there's sororal polygyny, so that

00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:21.440
a man who marries a woman may reasonably expect to

00:40:21.440 --> 00:40:23.360
also marry her sister.

00:40:23.600 --> 00:40:28.970
The sister may reasonably expect to run off with or marry her

00:40:29.290 --> 00:40:34.410
sister's husband and may want to, but the age of marriage.

00:40:39.130 --> 00:40:45.130
The age of marriage, five would be unusual, but is not unheard of.

00:40:45.290 --> 00:40:47.370
And that's not considered right.

00:40:47.770 --> 00:40:50.570
That's a whole nother s kind of adjudication.

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

00:40:57.040 --> 00:41:02.560
is really old or really dead, um, then that may

00:41:02.960 --> 00:41:06.000
girls tend to be married earlier.

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

00:41:11.520 --> 00:41:13.280
time and going back in time.

00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:19.520
13, you know, any older than 13, you're kind of getting over the hill.

00:41:19.760 --> 00:41:22.870
Um, so for um

00:41:26.390 --> 00:41:31.190
for a young woman to choose to run off,

00:41:31.830 --> 00:41:36.790
especially at that age, is not so

00:41:37.030 --> 00:41:37.990
uncommon.

00:41:38.630 --> 00:41:44.630
Um you know, they're they're not always thinking well

00:41:44.630 --> 00:41:48.710
in those early adolescent years, no matter where we are.

00:41:48.950 --> 00:41:54.320
So um there was there was one

00:41:54.320 --> 00:42:00.080
circumstance where an older, a really senior guy who really had been a

00:42:00.080 --> 00:42:05.520
fierce warrior, which delighted John, of course, had five or six

00:42:05.520 --> 00:42:11.280
wives, but he was really old, and his older wives weren't

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,

00:42:17.040 --> 00:42:22.730
and she and I don't even remember now, but she ran off with

00:42:22.730 --> 00:42:23.690
his son.

00:42:24.490 --> 00:42:27.530
And that was we'd only been in the community.

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

00:42:31.370 --> 00:42:31.770
weeks.

00:42:31.930 --> 00:42:34.410
But we saw that drama unfold.

00:42:34.730 --> 00:42:39.290
And um, and he he, you know, threatened to go after them.

00:42:39.450 --> 00:42:42.970
He was gonna kill both of them and with his gun.

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,

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,

00:42:54.160 --> 00:42:56.800
and they run further and further.

00:42:57.040 --> 00:43:02.400
Um, and and maybe after a time that will be resolved, or maybe it won't.

00:43:02.640 --> 00:43:05.920
But um, but she didn't want to be in that marriage.

00:43:06.080 --> 00:43:07.360
It was not a good marriage.

00:43:07.600 --> 00:43:13.450
And and that's true for a number of women, but leaving

00:43:13.450 --> 00:43:19.290
a marriage is something that can cause so much conflict and retaliation

00:43:19.290 --> 00:43:21.770
and violence that people don't support it.

00:43:21.930 --> 00:43:27.770
So the the women and men who run off have

00:43:27.770 --> 00:43:28.730
to run far.

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

00:43:34.580 --> 00:43:35.300
tends to go.

00:43:35.460 --> 00:43:40.100
Warren DeBora did a study of the ethnography and found this to be a pattern.

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.

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

00:43:50.820 --> 00:43:52.740
leave town basically.

00:43:52.980 --> 00:43:58.790
Um, but it it's that's some of the context for

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

00:44:04.870 --> 00:44:10.150
when they were endemic, you know, almost always involved taking

00:44:10.710 --> 00:44:15.430
women and and really incorporating them

00:44:15.750 --> 00:44:21.270
violently into the um the community and the household.

00:44:21.800 --> 00:44:21.960
Wow.

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

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.

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

00:44:39.000 --> 00:44:42.440
societies is violent competition between men.

00:44:43.080 --> 00:44:49.080
Um and what they are competing over is a limited resource, uh, namely

00:44:49.400 --> 00:44:50.040
women.

00:44:50.490 --> 00:44:56.250
Um and that has a kind of cold, tragic Darwinian logic, which is that

00:44:56.250 --> 00:45:02.250
the men who succeed in capturing women will tend to have a reproductive advantage and

00:45:02.250 --> 00:45:07.770
and the genes promoting such behavior will therefore have a selective advantage relative to

00:45:07.770 --> 00:45:08.730
alternative genes.

00:45:08.890 --> 00:45:13.240
So this has a really uh awful Darwinian logic to it.

00:45:13.400 --> 00:45:19.080
Um and and because these coalitions of men are competing with one another over this limited

00:45:19.080 --> 00:45:24.600
reproductive resource, um, the primary motive behind violence in these

00:45:24.600 --> 00:45:30.280
communities is either uh capturing women or avenging the

00:45:30.280 --> 00:45:34.150
capture of women or the killing of other men.

00:45:34.230 --> 00:45:38.310
So it's it's it's primarily capturing women or or revenge?

00:45:38.470 --> 00:45:42.630
Would would though is that a fair characterization or am I oversimplifying?

00:45:43.270 --> 00:45:48.950
No, I think that you are fair in your theoretical assessment

00:45:49.270 --> 00:45:50.470
of the situation.

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

00:45:55.430 --> 00:45:59.110
genealogical facts, the ethnographic facts.

00:45:59.510 --> 00:46:05.260
Um, but I wouldn't say that that's the focus of

00:46:05.260 --> 00:46:07.580
life today for sure.

00:46:07.820 --> 00:46:08.060
Okay.

00:46:08.300 --> 00:46:12.860
Um I think it's the focus of our theory um of the moment.

00:46:13.260 --> 00:46:18.620
But um I think and I and I've thought about this quite a bit

00:46:19.100 --> 00:46:25.020
because I mean that was the focus of the both John and I,

00:46:25.260 --> 00:46:25.900
you know.

00:46:28.770 --> 00:46:34.530
studied collected data on alliance formation and how those

00:46:34.530 --> 00:46:40.530
relationships worked and how they were supported, you know, what greased

00:46:40.530 --> 00:46:44.130
the wheels, how decisions were made, all of those things.

00:46:44.370 --> 00:46:48.210
But it's still I think,

00:46:50.420 --> 00:46:56.420
And even in other parts of Amazonia, as I've been privileged to

00:46:56.420 --> 00:47:01.860
work with scholars elsewhere, I've spent a fair amount of time in Brazil now with

00:47:02.420 --> 00:47:07.700
anthropologists there and some in the little bit in the

00:47:07.700 --> 00:47:13.430
communities, but um I

00:47:13.430 --> 00:47:19.430
think we need to turn this narrative on its head, which is that

00:47:20.070 --> 00:47:25.910
when things got heated in Konambo, it would not be unusual for

00:47:26.150 --> 00:47:31.990
especially one woman in particular who was my one of my main instructors,

00:47:32.150 --> 00:47:37.350
um, to come up to me and very quietly put her hand on my um

00:47:39.320 --> 00:47:43.640
and say, you know, calm down, Brenda, because I would be upset.

00:47:43.880 --> 00:47:44.760
Calm down.

00:47:46.280 --> 00:47:48.280
We want to live well.

00:47:48.680 --> 00:47:54.040
And if people needed to leave, which is a common conflict resolution strategy,

00:47:54.440 --> 00:47:57.640
you know, and there's a community decision making process.

00:47:57.720 --> 00:48:03.160
If there's conflict between parties and the community, there's some consensus built about

00:48:03.160 --> 00:48:04.360
who should leave.

00:48:05.530 --> 00:48:09.290
But the goal is to live well.

00:48:09.930 --> 00:48:15.850
And when people are mad, when there's discussion, when there's possibility of a fissioning

00:48:15.850 --> 00:48:21.770
event or something, people will say, I'm going to find a place to live well.

00:48:22.410 --> 00:48:28.330
And it turns out that the in in Brazil, the

00:48:28.660 --> 00:48:33.540
anthropologists and the linguists have done a lot of work with this concept.

00:48:33.780 --> 00:48:39.620
And it's deeply rooted in the Tubi Wadani language family, which

00:48:39.620 --> 00:48:41.700
covers most of the continent.

00:48:41.860 --> 00:48:47.700
And there is a specific term that has a common root in all these different

00:48:47.700 --> 00:48:48.580
languages.

00:48:48.820 --> 00:48:54.580
And it is basically translated to to find a place to live well.

00:48:55.150 --> 00:49:00.670
So people are cautious about violence, they're attentive to the

00:49:00.670 --> 00:49:02.430
potential for violence.

00:49:02.590 --> 00:49:07.870
They have strategies for avoiding

00:49:07.870 --> 00:49:13.710
violence, for considering the multiple responsibilities

00:49:13.710 --> 00:49:18.910
that are inherent in conflict, and one's own

00:49:18.910 --> 00:49:24.760
responsibility for addressing that as a responsible adult and member

00:49:24.760 --> 00:49:26.040
of a community.

00:49:26.360 --> 00:49:31.800
So I think the piece that we tend to lose sight of in these discussions

00:49:32.120 --> 00:49:35.080
is that larger context.

00:49:35.320 --> 00:49:40.200
And that, you know, John's dissertation was called the thoughtful warrior.

00:49:40.440 --> 00:49:45.850
And I think that's really, you know, totally embedded in that

00:49:45.850 --> 00:49:46.810
concept.

00:49:47.370 --> 00:49:51.690
I can give you one of my favorite examples, and this was like really early.

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

00:49:57.210 --> 00:49:57.610
river.

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

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

00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:13.920
logistics and you know try out some of the data methodologies and then come back home

00:50:13.920 --> 00:50:16.720
and sort of refine all of that and regroup.

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

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.

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

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

00:50:37.550 --> 00:50:38.270
were dying.

00:50:38.350 --> 00:50:41.790
You know, there were very few people left in the territory.

00:50:42.030 --> 00:50:47.950
And but somehow someone had called

00:50:47.950 --> 00:50:53.630
a plane to go into multiple communities to collect five

00:50:53.630 --> 00:50:59.630
elders, five elder men, and and they were going off to

00:50:59.950 --> 00:51:04.830
a little tiny place um and and it

00:51:06.020 --> 00:51:11.860
was slowly revealed that there was a man who had been found dead

00:51:11.860 --> 00:51:17.780
in his house with blood everywhere, splattered all around the house.

00:51:18.100 --> 00:51:23.860
And these five elders were brought, you know, by

00:51:23.860 --> 00:51:29.620
plane, coordinated among themselves to go in and evaluate the

00:51:29.620 --> 00:51:34.180
situation, determine what had happened, and determine what the appropriate response would

00:51:34.180 --> 00:51:34.420
be.

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,

00:51:40.610 --> 00:51:46.210
then it would obligate a response, um, a

00:51:46.210 --> 00:51:51.730
retaliatory violent response by one

00:51:52.050 --> 00:51:55.970
thread of obligation, which was pretty dominant, you know.

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.

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

00:52:05.640 --> 00:52:07.000
murder, then it must be avenged?

00:52:07.080 --> 00:52:07.880
Is that how it works?

00:52:08.200 --> 00:52:09.720
There there are ways around it.

00:52:09.960 --> 00:52:13.720
Um so this is one of the things that I learned in this situation.

00:52:13.960 --> 00:52:19.880
But you know, if you think of it again, in a place where institutionalized authorities

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

00:52:25.770 --> 00:52:31.610
responsible for deciding how to address and adjudicate these kinds of violent

00:52:31.610 --> 00:52:32.090
actions.

00:52:32.250 --> 00:52:37.930
All societies have to make these decisions, and they have institutionalized

00:52:37.930 --> 00:52:43.610
decision-making processes for doing that, and people who are responsible for implementing

00:52:43.610 --> 00:52:43.930
them.

00:52:52.180 --> 00:52:57.620
the five elders, um, one of whom was from the community where we were at

00:52:57.700 --> 00:53:03.380
Copatassa, um decided this is we found out when they

00:53:03.380 --> 00:53:09.380
came back, decided that it was a phantasm it was

00:53:09.700 --> 00:53:15.540
who had killed this man and that no retaliatory

00:53:15.540 --> 00:53:17.940
action was obligated.

00:53:19.030 --> 00:53:20.470
I I really want to dig into this.

00:53:20.630 --> 00:53:21.910
Um that is fascinating.

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

00:53:26.870 --> 00:53:27.270
killed?

00:53:27.430 --> 00:53:31.270
These people who do who were deciding uh that this was a phantasm.

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

00:53:38.070 --> 00:53:43.350
I was we were so new to the territory and the community at the time.

00:53:44.150 --> 00:53:47.640
I don't know if I know the relationship.

00:53:47.880 --> 00:53:50.200
Um do they usually have no relationship?

00:53:50.360 --> 00:53:54.760
Are they are they specifically people are related to each other?

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

00:54:00.840 --> 00:54:03.560
or genetically connected to the victim.

00:54:04.360 --> 00:54:04.680
No.

00:54:05.080 --> 00:54:10.760
No, not necessarily I mean, everybody in the territory, you have almost no business being

00:54:10.760 --> 00:54:13.000
there if you're not related by blood or marriage.

00:54:13.240 --> 00:54:16.590
So that's just the tr the case.

00:54:16.830 --> 00:54:16.990
Okay.

00:54:17.230 --> 00:54:21.870
Um an anthropologist understand us.

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

00:54:28.110 --> 00:54:28.910
in the community.

00:54:28.990 --> 00:54:30.350
So I'm grandmother.

00:54:30.590 --> 00:54:36.590
Um, on the other hand, was some monkey fictive kinship for those.

00:54:36.670 --> 00:54:36.750
Yeah.

00:54:37.070 --> 00:54:37.790
A bearded monkey.

00:54:39.390 --> 00:54:39.870
That's really funny.

00:54:40.110 --> 00:54:40.510
That's really funny.

00:54:40.670 --> 00:54:40.910
Yeah.

00:54:41.150 --> 00:54:46.900
So um, but um my sense of

00:54:46.900 --> 00:54:52.660
it was this was a man who was not closely related

00:54:52.980 --> 00:54:54.740
to a lot of other people.

00:54:54.900 --> 00:55:00.660
And he may, my memory is that it was that he lived, they and he

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

00:55:06.580 --> 00:55:07.620
or something like that.

00:55:07.860 --> 00:55:09.460
But I don't know for sure.

00:55:09.620 --> 00:55:15.190
But that he lived maybe even in an isolated house on the river

00:55:15.350 --> 00:55:21.270
rather than in a larger household cluster or a community, a larger

00:55:21.270 --> 00:55:22.150
community.

00:55:22.550 --> 00:55:25.430
But this is where status matters.

00:55:25.590 --> 00:55:29.750
This is the definition of what makes an important person.

00:55:30.470 --> 00:55:35.270
And an important person is someone that others listen to.

00:55:36.120 --> 00:55:36.440
right.

00:55:37.080 --> 00:55:43.080
So the men who went in were senior men from throughout the

00:55:43.080 --> 00:55:49.000
territory who were people that others listened

00:55:49.000 --> 00:55:49.320
to.

00:55:49.960 --> 00:55:55.880
So they could confer among themselves they were considered, you know, knowledgeable

00:55:55.880 --> 00:55:59.770
and um right-minded.

00:56:00.490 --> 00:56:03.690
And they reached that decision.

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

00:56:09.130 --> 00:56:12.570
decision to de-escalate.

00:56:13.050 --> 00:56:18.890
And one of the strategies that people had in their toolkit that we had

00:56:18.890 --> 00:56:21.770
never read about or heard about or imagined, right?

00:56:22.010 --> 00:56:27.820
Just to declare that the death was due to supernatural means and a

00:56:27.820 --> 00:56:28.540
phantasm.

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

00:56:34.540 --> 00:56:35.180
to die.

00:56:35.500 --> 00:56:38.300
Um so that's really fascinating.

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

00:56:44.140 --> 00:56:48.710
victim that determines whether you get to make this decision, but your status within the

00:56:48.710 --> 00:56:50.470
community and your and your political power.

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

00:56:56.070 --> 00:56:57.270
someone's death or not.

00:56:57.430 --> 00:56:58.710
Is that correct?

00:56:59.750 --> 00:57:02.310
I would say yes, that's correct.

00:57:02.470 --> 00:57:07.590
It's respected people, usually respected elders.

00:57:07.830 --> 00:57:09.510
It's not always men.

00:57:10.880 --> 00:57:16.800
And there too, I think there's so much that still remains to be written

00:57:16.800 --> 00:57:18.800
about the role that women play.

00:57:19.120 --> 00:57:24.720
So, you know, the one who has the weapon in their hand, you know,

00:57:25.040 --> 00:57:30.640
is not always the man, but probably more often the man than a woman.

00:57:31.600 --> 00:57:37.490
But women, for example, do a lot of divination and often determine who is responsible for

00:57:37.490 --> 00:57:42.370
a death that then leads to an avenge um incident.

00:57:43.090 --> 00:57:49.090
So um anyway so so I really want to get into this this phantasm thing

00:57:49.170 --> 00:57:51.170
because I find this really fascinating.

00:57:51.410 --> 00:57:55.730
Um so they attribute the cause of death to a ghost.

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

00:58:01.180 --> 00:58:03.260
we don't want to avenge this person's death.

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

00:58:07.740 --> 00:58:09.660
did it and risking our lives.

00:58:10.540 --> 00:58:11.420
I wouldn't say that.

00:58:11.820 --> 00:58:12.460
I wouldn't say that.

00:58:12.620 --> 00:58:12.780
Okay.

00:58:13.180 --> 00:58:18.460
No, because these men had the right to respond

00:58:19.180 --> 00:58:25.110
and um and the responsibility to respond, someone would have had that right

00:58:25.110 --> 00:58:27.430
and responsibility to respond.

00:58:28.230 --> 00:58:34.150
And what it does is lead to

00:58:34.150 --> 00:58:37.110
more retaliatory violence, right?

00:58:37.430 --> 00:58:43.270
So it's more, it's less about risk avoidance than it is about

00:58:43.910 --> 00:58:47.270
conflict um management.

00:58:47.660 --> 00:58:47.980
Got it.

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

00:58:54.060 --> 00:58:55.100
of violence.

00:58:55.500 --> 00:58:55.820
Right.

00:58:56.060 --> 00:58:58.780
Or creating a new job.

00:58:59.020 --> 00:58:59.180
Got it.

00:58:59.660 --> 00:59:02.860
And so and so if so if that's that's their motive.

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,

00:59:08.540 --> 00:59:10.380
an eye for an eye makes everyone blind.

00:59:10.540 --> 00:59:12.540
We don't that's our motive here.

00:59:12.700 --> 00:59:14.810
Um Why not just come out and say that?

00:59:14.890 --> 00:59:18.250
Why do we have to make up the story about the ghost?

00:59:22.650 --> 00:59:28.250
So I just gave a talk at our national conference, and I've

00:59:28.250 --> 00:59:31.370
done versions of this talk for a while.

00:59:31.770 --> 00:59:37.450
But um and it uh thinking

00:59:37.770 --> 00:59:42.000
about Indigenous

00:59:42.960 --> 00:59:48.560
ontologies and epistemologies and what constitutes valid evidence and what

00:59:48.720 --> 00:59:53.200
logics pertain are very culturally specific.

00:59:53.840 --> 00:59:59.760
So and the understanding of the world as it is, as a place where death is

00:59:59.760 --> 01:00:02.000
caused by certain things.

01:00:02.640 --> 01:00:08.560
People that the explanation of the phantasm fits into that

01:00:09.310 --> 01:00:14.750
that native ontology, that understanding of the world and how that comes about.

01:00:16.030 --> 01:00:19.470
So so so uh let me reframe the question.

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

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

01:00:29.870 --> 01:00:34.270
sincere, that they truly believe that the person was killed by a ghost?

01:00:36.460 --> 01:00:41.980
I think that they carefully considered the evidence at hand and decided

01:00:42.300 --> 01:00:47.900
that the a reasonable explanation

01:00:48.220 --> 01:00:49.820
was the phantasm.

01:00:50.860 --> 01:00:55.910
And whether they Also

01:00:56.230 --> 01:01:02.150
considered the fact that this would quell violence, I would say,

01:01:02.790 --> 01:01:08.550
of course, you know, and and those men that was of their

01:01:08.550 --> 01:01:14.470
generation and and knowing one of them, um actually,

01:01:14.710 --> 01:01:18.310
and knowing of actually another one knowing him.

01:01:18.550 --> 01:01:22.440
Um that was that was their responsibility.

01:01:22.760 --> 01:01:28.040
So they they reached that decision, I would say, on balance after considering

01:01:28.040 --> 01:01:31.720
multiple um possibilities.

01:01:32.040 --> 01:01:34.120
And um, I wasn't there.

01:01:34.280 --> 01:01:40.280
I don't know what kinds of evidence they considered, but certainly, you know,

01:01:40.360 --> 01:01:45.480
just the blood all over the place was apparently consistent with the killing by a phantasm

01:01:45.690 --> 01:01:51.530
and the fact that there were no there seemed to be no obvious um

01:01:53.450 --> 01:01:58.970
individuals who would be likely responsible for that

01:01:58.970 --> 01:01:59.610
death.

01:02:00.010 --> 01:02:05.050
Um there was no blame of others that I heard.

01:02:05.130 --> 01:02:10.540
Now there may have been those discussions in other communities, but people would have

01:02:10.540 --> 01:02:13.340
discussed a lot of different possibilities.

01:02:13.500 --> 01:02:18.700
Um, but the one who pronounces the decision is generally the

01:02:19.180 --> 01:02:24.460
higher status person, usually as an outcome of hearing other

01:02:24.460 --> 01:02:27.420
perspectives and listening to other perspectives.

01:02:27.660 --> 01:02:32.060
So they gathered multiple people together to discuss it.

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,

01:02:36.590 --> 01:02:42.350
that I remember John saying was that um when you go to these

01:02:42.350 --> 01:02:47.710
meetings, the um there's all this posturing, especially often young men,

01:02:47.950 --> 01:02:52.190
strong men, um, and lots of things are said.

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

01:02:57.560 --> 01:02:58.520
quiet down.

01:02:58.840 --> 01:03:04.120
And that's when you know that the person who is with high status is speaking.

01:03:04.200 --> 01:03:08.600
And it's not often somebody who's sort of superficially impressive for an outsider.

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

01:03:12.760 --> 01:03:16.120
as being the person who looks quote unquote like the leader.

01:03:16.280 --> 01:03:21.630
Um And that really stuck struck me and still does.

01:03:22.270 --> 01:03:25.230
And I think, you know, that thing you said about being listened to.

01:03:25.390 --> 01:03:31.310
And I think one of the things that people listening also might

01:03:31.310 --> 01:03:32.270
think in hearing this.

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

01:03:36.910 --> 01:03:40.030
mean, most of us were privileged to not be in that kind of context.

01:03:40.110 --> 01:03:41.470
And so that's the thing we're focusing on.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

01:04:11.750 --> 01:04:14.950
and dead, but also by gender or by sex.

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

01:04:20.390 --> 01:04:21.510
know, he learned it from you.

01:04:21.590 --> 01:04:27.110
And you have such a long history in the community that, you know, I think

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

01:04:32.440 --> 01:04:36.280
women's agency and how that gets how that plays out in this context.

01:04:36.360 --> 01:04:38.840
And I know I know you've thought a lot about that.

01:04:39.080 --> 01:04:40.920
Can you say something about that?

01:04:41.080 --> 01:04:46.280
I mean, I think you're you're you have, I can't over um uh

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,

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

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

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

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

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

01:05:21.430 --> 01:05:27.320
well I was interested in women's status

01:05:27.480 --> 01:05:33.240
when we first went in and women's relationships and how and

01:05:34.520 --> 01:05:40.520
now remembering this is 1992 and the anthropology of women was still

01:05:40.520 --> 01:05:42.360
a relatively new field.

01:05:42.920 --> 01:05:47.970
So um most of women's

01:05:50.130 --> 01:05:54.530
most of studies, most studies in the anthropology of women's status had addressed women's

01:05:54.530 --> 01:05:55.650
status relative to men.

01:05:55.730 --> 01:05:58.850
And a lot of it was done from a Marxist perspective.

01:05:59.090 --> 01:06:03.330
Um, so within, you know, sort of the patriarchy.

01:06:03.570 --> 01:06:09.020
And um and I and this was a good opportunity to do that, right?

01:06:09.180 --> 01:06:11.660
To look at women's status relative to men.

01:06:11.900 --> 01:06:14.780
But the first thing that we found when

01:06:17.900 --> 01:06:23.660
starting those tasks, the triadic comparison tasks on status and

01:06:23.660 --> 01:06:28.460
alliance, was that men refused to comment on women's

01:06:28.970 --> 01:06:30.250
relationships.

01:06:30.570 --> 01:06:32.890
And they said it would cause trouble.

01:06:33.210 --> 01:06:39.050
And but this was the way it was explained to me, is that,

01:06:39.930 --> 01:06:45.530
and when we were talking about, so we began to, you know, investigate separately those

01:06:45.530 --> 01:06:49.770
concepts of women's status and alliance and did the tasks separately.

01:06:50.490 --> 01:06:56.360
But it was said that women lead among women and men lead among men.

01:06:56.760 --> 01:07:02.440
And that's true in a lot of societies where men and women have really

01:07:02.440 --> 01:07:04.920
distinctive domains of responsibility.

01:07:05.000 --> 01:07:09.880
And it's not all, you know, home versus politics.

01:07:10.120 --> 01:07:15.720
So, but women are very active, and I've written about this some,

01:07:16.200 --> 01:07:17.720
but uh fair amount.

01:07:17.960 --> 01:07:23.530
Um So men and women are very active

01:07:23.850 --> 01:07:29.690
in political decision making and

01:07:29.690 --> 01:07:34.650
consensus building, but women do um

01:07:35.610 --> 01:07:39.610
converse among women, men converse among men.

01:07:40.010 --> 01:07:43.850
The difference is that women have access to men's spaces.

01:07:44.010 --> 01:07:47.450
I was interested in sort of domestic space.

01:07:47.720 --> 01:07:53.160
And um, so women have access to men's spaces during these big open

01:07:53.160 --> 01:07:53.880
discussions.

01:07:54.120 --> 01:07:56.840
Men do not have access to women's spaces.

01:07:57.560 --> 01:08:01.640
So women actually have more knowledge of what's going on.

01:08:02.040 --> 01:08:07.240
Um, and this is where um women can be and are

01:08:07.240 --> 01:08:12.120
effective in um mediating disputes.

01:08:12.360 --> 01:08:18.110
They have more sometimes cross-coalitional alliances

01:08:18.110 --> 01:08:18.750
than men.

01:08:19.150 --> 01:08:24.350
And so they can cross those boundaries and help

01:08:25.230 --> 01:08:29.790
develop consensus about what appropriate mediation would be.

01:08:31.310 --> 01:08:32.830
I think you may know the story.

01:08:32.910 --> 01:08:38.900
They I mean sometimes a woman will just march across know the boundary between the two

01:08:38.900 --> 01:08:44.820
factions and Konamo and walk into a house and basically tell the men that they're

01:08:44.820 --> 01:08:45.940
behaving badly.

01:08:46.180 --> 01:08:49.140
And um and here's what needs to happen.

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

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

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

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.

01:09:11.090 --> 01:09:17.090
So there was some reproductive um issue at stake and

01:09:17.090 --> 01:09:19.650
who was responsible among the young men.

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

01:09:24.850 --> 01:09:25.490
event.

01:09:25.890 --> 01:09:31.490
And um and the the senior men, as I said, very undignified,

01:09:31.650 --> 01:09:35.960
um got into a fist fight, but the floor of the house fell.

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.

01:09:41.080 --> 01:09:45.080
So they broke it broke through, and all the men came crashing through.

01:09:45.320 --> 01:09:46.760
And that was the end of the fight.

01:09:46.840 --> 01:09:47.640
And everybody went home.

01:09:47.720 --> 01:09:53.480
And the next day, um, the dispute was resolved by um by one of the women.

01:09:53.770 --> 01:09:55.850
And it was it was so funny.

01:09:56.010 --> 01:09:57.530
I I just laughed so much.

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,

01:10:02.410 --> 01:10:03.610
that would have been impossible.

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

01:10:09.770 --> 01:10:10.250
phone calls.

01:10:10.330 --> 01:10:14.970
Now I get like Facebook messages almost every day, you know, or you know.

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.

01:10:21.320 --> 01:10:24.200
But so women and and this is

01:10:28.520 --> 01:10:34.520
women are concerned about anything that

01:10:34.520 --> 01:10:40.120
has the potential for violence because it affects their lives too.

01:10:40.390 --> 01:10:46.150
And to think that that domain would be left exclusively to men in these small communities

01:10:46.150 --> 01:10:52.150
where everybody visits every day and the daily work really is the management of politics,

01:10:52.310 --> 01:10:57.750
um, would would just be lacking imagination, you know, an

01:10:57.990 --> 01:11:00.710
understanding of how the world works.

01:11:00.870 --> 01:11:06.140
I I don't so women to s uh agency is such a funny

01:11:06.300 --> 01:11:07.420
concept, right?

01:11:07.660 --> 01:11:13.660
Because we often tend to forget that agency specifically has to do with how one

01:11:13.660 --> 01:11:18.780
navigates one's life within a particular structure and in of um

01:11:19.900 --> 01:11:23.820
community or society or institution or whatever.

01:11:23.980 --> 01:11:28.570
But um but I have this uh phrase politics afoot.

01:11:28.650 --> 01:11:30.250
You can see politics afoot.

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

01:11:36.330 --> 01:11:39.850
of their daily routine, you know something's up.

01:11:40.490 --> 01:11:46.410
So it's just and and you know, outside we chose Konambo, who which

01:11:46.410 --> 01:11:52.000
has and did had has had continuously, about 200 people, just

01:11:52.000 --> 01:11:57.920
slightly under 200, because it was the largest community in

01:11:57.920 --> 01:12:03.280
the territory, and because it was divided into these two ethnolinguistic factions, and it

01:12:03.280 --> 01:12:03.920
was famous.

01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:07.920
I mean, we heard about it long before we were ever invited to go there.

01:12:08.080 --> 01:12:12.960
Um, so it was a really good place to study coalitional dynamics.

01:12:13.170 --> 01:12:18.770
um and and where we could get a 100% sample while many

01:12:18.770 --> 01:12:24.770
psychologists criticize the sample size tell me anyone who you know me really would

01:12:24.770 --> 01:12:27.330
be unhappy with a 100% sample.

01:12:27.650 --> 01:12:32.450
Um so that was anyway so I hope that helps.

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

01:12:38.210 --> 01:12:43.520
was that also something that actually came from from you that the is that the

01:12:43.520 --> 01:12:45.520
apocryphal, or did I get that right?

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

01:12:51.120 --> 01:12:56.320
other, each of them independently, that the other had been sort of considering

01:12:56.880 --> 01:12:58.240
apologizing.

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

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,

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

01:13:13.790 --> 01:13:15.310
uh back off.

01:13:15.390 --> 01:13:15.550
Yeah.

01:13:16.430 --> 01:13:17.790
That happened more than once.

01:13:17.950 --> 01:13:18.190
Yeah.

01:13:18.590 --> 01:13:20.030
It's not uncommon.

01:13:20.270 --> 01:13:24.830
And I think for that particular story, I think John and I were both there.

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

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

01:13:35.070 --> 01:13:36.030
side of the house.

01:13:36.190 --> 01:13:38.040
Yeah and um But I like that.

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

01:13:43.240 --> 01:13:46.120
long default for anthropology and science, right?

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.

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

01:13:55.960 --> 01:13:58.840
like the men are the drones and the women are controlling them, right?

01:13:58.920 --> 01:14:01.000
It's sort of like you don't get your hands dirty.

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

01:14:07.090 --> 01:14:11.970
different way to look at the power dynamic and the cost and benefit logic.

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

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

01:14:23.570 --> 01:14:25.570
of trust in the community.

01:14:25.810 --> 01:14:30.370
Um, you know, he he he he mentioned another anecdote where somebody threatened him at some

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

01:14:34.980 --> 01:14:36.580
his knee or something, you know.

01:14:36.740 --> 01:14:41.060
Um, and that actually led to this person sort of backing off um a bit.

01:14:41.220 --> 01:14:45.140
Like I remember carrying you, basically, was what John said to this this guy.

01:14:45.460 --> 01:14:47.060
And I may not have been there for that one.

01:14:47.140 --> 01:14:47.940
I don't I don't know.

01:14:48.260 --> 01:14:49.780
Yeah, no, I remember him telling me that.

01:14:49.940 --> 01:14:51.220
Yeah, he probably didn't.

01:14:51.460 --> 01:14:51.940
So yeah.

01:14:52.420 --> 01:14:53.940
But um, but I think that's the point.

01:14:54.180 --> 01:14:59.780
I think like that idea of sort of that um quote unquote cryptic leadership,

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

01:15:05.770 --> 01:15:10.170
more quote unquote more objective perspective, which I think would be the argument that,

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

01:15:16.250 --> 01:15:18.970
it looks cryptic from the perspective of the men.

01:15:21.690 --> 01:15:27.210
Certainly if we're talking about the existing literature and anthropology,

01:15:28.040 --> 01:15:33.960
I I was remembering um women if you

01:15:33.960 --> 01:15:39.400
look at the old ethnographies deserve their special category in the index

01:15:39.880 --> 01:15:42.600
because they're mentioned so infrequently.

01:15:42.760 --> 01:15:43.160
Wow.

01:15:43.320 --> 01:15:47.960
And there might be three pages where women are mentioned specifically.

01:15:48.200 --> 01:15:54.070
So I really I really have deep concerns about the current use

01:15:54.070 --> 01:15:55.430
of that literature.

01:15:55.670 --> 01:15:56.070
Yeah.

01:15:56.310 --> 01:16:01.670
Um to call information about women given and and that literature has been so heavily

01:16:01.670 --> 01:16:03.110
critiqued, you know.

01:16:03.590 --> 01:16:09.270
I mean, uh could could it be that this underestimation of women's influence in these

01:16:09.270 --> 01:16:15.040
societies is itself a product of the uh subtlety

01:16:15.040 --> 01:16:20.000
and intelligence with which they influence people covertly, that that is in fact a design

01:16:20.000 --> 01:16:24.080
feature that they are trying to influence without creating common knowledge that the

01:16:24.080 --> 01:16:26.000
influence has taken place.

01:16:27.040 --> 01:16:29.360
I think that's a really important question.

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

01:16:34.320 --> 01:16:35.920
women, assumed that.

01:16:36.240 --> 01:16:41.770
But because they did not have access to or even

01:16:42.090 --> 01:16:46.650
questions about women's participation in political decision making.

01:16:46.810 --> 01:16:51.130
There's so little written that we don't know.

01:16:51.290 --> 01:16:57.130
I I really think it's a an area that's open for more

01:16:57.130 --> 01:16:57.770
study.

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

01:17:05.100 --> 01:17:06.700
of the every episode at least once.

01:17:06.780 --> 01:17:11.740
But one of the themes of in our discussions has often been humility and sort of

01:17:11.740 --> 01:17:16.940
appreciating and just sort of listening to people who aren't usually listened to.

01:17:17.020 --> 01:17:19.580
And I think this is a really good example of that.

01:17:19.820 --> 01:17:25.580
The understanding ourselves and the science, this is a really clear case of um

01:17:25.820 --> 01:17:31.510
if people going sort of arrogantly or not respecting the people

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

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

01:17:42.310 --> 01:17:48.150
1950s, 60s anthropologist, that um that uh if you're not

01:17:48.550 --> 01:17:52.470
if you're letting your culture's sort of bargaining power blind you to the scientific

01:17:52.470 --> 01:17:55.590
questions you're asking, you're not looking at what children are doing, what women are

01:17:55.590 --> 01:17:58.070
doing, it's bad for the science, right?

01:17:59.760 --> 01:18:05.520
And you know, because John and

01:18:05.520 --> 01:18:11.440
I did our field work initially during a time period when 12 months in the field

01:18:11.440 --> 01:18:17.440
was a minimum, and because we aspired to be deeply immersed in

01:18:17.440 --> 01:18:22.210
that ethnographic context, I think we learned a lot more.

01:18:22.610 --> 01:18:28.530
Um, and so I you know, there's there's discussion now about slow science and

01:18:28.530 --> 01:18:34.370
fast science, but um but but also it I think it

01:18:34.530 --> 01:18:40.450
that we understand that we're sometimes blinded by our

01:18:40.450 --> 01:18:42.120
questions, Right?

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

01:18:47.160 --> 01:18:53.000
particular question, and we may never learn about these other phenomena if

01:18:53.000 --> 01:18:56.120
we're not there to ask questions about it.

01:18:56.360 --> 01:19:02.040
So the beauty of ethnography and the beauty of anthropology, especially long-term,

01:19:02.200 --> 01:19:07.730
committed, community-based anthropology is that you

01:19:07.730 --> 01:19:13.570
learn um what you may never have asked about and if you listen

01:19:13.730 --> 01:19:19.570
yeah and and that's the to me the great privilege of of being able to

01:19:19.570 --> 01:19:25.410
do this work is to is to is that you know to learn things that

01:19:25.410 --> 01:19:30.260
you might never have have thought about um yeah Yeah.

01:19:30.420 --> 01:19:30.660
Yeah.

01:19:30.820 --> 01:19:35.220
As a psychologist being interested in coalitional psychology, I always think to myself,

01:19:35.780 --> 01:19:38.740
talking to John always kept me honest.

01:19:38.900 --> 01:19:41.140
And it was exactly for this reason, right?

01:19:41.300 --> 01:19:45.780
That um, and I think psychology and the evolutionary behavioral sciences, I mean, David and

01:19:45.780 --> 01:19:46.500
I have talked about this.

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

01:19:52.340 --> 01:19:53.380
psychology.

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

01:19:59.490 --> 01:20:04.930
laboratory psychologist, to keep anthropology in the evolutionary behavioral sciences

01:20:05.090 --> 01:20:11.010
because it keeps us honest and we really lose our reality tethering if we don't

01:20:11.010 --> 01:20:16.610
keep talking to and and ultimately it's being grounded in in

01:20:16.850 --> 01:20:19.970
the the local knowledge and what's actually happening.

01:20:20.130 --> 01:20:20.770
Yeah.

01:20:21.560 --> 01:20:27.160
Yeah, and um I understand that next year HBES and the is it the

01:20:27.160 --> 01:20:33.080
Cultural Evolutionary Society are gonna hold joint meetings, and I think a really positive

01:20:34.040 --> 01:20:35.080
um thing.

01:20:35.800 --> 01:20:36.040
Yeah.

01:20:36.280 --> 01:20:41.400
Speaking of uh interfactional conflict, I'm glad that the factions are being united in

01:20:41.400 --> 01:20:43.240
evolutionary social science.

01:20:43.400 --> 01:20:48.850
Um I I I wanna speaking of factions, I wanna um return to something you

01:20:48.850 --> 01:20:54.530
mentioned about w women having more social ties between uh

01:20:54.690 --> 01:21:00.690
the rival factions than uh men had, uh and that because of that women were

01:21:00.690 --> 01:21:06.530
sort of trusted more as impartial mediators and adjudicators of

01:21:06.610 --> 01:21:09.730
uh intra or intergroup conflict.

01:21:09.890 --> 01:21:14.480
Um and I I find that to be a really interesting uh gender divide.

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

01:21:20.720 --> 01:21:26.560
uh why you think it exists, um, and and how women are uh

01:21:26.560 --> 01:21:27.840
navigating that role.

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

01:21:32.640 --> 01:21:34.080
have greater access, right?

01:21:34.240 --> 01:21:39.280
Because they formed these relationships that cause they just have more knowledge about

01:21:39.360 --> 01:21:42.480
about the the the situation itself in these conflicts.

01:21:44.550 --> 01:21:46.550
Often that's true.

01:21:47.190 --> 01:21:52.630
And I talked to Lita about this when during the symposium for John in

01:21:52.630 --> 01:21:58.630
October, but you know, John and I collected data over

01:21:58.630 --> 01:22:04.070
many years, and our goal for this time of our lives

01:22:04.390 --> 01:22:10.200
was to um look longitudinally at men's and women's

01:22:10.200 --> 01:22:11.880
coalitional structures.

01:22:12.280 --> 01:22:17.800
And that scenario that I just described really relates to

01:22:19.560 --> 01:22:21.320
two time periods.

01:22:21.640 --> 01:22:27.480
And contrary to my expectations, though, women with

01:22:27.480 --> 01:22:33.370
the greater cross-coalitional ties Were those with

01:22:33.370 --> 01:22:37.610
fewer kin within their own coalition and across the coalition.

01:22:37.690 --> 01:22:43.210
And so my argument was they needed to establish those cross-coalitional ties

01:22:43.530 --> 01:22:49.530
because that gave them really a place to go in the event that they

01:22:50.010 --> 01:22:55.880
lost their place in their own coalition, which again, you know, know, co um conflict

01:22:55.880 --> 01:23:01.480
resolution often involves someone leaving and they being less securely

01:23:01.640 --> 01:23:07.240
um related by kinship to people in their own coalition

01:23:07.480 --> 01:23:12.040
would be the most likely to have to leave if there were some kind of conflict.

01:23:12.120 --> 01:23:17.960
And that did happen um with a couple of women um and their families.

01:23:18.200 --> 01:23:24.110
But so what I wanted to see, so basically the structures looked like men had

01:23:24.430 --> 01:23:28.350
these really cleanly bounded coalitions.

01:23:28.750 --> 01:23:33.790
Um, and you know, they needed to be really clear on where their um

01:23:33.790 --> 01:23:36.430
alliances um were.

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,

01:23:41.630 --> 01:23:44.430
you know, color, you know, where there's that one hut that's over?

01:23:44.510 --> 01:23:45.710
What can you just explain?

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?

01:23:50.480 --> 01:23:50.800
Yeah.

01:23:51.200 --> 01:23:51.680
Right.

01:23:51.920 --> 01:23:57.360
So um and this really was, you know,

01:23:57.600 --> 01:24:03.280
John's methodology um to collect um

01:24:03.280 --> 01:24:08.000
quantitative information using cognitive anthropological

01:24:08.480 --> 01:24:14.090
approaches to reconstruct really the political landscape,

01:24:14.250 --> 01:24:16.170
the categories of alliances.

01:24:16.330 --> 01:24:21.850
So, and so men and the whole community really talked about Konambal being

01:24:21.850 --> 01:24:26.730
divided upriver and downriver into Achwa and Qichua factions.

01:24:26.890 --> 01:24:32.570
And that was true, even though each of those factions, in fact, was ethnically

01:24:32.570 --> 01:24:33.210
mixed.

01:24:33.420 --> 01:24:33.740
Okay.

01:24:34.060 --> 01:24:38.060
So by marriage and political affiliation.

01:24:38.140 --> 01:24:43.900
And the one, the one um house that you so so we have this kind of

01:24:43.900 --> 01:24:49.580
iconic figure of, you know, sort of this line, this wavy line that

01:24:49.580 --> 01:24:52.380
represents the river and then houses distributed along the river.

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

01:24:56.540 --> 01:24:56.780
or blue.

01:24:56.860 --> 01:24:58.780
Yeah, you have the thing I'm looking around.

01:24:58.860 --> 01:24:59.020
Yeah.

01:24:59.420 --> 01:25:00.620
Somewhere in my office here.

01:25:02.410 --> 01:25:04.650
But you can see how clean the divide is.

01:25:04.730 --> 01:25:09.290
And the divide that in that image is based on two things.

01:25:09.450 --> 01:25:14.730
It's based on how people discuss, right?

01:25:15.210 --> 01:25:20.330
How people refer to themselves and how they refer to others.

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,

01:25:26.490 --> 01:25:26.730
right?

01:25:26.810 --> 01:25:30.440
So you may refer to yourself differently in different situations.

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

01:25:36.360 --> 01:25:39.480
the Achwar, but I am Qichua.

01:25:39.880 --> 01:25:44.840
So if that helps clarify That actually just raises more questions.

01:25:45.000 --> 01:25:50.750
So that so there's a distinction between um being

01:25:51.150 --> 01:25:56.030
uh one of a member of the group and being with the group.

01:25:56.190 --> 01:25:57.310
So what is the difference there?

01:25:57.470 --> 01:25:59.790
Because they sound the same to my Western ear.

01:25:59.950 --> 01:26:02.190
So could you unpack that distinction?

01:26:04.110 --> 01:26:06.990
I can tell you how that is viewed.

01:26:07.070 --> 01:26:07.310
Yeah.

01:26:07.470 --> 01:26:12.860
When people talk about um it's usually based on identity.

01:26:13.020 --> 01:26:19.020
If we're talking about, let's say, ethnolinguistic identity, um, then people

01:26:19.580 --> 01:26:25.500
identify usually based on the language that they spoke

01:26:25.500 --> 01:26:26.460
in the home.

01:26:26.620 --> 01:26:28.300
Okay, their first language.

01:26:28.460 --> 01:26:33.980
Now, if their parents spoke different languages and multiple languages,

01:26:34.300 --> 01:26:39.980
then there's a little bit of um complication there in how clean

01:26:39.980 --> 01:26:42.190
those that pattern is.

01:26:42.750 --> 01:26:48.030
But generally, when people talk about the first language that they

01:26:48.030 --> 01:26:52.910
learned, the um the foods they eat, um

01:26:54.830 --> 01:27:00.670
kind of how fierce they are, um, those kinds of

01:27:00.910 --> 01:27:05.790
characteristics that are ascribed to ethnolinguistic groups and that are learned during

01:27:05.790 --> 01:27:07.310
early socialization.

01:27:07.870 --> 01:27:13.140
Um, I mean that is more of what can be called an

01:27:13.140 --> 01:27:17.220
ethno-linguistic dimension of identity, right?

01:27:17.460 --> 01:27:23.380
Um, and then but the political factional affiliation on the

01:27:23.380 --> 01:27:28.660
ground, even though people refer to the upriver people as Achwar and the downriver people

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

01:27:32.980 --> 01:27:38.630
things, but um it's it's a gloss.

01:27:39.030 --> 01:27:44.630
Um and it generally refers to who the founders of

01:27:44.630 --> 01:27:46.870
those places were.

01:27:47.830 --> 01:27:52.710
So the Upriver faction that the founders of that

01:27:53.350 --> 01:27:59.190
household cluster were Achwa people, and then others

01:27:59.190 --> 01:28:00.230
joined them.

01:28:00.440 --> 01:28:06.440
um and the same downriver the founders identified at the time as quichua

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

01:28:13.000 --> 01:28:18.440
below and this is just really classic identity it could conform with classic identity

01:28:18.440 --> 01:28:24.360
theory right that theory of that that identity is multidimensional and that it's

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

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

01:28:35.590 --> 01:28:36.390
Konombo.

01:28:36.470 --> 01:28:39.670
So but it's hard for people to understand that.

01:28:39.830 --> 01:28:41.110
Um sometimes.

01:28:41.590 --> 01:28:41.750
Yes.

01:28:42.470 --> 01:28:43.110
I mean oh sorry.

01:28:44.070 --> 01:28:44.230
Yeah.

01:28:44.390 --> 01:28:44.550
Yeah.

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.

01:28:49.340 --> 01:28:52.620
Um, because you know, I do work in political psychology.

01:28:52.860 --> 01:28:57.660
Um, and I think a problematic tendency is to um

01:28:57.900 --> 01:29:03.660
overexplain uh political beliefs and and political activity in terms of identity as opposed

01:29:03.660 --> 01:29:04.780
to allegiance.

01:29:05.180 --> 01:29:09.260
So these are two different things, and I and I applaud you for highlighting the important

01:29:09.260 --> 01:29:10.620
distinction between these things.

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

01:29:16.220 --> 01:29:17.020
alliances.

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

01:29:23.050 --> 01:29:26.890
feel political allegiance to police officers if I'm a Republican.

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

01:29:32.090 --> 01:29:32.970
politically.

01:29:33.210 --> 01:29:38.730
Um and if we focus solely on identity, which group you strictly belong to, rather than

01:29:38.730 --> 01:29:44.490
allegiances and loyalties, we're missing out on the crucial dimension of what politics

01:29:44.490 --> 01:29:45.980
is and how it works.

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

01:29:52.220 --> 01:29:57.020
uh is going to matter more politically than the I am a member of this group.

01:29:57.100 --> 01:29:57.820
Is that correct?

01:29:58.140 --> 01:29:58.620
Yeah.

01:29:59.100 --> 01:30:05.020
And and I I looking at material culture, looked at pottery and pottery design and have

01:30:05.100 --> 01:30:07.260
looked in considerable depth.

01:30:07.500 --> 01:30:13.010
But um from the perspective of um Design

01:30:13.330 --> 01:30:15.170
as ethnic marker.

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

01:30:21.250 --> 01:30:23.410
make this beautiful elaborate pottery.

01:30:23.490 --> 01:30:28.930
And I was collecting pottery and I was going to analyze it to see whether their

01:30:28.930 --> 01:30:34.770
political affiliation or political identity was reflected more strongly

01:30:34.770 --> 01:30:40.520
in their designs than their ethnolinguistic identity, really to

01:30:40.520 --> 01:30:46.040
test this idea that well you know pottery is supposed to reflect

01:30:46.040 --> 01:30:51.720
ethnicity and it's supposed to be you know unchanging virtually and um which

01:30:51.800 --> 01:30:57.720
didn't work out so um because it really fits better so

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

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

01:31:08.760 --> 01:31:14.690
um and and women, it fits all the characteristics of

01:31:14.690 --> 01:31:18.050
ethnic markers that we would expect with stereotyping.

01:31:18.290 --> 01:31:24.210
And women certainly were more accurate at identifying what was not made by

01:31:24.210 --> 01:31:29.730
a woman of their group than at identifying what was because they made finer gradations of

01:31:29.730 --> 01:31:30.450
otherness.

01:31:30.850 --> 01:31:35.410
And but um but but to your question, um

01:31:36.520 --> 01:31:42.360
both the design similarities and the women's identification of

01:31:42.360 --> 01:31:47.960
the pottery um was predicted

01:31:48.520 --> 01:31:54.360
significantly more by their political affiliation than by their ethno-linguistic

01:31:54.360 --> 01:31:55.000
identity.

01:31:55.160 --> 01:32:00.730
So my is that they're you know signifying in group and outgroup identity very

01:32:00.730 --> 01:32:06.730
actively in the pottery designs that they're making, which explains really the

01:32:06.890 --> 01:32:10.330
cultural transmission of Wow.

01:32:10.490 --> 01:32:16.170
So the pottery is not uh necessarily signaling which group I

01:32:16.170 --> 01:32:20.010
belong to, but which group I am politically loyal to.

01:32:20.940 --> 01:32:21.180
Right.

01:32:21.340 --> 01:32:24.860
If by which group I belong to, you mean the ethnolinguistic identity.

01:32:25.500 --> 01:32:25.820
Right.

01:32:26.140 --> 01:32:26.380
Right.

01:32:26.460 --> 01:32:32.140
So it's not something that is, you know, static and passive and you know

01:32:32.380 --> 01:32:37.820
learned in early socialization and perpetuated throughout the lifetime of an individual,

01:32:37.980 --> 01:32:43.500
but that these markers are being used actively to signify and and to be

01:32:43.500 --> 01:32:49.390
understood as markers of um group out group identity in a

01:32:49.390 --> 01:32:50.430
political sense.

01:32:50.590 --> 01:32:50.750
Yeah.

01:32:51.310 --> 01:32:52.990
That's so yeah, it's so fascinating.

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

01:32:56.430 --> 01:32:57.150
fascinating.

01:32:57.470 --> 01:33:03.470
So um the pottery is being used um as as a signal of which

01:33:03.710 --> 01:33:05.150
faction you are loyal to.

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

01:33:10.160 --> 01:33:10.320
at.

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

01:33:16.640 --> 01:33:22.480
of signaling or signifying uh political differences and w why other methods

01:33:22.480 --> 01:33:22.960
aren't used.

01:33:23.040 --> 01:33:24.320
Why can't they just be out in the open?

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

01:33:27.920 --> 01:33:29.600
information through pottery?

01:33:30.170 --> 01:33:34.330
There are many markers of affiliation and they're all the time.

01:33:34.490 --> 01:33:34.650
Yeah.

01:33:34.810 --> 01:33:40.410
You know, so it may be who you invite to your house for um

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

01:33:47.450 --> 01:33:53.260
i it's hard to and whether it's all understood as signification,

01:33:53.420 --> 01:33:55.180
I think probably so.

01:33:55.340 --> 01:33:59.820
Whether it's all done for purposes of signification, I think probably not.

01:34:00.140 --> 01:34:01.340
I think so.

01:34:02.060 --> 01:34:06.860
So if if not if not signification, then then what would the alternative motive be?

01:34:09.660 --> 01:34:14.220
Well, um so we studied

01:34:14.860 --> 01:34:17.890
relationships in a lot of different ways.

01:34:18.610 --> 01:34:20.610
We studied meat sharing.

01:34:20.930 --> 01:34:26.530
We studied the um sharing of propagules,

01:34:26.690 --> 01:34:32.210
garden propagules, and how that relates to garden richness and women's reproductive

01:34:32.450 --> 01:34:33.090
success.

01:34:34.690 --> 01:34:40.560
The meat sharing it is certainly if you look at

01:34:40.560 --> 01:34:46.560
the pattern signifies alliances, but you also get the pattern where higher

01:34:46.560 --> 01:34:50.880
status men are giving more meat than they're receiving and they um

01:34:52.640 --> 01:34:57.600
um again it all relates to

01:34:57.870 --> 01:35:01.550
reproductive success and strategies of alliance building.

01:35:01.710 --> 01:35:07.310
I mean strategies of alliance building and status building as a um

01:35:09.710 --> 01:35:14.830
yeah so it's not merely a signifying alliance but also a status marker as well.

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

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.

01:35:27.880 --> 01:35:28.840
Uh is that right?

01:35:28.920 --> 01:35:34.120
And and is is something similar going on with pottery or are this

01:35:34.280 --> 01:35:39.960
that's this is where I think we're too

01:35:39.960 --> 01:35:45.400
focused, not in this conversation, but in general in the field, maybe more focused on

01:35:45.720 --> 01:35:50.810
status as a goal rather than kind of almost a

01:35:50.810 --> 01:35:51.770
byproduct.

01:35:52.010 --> 01:35:53.690
But um so

01:35:58.170 --> 01:36:03.930
I think building coalitions is more important than building status.

01:36:04.810 --> 01:36:10.570
But people who are best at building coalitions accrue

01:36:10.570 --> 01:36:16.330
status because of the skills that they have in coalition

01:36:16.330 --> 01:36:20.800
building and they become known for

01:36:22.640 --> 01:36:27.360
making wise decisions, speaking well, and um

01:36:28.480 --> 01:36:33.440
the things that give people status.

01:36:33.840 --> 01:36:39.840
Um so meat sharing, I I think it would be really

01:36:39.840 --> 01:36:45.290
hard to say people share meat and give more meat for to build

01:36:45.290 --> 01:36:51.130
status, even though a crew partly it's not highly visible now.

01:36:51.450 --> 01:36:55.450
So it's more of a dyadic relationship.

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

01:37:01.690 --> 01:37:06.970
a leg of deer slapped onto the table with someone riding in

01:37:07.210 --> 01:37:13.120
charcoal from the fire, you know, from Cilio, Mukushiwa or something, um,

01:37:13.360 --> 01:37:14.720
is not uncommon.

01:37:14.960 --> 01:37:20.880
But um I so I don't see all

01:37:20.880 --> 01:37:24.560
those things as markers, if that's what you know, is as

01:37:26.400 --> 01:37:31.440
signification of status um or status

01:37:31.440 --> 01:37:35.760
striving, but rather as coalition building.

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

01:37:41.190 --> 01:37:45.190
families, which translates into reproductive success.

01:37:45.510 --> 01:37:46.550
And right.

01:37:46.710 --> 01:37:52.710
So I mean the question then in my mind is um what in fact is

01:37:52.710 --> 01:37:56.230
the difference between status and coalitional support?

01:37:56.390 --> 01:37:58.230
Is there a di- Do you see a distinction there?

01:37:58.310 --> 01:38:00.870
Are they the same thing or are they different?

01:38:01.110 --> 01:38:03.500
Um, What is the relationship between them?

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

01:38:09.340 --> 01:38:10.060
these two things.

01:38:10.300 --> 01:38:15.660
In my mind, the way I think about status is uh is basically in terms of

01:38:15.660 --> 01:38:16.940
coalitional support.

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,

01:38:23.020 --> 01:38:28.620
is um common knowledge of a person's relative value as a social partner,

01:38:29.260 --> 01:38:34.210
um, and its downstream consequences on coalitions and alliances.

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.

01:38:40.530 --> 01:38:45.330
And because it is a good strategy to do that, people who are recognized as valuable

01:38:45.330 --> 01:38:51.090
partners, therefore, as a byproduct acquire all this political power because they have all

01:38:51.090 --> 01:38:54.290
these people who are willing to support them and be their allies.

01:38:54.450 --> 01:39:00.180
So I view status as basically what happens when a community gains common knowledge

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.

01:39:06.580 --> 01:39:09.860
And uh as as we say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

01:39:09.940 --> 01:39:15.860
So if I uh hate someone, um people are going to uh show support to

01:39:15.860 --> 01:39:16.980
me by hating that person.

01:39:17.270 --> 01:39:20.790
If I love someone, they're going to show support to me by loving that person.

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,

01:39:24.950 --> 01:39:27.670
uh, to to show uh loyalty to me.

01:39:27.990 --> 01:39:31.670
I view uh all of that as as a kind of status.

01:39:31.750 --> 01:39:36.070
So uh um do what do you think of that way of thinking?

01:39:36.150 --> 01:39:37.510
Do you have a different way of thinking?

01:39:37.750 --> 01:39:43.620
Um and I think um uh I'm gonna go back to the

01:39:43.620 --> 01:39:49.060
pottery and tell you that there's this category I that I created of women

01:39:49.780 --> 01:39:53.220
data that I could see over and over again that I call women in between.

01:39:53.300 --> 01:39:56.260
And they're the women who politically mediate.

01:39:56.420 --> 01:40:01.940
Um they also paint pottery that women can't identify as either Achwa or Qichua.

01:40:02.100 --> 01:40:07.750
They have ambiguous pottery, but they recognize the styles of both above and below.

01:40:07.830 --> 01:40:13.030
And I argue that that's an intentional strategy of political ambiguity.

01:40:13.270 --> 01:40:18.710
But I think of status as influence, and I think of

01:40:18.710 --> 01:40:24.470
status as influence that is wielded in the

01:40:24.470 --> 01:40:30.340
process of political decision making within, and it and it

01:40:30.340 --> 01:40:32.580
has to be embedded within a coalition.

01:40:33.380 --> 01:40:38.420
It's not something that exists independently, you know, as a personal characteristic that

01:40:38.420 --> 01:40:40.260
one carries around with them wherever they go.

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

01:40:46.900 --> 01:40:52.420
think that it is the consensus that's built isn't

01:40:52.420 --> 01:40:57.850
necessarily a single kind of consensus.

01:40:58.010 --> 01:41:03.690
It's really that individual people all tend to consider this person

01:41:03.930 --> 01:41:04.890
in that way.

01:41:05.930 --> 01:41:11.690
But status is, and again, this is the methodology that we used, right?

01:41:11.930 --> 01:41:17.930
So we, you know, spent a fair amount of time doing kind of what our

01:41:17.840 --> 01:41:23.760
are called free listing exercises where you just ask people, what is it

01:41:23.760 --> 01:41:25.280
that makes an important person?

01:41:25.920 --> 01:41:30.800
You know, and they free list those attributes and you find some consensus, and then those

01:41:30.800 --> 01:41:32.640
become attributes of study.

01:41:33.520 --> 01:41:39.360
But and you elicit in this context the indigenous terminology for

01:41:39.360 --> 01:41:45.070
people of of status, of importance, what because status is a meaningless term, you know,

01:41:45.230 --> 01:41:46.590
in most contexts.

01:41:47.470 --> 01:41:51.790
But so um and in

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

01:42:00.430 --> 01:42:04.360
translates best into organizer rather than leader.

01:42:04.600 --> 01:42:07.880
Someone who can organize a new community.

01:42:08.120 --> 01:42:11.480
Someone who starts a new community, invites others to join.

01:42:11.640 --> 01:42:14.520
Someone who can organize a fish poisoning event.

01:42:14.760 --> 01:42:17.560
Someone who, when they invite people, they come.

01:42:18.200 --> 01:42:21.720
Someone who when they speak, they're listened to.

01:42:22.120 --> 01:42:25.880
Someone who, when they loan something, they get it back.

01:42:26.120 --> 01:42:31.640
I mean, there are really interesting attributes ascribed to a

01:42:31.810 --> 01:42:33.250
person of status.

01:42:34.290 --> 01:42:39.650
And so in Qichua it's Amu, which best translates into

01:42:39.650 --> 01:42:40.610
organizer.

01:42:41.250 --> 01:42:47.170
And um and then in Achwar,

01:42:47.890 --> 01:42:53.800
I love it, it's it's Hun, which means big and hunri are

01:42:53.800 --> 01:42:56.120
the big people and it's not just men.

01:42:56.360 --> 01:42:57.560
It's women and men.

01:42:57.720 --> 01:43:03.080
If you ask people who the Hunri are, they'll list men and women.

01:43:03.320 --> 01:43:05.880
Men more often leave out the women.

01:43:06.680 --> 01:43:09.880
But um not everyone and certainly not the women.

01:43:10.040 --> 01:43:14.440
So um there are people of

01:43:15.750 --> 01:43:21.430
influence and respect and I think in measured in

01:43:21.430 --> 01:43:25.510
many ways that I think are universally true.

01:43:26.950 --> 01:43:32.950
And then but they are, you know, Hunri or Amu

01:43:33.830 --> 01:43:35.750
within that context.

01:43:36.230 --> 01:43:40.070
And they actively work as

01:43:41.900 --> 01:43:47.820
responsible people to give meat

01:43:48.140 --> 01:43:53.980
to people who might not otherwise have it, which is

01:43:53.980 --> 01:43:57.740
part of how they extend those um

01:43:59.260 --> 01:44:00.460
coalitional ties.

01:44:00.700 --> 01:44:06.430
But it's it's women who don't have a husband, um, a

01:44:06.430 --> 01:44:10.430
new family who doesn't have a lot of other relationships.

01:44:10.830 --> 01:44:15.630
Um the the visiting anthropologists, you know, who do you give meat to?

01:44:15.710 --> 01:44:18.590
And usually you can give more meat because you're a better hunter.

01:44:18.750 --> 01:44:22.030
I mean, there are lots of implications all bound up in that.

01:44:22.830 --> 01:44:28.510
Um people who people respect

01:44:28.590 --> 01:44:30.620
people who work hard, you know?

01:44:30.780 --> 01:44:33.260
Um, women have big gardens.

01:44:33.740 --> 01:44:39.260
Um, there's a relationship between garden richness and

01:44:39.820 --> 01:44:45.820
women's um political centrality and um and their

01:44:45.820 --> 01:44:47.420
reproductive success.

01:44:48.060 --> 01:44:53.910
Um so even though you tend to think sometimes there's not a lot of variation

01:44:53.910 --> 01:44:57.270
in women's reproductive success, there is, and it's very meaningful.

01:44:57.830 --> 01:45:00.790
Um, so I'm not sure.

01:45:00.950 --> 01:45:06.790
I just it's I I think you just can't see status as disembedded

01:45:06.870 --> 01:45:07.670
from coalition.

01:45:07.750 --> 01:45:11.030
And I don't think that everybody's out there status driving.

01:45:11.270 --> 01:45:17.190
I think status is something that's built by this sense of responsibility for others and

01:45:17.990 --> 01:45:23.700
sense of responsibility for conflict resolution, especially in this

01:45:23.700 --> 01:45:24.580
context.

01:45:25.540 --> 01:45:31.460
There's the theory, you know, there's political factionalism, the theories

01:45:31.460 --> 01:45:37.060
of the work done in political factionalism a

01:45:37.060 --> 01:45:42.970
while ago, um, really is helpful, I think, in that respect, because it really

01:45:43.130 --> 01:45:47.770
gives you an idea of the importance of the swing voters, which is certainly important in

01:45:47.770 --> 01:45:53.690
politics today, and how people curry the um the alliance of

01:45:53.690 --> 01:45:54.570
those swing voters.

01:45:54.650 --> 01:45:58.410
And that certainly happens in in this context as well.

01:45:58.570 --> 01:46:04.560
And I think that that's probably universally true in politics that you

01:46:04.560 --> 01:46:10.560
have people that you know may defect or maybe um maybe you can get to

01:46:10.560 --> 01:46:16.160
defect and um and those people tend to get sometimes a little more attention than

01:46:16.480 --> 01:46:19.760
than perhaps they deserve but you need them.

01:46:20.080 --> 01:46:20.480
Interesting.

01:46:20.720 --> 01:46:26.640
So you don't view uh status as separable from from coalitional support or political power

01:46:26.800 --> 01:46:28.640
that they're they're basically the same thing.

01:46:29.070 --> 01:46:30.350
I don't think they're the same thing.

01:46:30.510 --> 01:46:34.990
I think they're two different dimensions of relationships.

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

01:46:41.310 --> 01:46:44.510
lot of status, but people will, you know, that's odd.

01:46:44.590 --> 01:46:45.870
That that that's sound that's interesting.

01:46:45.950 --> 01:46:48.110
So uh how how would that work?

01:46:48.270 --> 01:46:54.110
A person who is um say has a lot of influence, coalitional support,

01:46:54.190 --> 01:46:57.150
political power, whatever you want to call it, and yet they're low status.

01:46:57.310 --> 01:46:58.510
How does that work?

01:46:59.700 --> 01:47:05.620
Well, especially in these kinds of communities, status you know is partly

01:47:05.620 --> 01:47:07.140
a factor of age.

01:47:07.460 --> 01:47:13.380
So you may have a young man who's very hardworking, whose status may be a

01:47:13.380 --> 01:47:19.220
little higher than expected for his age, but it's still low in the community overall.

01:47:19.860 --> 01:47:25.620
Um, but if he's well respected and perhaps um, you know, hard working and

01:47:25.780 --> 01:47:31.330
shares a lot of his resources with others, demonstrates his

01:47:31.330 --> 01:47:37.330
commitment to being a good member of the community and the coalition, um, you

01:47:37.330 --> 01:47:43.010
know, supports for young men, his father-in-law, um, when expected to do so, if

01:47:43.330 --> 01:47:49.330
then, then if there is a conflict, then he's more likely

01:47:49.330 --> 01:47:55.170
to be supported in that conflict by others um who do not whole

01:47:55.480 --> 01:47:57.960
have those same attributes.

01:47:58.200 --> 01:48:04.120
So in this study, you know, the question was for status, you know, what

01:48:04.120 --> 01:48:05.800
makes an important person?

01:48:06.840 --> 01:48:09.880
And those are the attributes that I described.

01:48:10.040 --> 01:48:15.560
And then the question about alliance was who would support who

01:48:16.120 --> 01:48:20.440
in the event there were a conflict involving these three people.

01:48:20.680 --> 01:48:25.270
And so that was the triadic task for alliance.

01:48:26.150 --> 01:48:28.310
And were these related?

01:48:30.150 --> 01:48:34.150
So were the important people also the people who would be supported in conflicts?

01:48:34.390 --> 01:48:36.310
Or were they often different people?

01:48:40.790 --> 01:48:42.310
Yeah, they're related.

01:48:42.550 --> 01:48:48.080
Um so I wish I had a graph.

01:48:48.480 --> 01:48:54.160
So there's a we have some really nice diagrams of sort of

01:48:54.160 --> 01:48:59.120
coalitional relationships, the political landscape with the

01:49:00.080 --> 01:49:04.640
excuse me, icons for each individual scale by size according to status.

01:49:04.880 --> 01:49:10.490
So you can see that the higher status people are most well situated within

01:49:10.810 --> 01:49:12.330
their alliances.

01:49:12.650 --> 01:49:18.090
And even for men, the highest status people are tend to be

01:49:18.410 --> 01:49:24.090
more um toward the

01:49:24.410 --> 01:49:29.850
center of the division between the two coalitions.

01:49:30.010 --> 01:49:32.890
For women, it's really clear there are almost three groups.

01:49:33.050 --> 01:49:38.480
So you have like the Achwar Alliance, the Qichua Alliance, and then this

01:49:38.480 --> 01:49:43.840
group, loose group, but still statistically

01:49:43.840 --> 01:49:49.040
significant, where women who have higher status than expected for their

01:49:50.320 --> 01:49:56.000
age are more centrally located between the two

01:49:56.000 --> 01:49:56.720
coalitions.

01:49:56.800 --> 01:50:02.320
So it's really a nice visual representation of their position as mediators

01:50:02.690 --> 01:50:04.530
within the coalitions.

01:50:05.810 --> 01:50:06.130
Okay.

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

01:50:12.370 --> 01:50:16.450
get by and make a living in whatever context we are.

01:50:16.690 --> 01:50:22.130
Um, and in particular in Kanambo, that is, you know, having

01:50:22.130 --> 01:50:26.210
coalitional um uh influence or influence in the community.

01:50:26.370 --> 01:50:30.050
Like um it's um uh yeah.

01:50:30.660 --> 01:50:34.100
I I think you can't disentangle them.

01:50:34.900 --> 01:50:40.580
And you know, if we want to read contemporary social theory, you know, Bordure would tell

01:50:40.580 --> 01:50:44.420
us that in a heartbeat, but that you know that um

01:50:47.620 --> 01:50:52.180
status comes from one's position within those

01:50:53.350 --> 01:50:58.150
uh in this case what we call alliances or coalitions.

01:50:59.350 --> 01:50:59.590
Right.

01:50:59.750 --> 01:51:01.590
It's a relational attribute.

01:51:01.750 --> 01:51:03.270
It's not a a noun.

01:51:03.430 --> 01:51:04.230
It's not a thing.

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

01:51:09.030 --> 01:51:11.430
something, it doesn't tell you what they're good at, right?

01:51:11.590 --> 01:51:14.390
Like it it doesn't, it doesn't fill in the content.

01:51:14.940 --> 01:51:19.260
It's just sort of a uh an adjectival word, right?

01:51:19.420 --> 01:51:21.900
It's sort of like status is sort of like what that is.

01:51:22.140 --> 01:51:23.580
It's status has that same stat.

01:51:24.380 --> 01:51:26.620
Status has the same status, which is interesting.

01:51:27.660 --> 01:51:29.820
That's a really good way to think about it.

01:51:29.900 --> 01:51:35.580
And and I think this with the shamanism too, where people are looking for the shaman,

01:51:35.740 --> 01:51:41.350
but shamanic power um or ability is

01:51:41.590 --> 01:51:47.590
is often um relational right and it's um it's not a

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

01:51:53.430 --> 01:51:59.340
than than others so um yeah Yeah,

01:51:59.420 --> 01:52:00.380
it's it's so interesting.

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

01:52:03.500 --> 01:52:04.060
honest here.

01:52:04.140 --> 01:52:06.220
Like we're we're learning about status.

01:52:06.380 --> 01:52:06.620
Yeah.

01:52:07.180 --> 01:52:07.580
Yes.

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

01:52:13.820 --> 01:52:19.100
incredibly rich and complicated topic with with lots of really subtle

01:52:19.100 --> 01:52:21.420
distinctions to be made.

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

01:52:26.470 --> 01:52:27.430
podcast.

01:52:27.590 --> 01:52:33.190
Um and um he he told a story that that stuck with me of a

01:52:33.190 --> 01:52:39.110
hunter who was uh exiled from the community for being too good of a hunter

01:52:39.350 --> 01:52:44.390
for being a show off um and and that often being too overt or

01:52:44.390 --> 01:52:49.800
braggadocious in one's uh seeking of status or or

01:52:49.800 --> 01:52:54.600
influence could actually lower your status and influence.

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

01:52:59.880 --> 01:53:01.800
communities that you've worked with.

01:53:02.600 --> 01:53:08.440
You know, and anthropologists have a term for that called leveling mechanisms that

01:53:08.440 --> 01:53:11.720
are commonly found in small-scale societies.

01:53:12.360 --> 01:53:13.640
But let me think.

01:53:14.200 --> 01:53:20.010
Um I

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

01:53:25.450 --> 01:53:26.250
scenario.

01:53:31.530 --> 01:53:36.650
Men, especially young men, tend to be fairly humble.

01:53:37.930 --> 01:53:39.370
They need to be.

01:53:40.570 --> 01:53:45.860
So I I can I guess I can see how that happens.

01:53:46.100 --> 01:53:51.780
But so this territory and this region,

01:53:52.100 --> 01:53:56.660
Indigenous of Indigenous communities, is predominantly

01:53:56.980 --> 01:54:02.900
matrilocal, meaning that you know young men to

01:54:02.900 --> 01:54:08.740
be married need to go and live in the house of their father-in-law and

01:54:08.740 --> 01:54:09.940
mother-in-law.

01:54:10.180 --> 01:54:15.870
And there is a period of bride service where they're really

01:54:15.870 --> 01:54:21.470
obligated to work, um, to do whatever it is that especially their

01:54:21.470 --> 01:54:23.470
father-in-law wants them to do.

01:54:23.710 --> 01:54:29.070
So to tell someone to take a two-day hike, to um go buy a

01:54:29.070 --> 01:54:34.990
cigarette at a military base for a party that's coming up might be a

01:54:34.990 --> 01:54:37.470
task that you would assign to a son-in-law.

01:54:37.630 --> 01:54:42.670
In the old days, it could be a several month trip downriver to get salt.

01:54:43.020 --> 01:54:47.020
And those are tasks for young married and sons-in-law.

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

01:54:53.260 --> 01:54:56.220
in law, he would be set on an even longer trip.

01:54:56.460 --> 01:54:59.020
But um I don't, I don't really

01:55:02.860 --> 01:55:07.970
young men certainly express that they need to

01:55:08.290 --> 01:55:13.410
behave in a certain way while they're married in, um,

01:55:14.210 --> 01:55:15.730
especially at first.

01:55:19.490 --> 01:55:21.490
So I can't.

01:55:23.650 --> 01:55:29.170
There are people who are sort of men who may be kind of a bully, an

01:55:29.170 --> 01:55:33.860
older, you know, a higher status senior man.

01:55:34.660 --> 01:55:40.180
And what I see is that he's had a hard time

01:55:40.180 --> 01:55:44.020
finding husbands for his daughters because they don't want to go live with him.

01:55:44.180 --> 01:55:48.580
And people don't want them to go, their sons to go live there.

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

01:55:54.420 --> 01:56:00.180
leveling mechanism that I've observed, and mostly because I don't see I've

01:56:00.420 --> 01:56:05.950
I can't think of a single example of behavior I've seen that would be

01:56:05.950 --> 01:56:08.110
categorized as braggadocious.

01:56:08.430 --> 01:56:12.110
You know, I I think there's teasing and interesting.

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

01:56:16.590 --> 01:56:16.830
happen?

01:56:16.910 --> 01:56:22.750
Or is it is the idea of braggadociousness being bad not even uh

01:56:22.910 --> 01:56:23.870
a thing?

01:56:28.180 --> 01:56:34.100
People make fun of people sometimes, you know, which but

01:56:34.100 --> 01:56:39.540
it's a but it's not as an

01:56:39.540 --> 01:56:41.460
outcome of that, I think.

01:56:41.700 --> 01:56:42.580
I I don't know.

01:56:42.660 --> 01:56:44.980
I can't I can't answer the question.

01:56:45.220 --> 01:56:50.740
I don't I can't really think of anything that

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

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

01:57:00.430 --> 01:57:04.030
reproductive consequence for uh being seen as a bully.

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

01:57:10.430 --> 01:57:11.390
that poor.

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

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

01:57:23.820 --> 01:57:29.740
it's it's interesting um because i have

01:57:29.900 --> 01:57:35.710
uh a way of thinking about this that um basically tries to explain the variation

01:57:35.710 --> 01:57:41.470
in status symbols as deriving from the fact that uh revealing them as

01:57:41.470 --> 01:57:45.950
status symbols often negates their status enhancing effects.

01:57:46.110 --> 01:57:51.790
Um and so uh that creates a kind of volatility uh in in our in

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

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

01:58:01.960 --> 01:58:05.400
different to show that we're more humble or that we don't care about status.

01:58:05.480 --> 01:58:08.680
And that creates uh an incentive to send a different signal.

01:58:08.840 --> 01:58:14.840
And you sort of and this creates um uh a a dynamic that

01:58:14.840 --> 01:58:20.120
that would cause cultural variation in the in the types of status signals being sent over

01:58:20.440 --> 01:58:20.680
time.

01:58:20.920 --> 01:58:23.690
Um Does that sound plausible to you?

01:58:24.010 --> 01:58:29.850
Yeah, I think that the that to consider that more, I

01:58:29.850 --> 01:58:35.530
would think about um what might be

01:58:36.490 --> 01:58:42.250
contexts for status driving that are novel contexts,

01:58:42.410 --> 01:58:47.610
um, and who moves into those positions and that um

01:58:48.490 --> 01:58:54.200
and then and and of course that's happening now because

01:58:54.520 --> 01:59:00.360
the men who were you know the ones at my knee when uh

01:59:00.520 --> 01:59:06.520
we first went in are now president of the indigenous political organization

01:59:06.680 --> 01:59:08.280
and that sort of thing.

01:59:08.520 --> 01:59:14.410
Um and I think in those contexts would probably see some

01:59:14.410 --> 01:59:15.770
status leveling.

01:59:16.010 --> 01:59:18.970
And I haven't thought about that a lot.

01:59:19.050 --> 01:59:24.170
And I haven't um I don't but so and again

01:59:24.330 --> 01:59:30.330
anthropologically, we know that when kind of new opportunities, new context for status open

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

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

01:59:42.520 --> 01:59:42.840
control.

01:59:43.480 --> 01:59:48.600
So I think probably, you know, in Konamo now

01:59:49.560 --> 01:59:55.370
and in a lot of other traditional societies there's greater articulation

01:59:55.370 --> 02:00:01.130
with outside institutions, you know, with NGOs and the coolness of indigeneity

02:00:01.690 --> 02:00:07.690
and such that we might see more of that at play.

02:00:09.530 --> 02:00:09.690
Yeah.

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

02:00:14.570 --> 02:00:16.090
level being in these communities.

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

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

02:00:24.320 --> 02:00:25.680
there's a con, and vice versa.

02:00:25.920 --> 02:00:31.920
Is there anything about like when you experience sort of switching cultures, and

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,

02:00:36.560 --> 02:00:42.550
but um, but uh that you that's sort of unique um, or that's a

02:00:42.870 --> 02:00:47.510
pro because there's all of this conflict, there's actually some something else, you know.

02:00:47.590 --> 02:00:52.870
There's almost like a a piece because everybody is sort of um sh pretty

02:00:52.870 --> 02:00:56.150
coordinated about social relationships, or everybody's really close.

02:00:56.230 --> 02:01:00.550
You know, people talk about closeness when they've been in conflict or combat together.

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

02:01:06.100 --> 02:01:12.100
there is this sort of interpersonal violence that they're sort of part of our evolved

02:01:12.100 --> 02:01:17.620
psychology or part of our experience of social ties that that

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

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.

02:01:29.300 --> 02:01:30.820
Is there anything like that?

02:01:31.930 --> 02:01:37.610
I think I yeah, I I tend to see politics afoot

02:01:37.610 --> 02:01:38.410
everywhere.

02:01:38.970 --> 02:01:43.050
I see coalitions forming everywhere.

02:01:43.210 --> 02:01:49.130
I see people who are better or worse at it, certainly within faculty, you know,

02:01:49.290 --> 02:01:54.570
within the academic senate, um, even within the administration.

02:01:54.810 --> 02:02:00.320
You know, there are ways to um Observe

02:02:00.320 --> 02:02:05.200
coalitions that are forming that may require a little

02:02:06.400 --> 02:02:12.320
concern or ways to understand coalitions and how they

02:02:12.640 --> 02:02:18.560
are formed on the ground to be effective at getting things done.

02:02:19.360 --> 02:02:25.070
I think understanding that I think politics

02:02:25.070 --> 02:02:30.990
and coalitional formation and um respect and status formation

02:02:31.310 --> 02:02:37.070
are always part of the human condition and recognizing that that's true

02:02:37.390 --> 02:02:40.110
in whatever context we're embedded.

02:02:40.430 --> 02:02:42.990
I I think I see that.

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

02:02:49.060 --> 02:02:54.900
when I step into an indigenous context, I understand better.

02:02:55.140 --> 02:03:00.820
And that's true in there are in people who write in

02:03:00.820 --> 02:03:05.780
native studies and really identify

02:03:06.390 --> 02:03:11.750
common characteristics of um really we are talking about

02:03:11.750 --> 02:03:17.670
epistemology and ontology and and um just an understanding of how the

02:03:17.670 --> 02:03:23.510
world works and the relationships and how important they are um i i feel

02:03:23.510 --> 02:03:28.950
like i get that better than if i wouldn't have had this experience.

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

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

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

02:03:45.920 --> 02:03:51.920
just sort of like really poorly developed politically and coalitionally because we don't

02:03:51.920 --> 02:03:57.120
have these like evolutionarily valid training life experiences.

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

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

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

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

02:04:15.910 --> 02:04:20.070
know, David and I especially, you know, we're just like bumbling idiots.

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

02:04:26.310 --> 02:04:31.980
been trained in a crucible of sort of really, you know, you've

02:04:31.980 --> 02:04:37.580
gotten good training in like actually ecologically or evolutionarily valid alliance and

02:04:37.580 --> 02:04:38.460
politics?

02:04:38.700 --> 02:04:44.060
Or is it that it's just that the cues

02:04:44.620 --> 02:04:50.380
for our evolved psychologies, it's just fitting the cue structure better, where it's just

02:04:50.460 --> 02:04:55.340
you're hearing the conversations, you're seeing the people, and and maybe the same appetite

02:04:55.340 --> 02:05:00.890
that people have for sort of you know, TV shows or dramas or fiction is

02:05:01.290 --> 02:05:06.970
this appetite for, you know, um, that's politics for our evolved psychology,

02:05:07.290 --> 02:05:11.370
not current politics of, you know, abstract things.

02:05:11.530 --> 02:05:17.290
So do you think, you know, so this experience that you understand it, and may

02:05:17.370 --> 02:05:19.050
again, maybe these are not separable.

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

02:05:24.440 --> 02:05:30.440
psychology is responding to that this is just the right Q structure for all

02:05:30.440 --> 02:05:30.840
of us?

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

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

02:05:41.400 --> 02:05:42.200
just really bad at it.

02:05:42.280 --> 02:05:43.320
Or maybe, and again, yeah.

02:05:43.640 --> 02:05:45.240
I don't I don't think we are really bad at it.

02:05:45.320 --> 02:05:46.360
I think we're really good at it.

02:05:46.600 --> 02:05:52.040
I think that evolved psychology is is part of the way we all

02:05:52.310 --> 02:05:53.910
perceive the world.

02:05:54.150 --> 02:05:59.750
I think that I perceive it more acutely because of,

02:06:00.230 --> 02:06:05.910
and I imagine that you do both of you also, because you've thought about the

02:06:06.070 --> 02:06:11.430
the theory of it, you know, the principles and the paradigm and and um

02:06:11.830 --> 02:06:17.670
and you'll r recognize the patterns and the behaviors more rapidly and

02:06:17.670 --> 02:06:20.310
more consciously than than others.

02:06:20.550 --> 02:06:26.160
But you know, we all know movers and shakers and it's context dependent,

02:06:26.320 --> 02:06:27.280
I think, you know.

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

02:06:32.800 --> 02:06:38.720
conversation in a faculty meeting effectively, it may be making

02:06:38.720 --> 02:06:44.560
sure or you know, organizing the joint conference of HBS and the

02:06:44.560 --> 02:06:49.440
Cultural Evolutionary Society, you know, those folks are, you know,

02:06:49.760 --> 02:06:55.390
embedded in structure of alliances and and um and that

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

02:07:01.390 --> 02:07:07.390
in the um than there is in a small community but I

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

02:07:12.670 --> 02:07:17.950
and and coalitions being formed everywhere and I think the same the same

02:07:17.950 --> 02:07:19.470
principles apply.

02:07:19.840 --> 02:07:20.160
Yeah.

02:07:20.400 --> 02:07:22.480
Just hunting and giving me.

02:07:22.960 --> 02:07:24.720
It's just different behaviors.

02:07:25.040 --> 02:07:30.960
One of the things that really struck me in the uh October um symposium

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

02:07:36.480 --> 02:07:40.160
house and your home and your family up to them.

02:07:41.200 --> 02:07:46.690
And uh I'm wondering, is that sort of the flip side of you going to

02:07:46.690 --> 02:07:52.610
Kanambo in the sense of, I mean, the dividing line between work and

02:07:52.610 --> 02:07:58.610
home or home life or family life, um, you know, how

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

02:08:02.850 --> 02:08:08.370
observation that I was really struck with how many students felt like you

02:08:08.860 --> 02:08:12.300
adopted them and really took care of them.

02:08:12.460 --> 02:08:15.740
Um is that something you that you did consciously?

02:08:18.620 --> 02:08:24.460
Well, kind of, but um it wasn't unusual

02:08:24.700 --> 02:08:30.620
to find that one of us independently had invited somebody to come, you know, and stay.

02:08:31.020 --> 02:08:36.620
But I think honestly, I think it's who we both John and I

02:08:37.110 --> 02:08:42.870
are or were, you know, um, in our homes when we grew up,

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

02:08:48.950 --> 02:08:49.990
periods of time.

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

02:08:55.510 --> 02:08:55.750
mother.

02:08:55.830 --> 02:08:59.320
And my mother would say, Well, you know, they can stay here.

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.

02:09:04.840 --> 02:09:07.560
And a year later they're still there.

02:09:07.720 --> 02:09:11.080
You know, so I mean, that was part of my growing up.

02:09:11.240 --> 02:09:17.080
And then John comes from a really big extended, you know, Mexican

02:09:17.080 --> 02:09:17.720
family.

02:09:17.960 --> 02:09:23.730
And so to have cousins and aunts and his

02:09:23.730 --> 02:09:28.290
mother's sister lived with them almost his entire life.

02:09:29.330 --> 02:09:35.090
And so I think, uh, and

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

02:09:39.330 --> 02:09:41.380
say we don't have good boundaries.

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

02:09:47.620 --> 02:09:53.380
work, you know, because there, there, there are boundaries, you have to learn them, but

02:09:53.380 --> 02:09:54.900
they're really different.

02:09:55.060 --> 02:09:59.460
And um and you know, even proxymics are different.

02:09:59.620 --> 02:10:04.820
And um what is your business versus somebody else's business, you know, especially us,

02:10:05.060 --> 02:10:09.990
because you know, there had to be a whole new category of person established for us.

02:10:10.310 --> 02:10:16.150
So um boundaries were um we learned about them because

02:10:16.470 --> 02:10:18.390
we kind of needed to.

02:10:18.550 --> 02:10:24.390
But yeah yeah I mean I think that's the anthropology um is is is

02:10:24.390 --> 02:10:30.310
exactly sitting is is the science of those boundaries right and sort of maybe just sitting

02:10:30.310 --> 02:10:36.150
right on them or pushing through them right yeah yeah and and and that

02:10:36.150 --> 02:10:42.080
was my you know for finding a place to do research

02:10:42.080 --> 02:10:47.760
and maintaining that research site, you know, um, living well within the

02:10:47.760 --> 02:10:52.560
community and contributing a benefit to the community.

02:10:52.960 --> 02:10:57.360
Um and and understanding that you're there.

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,

02:11:04.110 --> 02:11:09.790
you know, you're there, especially in an indigenous territory where it's we're

02:11:09.790 --> 02:11:13.230
totally dependent on people's permission to be here.

02:11:13.470 --> 02:11:17.310
So um it's by their grace, sort of in a way, yeah.

02:11:17.630 --> 02:11:18.350
Absolutely.

02:11:18.510 --> 02:11:19.070
Yeah.

02:11:19.310 --> 02:11:19.950
Yeah.

02:11:21.560 --> 02:11:22.840
So I think

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

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.

02:11:39.480 --> 02:11:45.240
Is there anything um that yeah on at

02:11:45.240 --> 02:11:47.640
whatever level that we should have asked?

02:11:51.010 --> 02:11:53.650
Don't think so.

02:11:54.530 --> 02:12:00.450
Um I think, you know, for students and

02:12:00.450 --> 02:12:06.450
others who are thinking about establishing a field site, I think recognizing

02:12:06.450 --> 02:12:12.140
how much time it can take to do that and how important getting

02:12:12.140 --> 02:12:17.820
permissions and building relationships is before you can even go into

02:12:17.980 --> 02:12:19.100
a community.

02:12:20.300 --> 02:12:26.220
So we were over, we were about 11

02:12:26.220 --> 02:12:31.420
months in before we actually started our field work in

02:12:31.420 --> 02:12:32.380
Conambo.

02:12:33.020 --> 02:12:38.610
So um the IRB is a really great process because it

02:12:38.610 --> 02:12:44.610
requires you now to think about what your potential impacts on a community may be.

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.

02:12:51.090 --> 02:12:56.980
We become, you know, kind of, we we need to think about that and

02:12:56.980 --> 02:13:02.980
we need to think about what kind of benefit we can return and how

02:13:02.980 --> 02:13:08.500
we can return a benefit in a way that allows people the choice to

02:13:08.500 --> 02:13:14.100
participate or not participate in the research so we did um

02:13:15.140 --> 02:13:20.980
we did we were basically served as health promoters and um the first aid station

02:13:21.220 --> 02:13:27.070
and facilitated um that um access to

02:13:27.070 --> 02:13:33.070
medical care that people when asked you know that's what they wanted and we

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

02:13:38.910 --> 02:13:44.670
followed um you know john could give injections and

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

02:13:50.480 --> 02:13:53.120
were and he had worked in a venom lab.

02:13:53.360 --> 02:13:56.320
So and he could fix things like radios.

02:13:56.480 --> 02:14:00.640
So when there was a snake bite and the radio was down, he could gauge.

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

02:14:06.800 --> 02:14:12.560
radio and and you know, and and then so we could call the pilots

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

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

02:14:22.590 --> 02:14:24.910
because of the necrosis that can result.

02:14:25.310 --> 02:14:28.350
Anyway, there's there's so many, so many things, right?

02:14:28.510 --> 02:14:29.470
So many things.

02:14:29.790 --> 02:14:31.630
Ask people what they need.

02:14:31.790 --> 02:14:33.790
That's I think the advice.

02:14:34.030 --> 02:14:38.190
Make sure you ask permission before you go anywhere.

02:14:38.430 --> 02:14:41.790
Don't take a lot of photographs, don't be rude.

02:14:41.920 --> 02:14:45.520
Um, you know good good good life lessons for any context actually.

02:14:45.840 --> 02:14:46.000
Right.

02:14:46.320 --> 02:14:46.560
Right.

02:14:46.720 --> 02:14:50.480
And and we basically didn't go anywhere unless we were invited.

02:14:50.640 --> 02:14:55.280
We waited for invitations and I find that to be good um

02:14:56.240 --> 02:14:56.880
method.

02:14:57.200 --> 02:14:57.600
Yeah.

02:14:57.760 --> 02:14:59.200
So how how long?

02:14:59.520 --> 02:15:00.560
So how long has it been?

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

02:15:05.280 --> 02:15:06.080
don't mind me asking?

02:15:06.160 --> 02:15:06.960
I'm just curious.

02:15:07.360 --> 02:15:13.030
No, we first went in 1992 and

02:15:13.270 --> 02:15:18.390
maybe around April, somewhere around there.

02:15:18.550 --> 02:15:19.750
We went in first.

02:15:19.990 --> 02:15:25.750
Um be and then that was part of our checking out different places and then

02:15:25.750 --> 02:15:29.190
going back to the States and regrouping and coming back.

02:15:29.430 --> 02:15:35.270
So we landed in Konambo Christmas Eve, 1992, with a two

02:15:35.350 --> 02:15:35.990
year old.

02:15:36.230 --> 02:15:41.660
And um, so that's been a few years, right?

02:15:42.140 --> 02:15:47.660
32, 35, yeah, 32, 33, something like that.

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

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

02:15:59.630 --> 02:16:04.270
the last 10 years you've learned so much more or is it trailing off?

02:16:04.350 --> 02:16:10.350
Or, you know, what's the curve of um I haven't been back since John

02:16:10.510 --> 02:16:15.070
and I did our last field trip there in 2018 and then came COVID and

02:16:16.750 --> 02:16:19.950
almost every every anthropologist we've talked to is had the COVID line.

02:16:20.030 --> 02:16:20.270
Yeah.

02:16:20.750 --> 02:16:23.150
So it's it's time to go back.

02:16:23.230 --> 02:16:26.580
And it's not that I haven't been in touch with people.

02:16:26.740 --> 02:16:30.740
Like I said, I get phone calls and I get lots of Facebook messages.

02:16:30.980 --> 02:16:36.900
But um so in that sense, uh I mean the

02:16:36.900 --> 02:16:39.700
world of people in Conambo has changed so much.

02:16:39.940 --> 02:16:43.540
The younger generation speaks Spanish, they're literate.

02:16:43.780 --> 02:16:49.690
We just saw the first um kid born in Konambo get her

02:16:49.690 --> 02:16:50.490
college degree.

02:16:50.730 --> 02:16:51.530
Oh cool.

02:16:52.010 --> 02:16:54.970
And so just there's a lot of changes.

02:16:55.210 --> 02:17:00.970
But I think honestly, I mean John and I started doing what we call tag

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

02:17:06.730 --> 02:17:09.530
had the kids back as all that stuff.

02:17:09.770 --> 02:17:13.480
But um, and I learned a lot.

02:17:14.200 --> 02:17:20.040
Um I think of them as pajama parties, just traveling with women and

02:17:20.120 --> 02:17:25.800
um, you know, getting a big hotel room or staying on the

02:17:25.800 --> 02:17:31.480
river and you know a shelter that is built, you know, for the

02:17:31.480 --> 02:17:31.960
night.

02:17:32.200 --> 02:17:36.950
Um but just um I I think I learn stuff all the time.

02:17:37.110 --> 02:17:41.990
Every time I go, I learn something new and um

02:17:44.950 --> 02:17:49.830
so the individual stories, but there's tons of data to be analyzed.

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

02:17:55.990 --> 02:18:00.800
touch base and make sure I'm getting, you know, when are you coming?

02:18:01.040 --> 02:18:02.240
Are you coming back?

02:18:02.480 --> 02:18:03.680
You know, all the time.

02:18:03.840 --> 02:18:08.800
So it's time I have responsibilities and people that I care about.

02:18:08.960 --> 02:18:10.080
So yeah.

02:18:10.240 --> 02:18:10.480
Yeah.

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

02:18:16.240 --> 02:18:18.240
evolutionary behavioral sciences to be doing it.

02:18:18.480 --> 02:18:19.440
I feel that way.

02:18:19.600 --> 02:18:25.590
Um and I especially think that, you know, the the anthropology part of

02:18:25.590 --> 02:18:31.590
that is the it's just an incredible, you know, these these societies are changing so

02:18:31.590 --> 02:18:37.110
much and to be the generation that sort of is seeing it,

02:18:37.350 --> 02:18:41.110
um, um, you know, it's it's it's vanishing, right?

02:18:41.270 --> 02:18:46.390
These the the the these different places that are not all h homogeneous.

02:18:46.470 --> 02:18:52.240
Um It's such a um just an incredible opportunity to sort of document this

02:18:52.320 --> 02:18:54.240
this way of living and these people.

02:18:55.520 --> 02:18:56.160
Yeah.

02:18:56.640 --> 02:18:56.960
Yeah.

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

02:19:02.800 --> 02:19:05.760
want to contribute to the, you know, the myth of the vanishing.

02:19:06.080 --> 02:19:06.640
No, exactly.

02:19:06.720 --> 02:19:06.960
Yeah.

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.

02:19:11.280 --> 02:19:11.760
Yeah, exactly.

02:19:12.000 --> 02:19:17.910
And and that the these, you know, sort of principles of indigenity are

02:19:17.910 --> 02:19:20.470
found in urban Indian communities.

02:19:20.630 --> 02:19:24.070
And you know, my students on campus who are native.

02:19:24.230 --> 02:19:29.910
You know, there's there's just a a way of thinking about the world that

02:19:30.230 --> 02:19:35.990
is shared and um and and I'm done I don't have to

02:19:36.040 --> 02:19:38.280
declare that as my own insight.

02:19:38.360 --> 02:19:43.320
You know, we can look at lots of writing by native scholars

02:19:44.120 --> 02:19:45.720
and find it there.

02:19:45.960 --> 02:19:51.240
So I don't I'm I'm worried though about going back.

02:19:51.320 --> 02:19:54.920
You know, so many people, including John, have died.

02:19:55.080 --> 02:19:55.400
Yeah.

02:19:55.640 --> 02:20:01.160
There will be observations of all those deaths and um there

02:20:02.040 --> 02:20:07.330
um I don't I don't know what this next generation

02:20:07.890 --> 02:20:09.090
is gonna be.

02:20:09.330 --> 02:20:13.170
That generation though, there are boisterous ones, you know.

02:20:13.250 --> 02:20:19.170
I mean, I think always, but it's when they we talked, we used to

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

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

02:20:30.360 --> 02:20:34.760
suddenly the ones who had been the junior roosters became the senior roosters, and there

02:20:34.760 --> 02:20:36.920
was a lot of cockfight.

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

02:20:42.760 --> 02:20:43.480
extent.

02:20:43.720 --> 02:20:49.560
Um, I and that would be interesting to see actually those leveling

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

02:20:55.490 --> 02:20:57.730
know, because that's more typical.

02:20:58.610 --> 02:21:00.610
So yeah, I don't know.

02:21:00.770 --> 02:21:01.410
Yeah.

02:21:01.730 --> 02:21:03.890
Things are changing for sure.

02:21:04.210 --> 02:21:04.850
Yeah.

02:21:05.490 --> 02:21:11.330
Well, thank you, Brenda, for uh giving your uh insightful

02:21:11.330 --> 02:21:12.930
theoretical perspective.

02:21:13.090 --> 02:21:19.000
Um, but more importantly the rich empirical reality uh that our theories will

02:21:19.000 --> 02:21:24.760
inevitably collide with as we embark on this mission to try to understand

02:21:24.920 --> 02:21:26.520
uh who we are.

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

02:21:31.800 --> 02:21:32.200
podcast.

02:21:32.520 --> 02:21:33.320
Yeah, thank you.

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,

02:21:39.850 --> 02:21:40.570
uh yes.

02:21:40.810 --> 02:21:42.970
So both both big and organizers.

02:21:43.050 --> 02:21:46.010
So thank you for for doing that and and thank you for coming on.

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

02:21:51.770 --> 02:21:53.690
engage with those ideas.

02:21:53.850 --> 02:21:56.730
I I think all these theories are compatible.

02:21:56.970 --> 02:22:00.730
So I think we're on the right track for sure.

02:22:01.880 --> 02:22:03.160
So thank you.

02:22:03.400 --> 02:22:03.720
Yeah.

02:22:03.800 --> 02:22:04.360
Thank you.

02:22:04.680 --> 02:22:05.000
Okay.

02:22:07.560 --> 02:22:10.040
So David, we've completed another episode.

02:22:10.360 --> 02:22:11.080
We sure did.

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

02:22:15.720 --> 02:22:18.680
support us and uh give us some encouragement?

02:22:19.160 --> 02:22:22.920
Um they can share our episodes on social media.

02:22:23.160 --> 02:22:27.960
They can give us a rating um on whatever format they listen to.

02:22:28.440 --> 02:22:30.520
They can also leave a positive review.

02:22:30.770 --> 02:22:31.090
Yeah.

02:22:31.250 --> 02:22:32.290
All those would be great.

02:22:32.370 --> 02:22:36.210
And we also have a Patreon page if you're so inclined to support us.

02:22:36.450 --> 02:22:37.090
Yeah.

02:22:37.410 --> 02:22:40.050
So uh yeah, I guess we'll see you next week then.