Introduction

INTRODUCTION Y•Z The philosophers who have examined the founda- tions of society have all felt the need to go back to the state of nature, but none of them has succeeded. —Jean-Jacques Rousseau Discourse on Inequality1 When I returned to Suriname in November 2011, I learned of a scandal that was causing turmoil among the Trio. It was a case of adultery, in which one man, Luuk, had been carrying on an affair with the wife of another man, Sam.2 One day Sam caught them in the act. He reacted furiously. He waited for an opportunity, then, together with some of his kinsmen, attacked Luuk and beat him up. Soon, rumours circulated that Luuk wanted to demand a cash payment as compensation for the inju- ries he had received. Sam’s anger rose again. He went, again with some kinsmen, to Luuk’s house at night, armed with guns and machetes. He seemed intent on killing him. Some men intervened, but it was clear that the matter would have to be settled by independent parties. This was complicated by the fact that Sam was the brother of Silvijn, a village leader, and Luuk was married to the daughter of Douwe, the other village leader. The dispute risked turning into a factional crisis that could tear the whole village apart. Gossip spread like wildfi re, and thanks to mobile telephone and shortwave radio, this confl ict was soon the talk of all the Trio villages and those living in the city of Paramaribo. The church elders held concerned discussions with their mentors in the city. At last, it was decided that this was a matter for the church to resolve, and an Amer- ican missionary who had spent his life ministering to the neighbouring 2 • Introduction Wayana, together with the Trio Granman, Vigo, fl ew to Tëpu in a spe- cially chartered light aircraft. After long consultations and deliberations, it was decided that Sam should leave the village with his family, at least for a while. The last I heard, he was to go to live in Kwamalasamutu, a large Trio village nearer the Brazilian border. This story illustrates how a petty dispute can quickly turn into a political crisis in a small-scale society. The events were underpinned by a wide array of circumstances, which hinged upon the interplay between gender relations, kinship ties and leadership roles. They took place against the historical background of the concentration of the population around mis- sion stations, which brought distant affi nes (who would previously have avoided one another) into everyday contact. The coresidence of affi nes brings new tensions into play, and in this case these in turn called for the intervention of a hierarchy of leadership extending beyond the specifi c village concerned, and even beyond the Trio themselves to some non-Amerindian organizations that have played a historic role in the de- mographic and material changes in Trio life over the past half-century. And yet the solution that was found at the end of this episode was perhaps surprisingly traditional: the most serious disputes among Trio people have always been resolved through the physical separation of the parties concerned. This can have implications that go beyond the interventions of existing leaders. In such cases, when a man leaves his village to allow the social harmony to be restored, his exile often marks the beginning of a new political formation: as we shall see, he may found his own village and become a leader in his own right. This recourse to longstanding solutions to what may seem to be rela- tively new problems raises questions about the extent to which the dra- matic social and economic changes that the Trio and their neighbours have experienced in recent decades have impinged upon long-term pat- terns of political action. This book is concerned accordingly with the question of cultural continuity in the face of historical change, and shows how a type of political leadership deeply grounded in specifi c, collectively held ideals and practices of kinship and masculinity can provide a power- ful form of cultural resilience. At the same time, the book addresses the ways in which political leadership itself shapes society through space and time. On another level, it is about how a cultural ideal of masculinity is played out and realized through leadership. Leadership and masculinity are intertwined in many ways, but perhaps the most important activity common to both is the manipulation (though not necessarily the accumulation) of wealth – that is, objects and persons of value. It is through the manipulation of wealth that masculine capacities are brought to bear upon the life of the community. Introduction • 3 Political theory, gender studies and economics converge in their shared concern with equality and inequality. In classical political theory, ‘primi- tive’ societies are assumed to be egalitarian, and property is assumed to be absent. Property and inequality are understood to be in causal relationships with each other: Thomas Hobbes (1996) takes the establishment of sovereign power and monopoly over violence to be the necessary condi- tion for the accumulation of wealth, while Rousseau (1992) understands the emergence of private-property rights to be the cause of inequality, exploitation and subjugation. Meanwhile, gender inequality and male domination of women have been associated with the treatment of women as property since Aristotle. Arguments about inequality rely heavily upon the assumption that culture and society exist on a separate plane of existence from nature, and place them in a separate fi eld of analysis. Certain feminist scholars have challenged the confl ation and subjection of women and nature, arguing that women are ‘no more “part of nature” or “closer to nature” than men are’, but few political thinkers have gone a step further to ‘contest the idea that real human life proceeds in a hyperseparated sphere of culture, for which nature is inessential’ (Plumwood 2006: 55). In the anthropol- ogy of indigenous Amazonia, however, it is now widely agreed that nature and culture are at best mutually constituted and context-dependent, if they are valid categories at all (Descola 2005; Seeger 1981; Viveiros de Castro 1998). This has signifi cant implications for understanding indigenous political thought. Guianan Leadership The Trio word for ‘thumb’ is jeinja itamu, which literally means ‘leader (or grandfather) of the hand’. This illustrates the fact that leadership, masculinity and kinship are implicated in Trio ways of classifying the world, and how they are replicated on different scales, from below that of the individual (as parts of the body) through the nuclear family to the village and, perhaps, beyond.3 Three kinds of hierarchical differentiation are at play here, in the fi elds of gender, age and space, illustrating how symmetry and differentiation are taken for granted by Guianan Amerin- dians4 as fundamental aspects of social and cosmological order. However, asymmetrical relationships in Guiana are not usually absolute; they shift with time and are perspective and scale-dependent. This gives rise to an aggregate impression of overall equality, and it is this serendipitous result of multiple asymmetries that gives the illusion, and arguably an aggregate effect, of equality. 4 • Introduction According to Peter Rivière, a Trio leader is expected to lead by example and to be a competent organizer, a good speaker, generous and knowl- edgeable (1984: 73). In a ‘political economy of people not of goods’, a leader ‘lacks any formal means of control other than his personal infl u- ence and competence’ (ibid.: 93, 94). The roles of a head of family and leader of a village are ‘identical’ (Rivière 1969: 234). His duty, although he can be seen as standing between or mediating the inside and the out- side of the community, ‘if anything … is to strengthen the inside which he owns and symbolizes.’ (ibid.: 268). As a symbol of the community, he is the social incarnation of the network of relations he represents. I would add to Rivière’s characterization that the asymmetrical relationship between a man and his dependents (wife, daughters, sons-in-law) is one node in a network of such miniature hierarchical formations, composing what may be termed a ‘heterarchy’, which is further differentiated by the prominence of some men and their families over others. Rivière’s characterization of leadership is largely based upon a recon- struction of Trio society with the elements and effects of contact with missionaries removed. To acquire a fuller understanding of Trio leadership and Guianan society in general it is necessary to see how they function in relation to contemporary circumstances and to consider this in the light of earlier situations. For example, Rivière’s distinction between people and goods may benefi t from taking into account the ways in which things may represent or even ‘embody’ persons (Grotti 2007; Van Vel- them 2003). Missionization has also had important effects on political economy, allowing accumulation of material wealth and creating greater needs for other scarce resources – fuel, salt, metal goods, etc. Because of the ways in which these goods are obtained, that is to say, through the control of networks of people, they remain implicated in those networks through their ‘biographies’ (Hoskins 1998). The point to retain here is that things can take on greater importance as a result of their associations with persons. This will not surprise students of exchange theory. But the objects in question do not necessarily have the quality of gifts in what is primarily a sharing economy. Guiana5 The Guiana Shield forms a continental island bordered by the Amazon, Negro and Orinoco rivers, and by the Atlantic.

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