“ The Yanomami in Light of Mauss, and Vice Versa ” Catherine Alès To cite this version: Catherine Alès. “ The Yanomami in Light of Mauss, and Vice Versa ”. Revue du MAUSS, La découverte, 2010, Marcel Mauss Vivant, 2 (36), pp.155-170. halshs-02568257 HAL Id: halshs-02568257 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02568257 Submitted on 8 May 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Alès Catherine 84.97.242.19 29/05/2015 18h23. © La Découverte The Yanomami in Light of Mauss, and Vice Versa Catherine Alès Marcel Mauss, who considered empirical data crucial in con- firming the theoretical approach, endeavored to understand the phe- nomenon of destruction in gift-giving. In particular, he emphasized the agonistic aspect of the gift in “exchanges involving aggravated rivalry,” exchanges that might also be called “total services of an agonistic type.”1 Mauss equally emphasized the relationship between “the war of blood” and the gift-exchange of goods: the potlatch is like the waging of “a war,” a “property war” in which “the property is killed.”2 The gift-exchange therefore shares cer- tain characteristics with war, which can be used as a metaphor to describe it. However, the case of revenge illustrates that this propo- sition can also be reversed. The example of the exchange of murders in societies engaging in vendetta wars thus enables a comparison to 1. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W.D. Halls. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1990), 7. 2. Mauss, The Gift [1990], 47. “Political status of individuals in the brotherhoods and clans, and ranks of all kinds, are gained in the ‘war of property,’ just as they are in a real war, or through chance, inheritance, alliance, and marriage. Yet everything is conceived of as if it were a ‘struggle of wealth.’” Mauss notes, “The opposition, the war of wealth, the war of blood, is to be found in the speeches made at the same potlatch of 1895 at Fort Ruppert” (1990, 140, note 137), and adds that, “To give is to destroy. As in war, masks, names and privileges of the slain owner may be seized, so in the war of property, property is ‘slain’. The other motif is that of sacrifice. If property can be ‘killed,’ this means it must be ‘alive.’” (1966, 102, note 122). Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Alès Catherine 84.97.242.19 29/05/2015 18h23. © La Découverte II be made between the gift-exchange and the destruction-exchange. It also shows that the obligation to engage in a relationship with others is involved equally in both hostile reciprocity and peaceful reciprocity. Relationships of Alliance and Hostile Relationships Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Alès Catherine 84.97.242.19 29/05/2015 18h23. © La Découverte in a Traditional Society In this paper, I will rely on data gathered from the Yanomami, an Amerindian population whose territory lies in Venezuela and Brazil, on either side of the dividing line between the waters of the Orinoco and Amazon River basins. The Yanomami groups can be described as a series of nested “socio-spatial units”3 that maintain mutually friendly or hostile relationships. The friendly and harmonious relationships within and between communities are initiated, maintained, and renewed through visits, speeches, gifts of food and goods, invitations to festi- vals, intermarriage, as well as through economic, ritual, and political solidarity, which, in particular, is manifested in food production, ceremonies, combats and war expeditions. Hostile and discordant relationships between communities are expressed through various forms of combat and aggression, either tangible or hidden, mortal or non-mortal, organized on the basis of social and spatial distance/ proximity, and result in and/or maintain a certain separation between the opposing groups. Peaceful relationships within and between communities must be endlessly affirmed and confirmed at the risk of becoming undone and thus turning into hostile relationships. We have seen that these relationships come together in several forms. If one focuses on the traditional forms that continue to be practiced by the Yanomami, the gift-exchange does not so much involve the exchange of goods (which only existed in a limited form prior to the arrival of foreig- ners) as it does the exchange of gifts of food; marriage partners; visits; conversations and speeches; festivals; and funeral, shama- nistic, and military services. Typically, there is what Mauss calls a 3. According to the terminology proposed by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), 190. Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Alès Catherine 84.97.242.19 29/05/2015 18h23. © La Découverte III “system of total services.”4 Mauss developed this notion when he observed that even non-exotic societies like the ancient Germanic societies were bound together by multiple reciprocities of services and obligations. Among the Yanomami, there is indeed “an inces- sant circulus of goods and persons mixed together, permanent and temporary services, honors, festivals hosted and hosted in return and Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Alès Catherine 84.97.242.19 29/05/2015 18h23. © La Découverte those yet to be hosted in return . .”5 Forms of exchange are prac- ticed daily between co-residents and frequently between neighbors. These various services and obligations forge, maintain, and renew economic, political, and ritual solidarity, with this ritual solidarity displayed specifically during therapeutic shamanistic sessions or those involving economic shamanism, which promote hunting and horticulture. During funeral ceremonies, such solidarity is also expressed through the circulation of services between mourners and workers, the gift of gourds containing the ashes of a deceased person, and the gift of ceremonial food. Exchanges of goods take place on the occasion of festive inter- community gatherings, or else during visits that people conduct on their own initiative in a friendly community. This makes it possible to choose when or where to go in order to request a good when non-hostile relationships allow one to do so. The request is generally made by the visitor to one of the members of the visited community. The visitor either brings a good with him or commits to providing one. But that does not ultimately change the nature of the exchange: there is an obligation to give, which is also an obligation to receive, immediately or later on, and an obligation to give in return for what one requests and to give back for what one has requested and received. Once the exchange partnership relationships have been established, each partner will in turn present his arguments as to why he needs the good requested of the other, and the requester asks the donor to give it to him, “without consideration,” in the same way as he had previously likewise given “without consideration.” The obligation to give is therefore inescapable; one cannot refuse to give a visitor what he has requested without seriously offending him, which is equivalent to a refusal of alliance and therefore a 4. Marcel Mauss, Œuvres, tome III (Paris: Minuit, 1969), 47. [All quotations from this work translated from the French by the translator of this paper]. 5. Mauss, Œuvres, tome III, 47. Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Alès Catherine 84.97.242.19 29/05/2015 18h23. © La Découverte IV declaration of hostility. Receiving visitors poorly is a casus belli in the Yanomami region where I work; this is a perfect illustration of the obligation to receive and to exchange, as highlighted by Mauss in The Gift.6 It is interesting to point out that needs or goods can be devised so as to have a reason for visiting unrelated and/or previously hostile Document downloaded from www.cairn-int.info - Alès Catherine 84.97.242.19 29/05/2015 18h23. © La Découverte communities. These visits fall within the scope of neighbor alliance strategies and are even an absolute necessity in the Yanomami world because of the hostilities that might otherwise emerge. As soon as an opposing front opens up in one direction, the players seek to activate or develop their former alliances and to establish new ones in other directions. Thus there are “local specialties” which are artificially created for certain villages in order to gain possible access to this or that community. This gives them a motive for being able to visit Yanomami who had thus far been visited infrequently or not at all and to thereby build relationships. The changes introduced by the arrival of metal tools developed the practice of exchanging goods, and the increase in the contact undoubtedly intensified it. The exchanges of this type are unilateral, but they cause a chain reaction, starting with the exchanging villages close to the supply center. In this sense, this type of exchange is not fundamentally different from the exchanges produced by the creation of “local specialties.” Here again, the exchanges respond more to the need for socializing than to the need for utilitarian goods. Although exchange of goods relationships provide the opportunity to obtain rare products, or those declared to be so, these relationships serve primarily as an opportunity to create and maintain political and matrimonial alliances.