Images of Public Wealth or the Anatomy of Well- Being in Indigenous Amazonia Images of Public Wealth or the Anatomy of Well- Being in Indigenous Amazonia Edited by FERNANDO SANTOS- GRANERO tucson To Olga F. Linares, mentor, colleague, and dearest friend The University of Arizona Press www . uapress. arizona . edu © 2015 The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2015 Printed in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3189-9 (cloth) Jacket designed by Leigh McDonald Jacket photo by Beth Conklin Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Images of public wealth or the anatomy of well- being in indigenous Amazonia / edited by Fernando Santos-Granero. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8165-3189-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Indians of South America— Amazon River Region— Economic conditions. 2. Indians of South America— Amazon River Region— Social conditions. 3. Wealth— Amazon River Region. 4. Well- being— Amazon River Region. I. Santos- Granero, Fernando, 1955– editor. II. Title: Anatomy of well- being in indigenous Amazonia. F2230.1.E25I57 2015 981'.1— dc23 2015005907 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). CONTENTS Introduction: Images of Public Wealth 3 Fernando Santos-Granero I. HEALTH, VITALITY, AND EUPHORIA 1. It’s Ear-y and Euphoric: Amazonian Music and the Per for mance of Public Wealth Among the Suyá/Kïsêdjê 37 Anthony Seeger 2. Biopolitics of Health as Wealth in the Original Risk Society 60 Beth A. Conklin 3. Public Wealth and the Yanesha Struggle for Vitality 89 Fernando Santos-Granero II. LAND, MONEY, AND CARE 4. Amazonian Kichwa Leadership: The Circulation of Wealth and the Ambiguities of Mediation 117 María A. Guzmán- Gallegos 5. “It Makes Me Sad When They Say We Are Poor. We Are Rich!”: Of Wealth and Public Wealth(s) in Indigenous Amazonia 139 Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti 6. Divine Banknote: The Translation of Project Money into Public Wealth 161 Giovanna Micarelli vi Contents III. LIVING WELL 7. Clashing Concepts of the “Good Life”: Beauty, Knowledge, and Vision Versus National Wealth in Amazonian Ecua dor 191 Norman E. Whitten, Jr., and Dorothea Scott Whitten Contributors 217 Index 221 Images of Public Wealth or the Anatomy of Well- Being in Indigenous Amazonia Introduction Images of Public Wealth Fernando Santos- Granero This volume is devoted to exploring local notions of public wealth in in- digenous Amazonia. It deliberately appropriates a concept that classical po liti cal economists developed to understand wealth accumulation in emergent capitalist nation-states with the intention of denaturalizing it and assessing its applicability in noncapitalist, kin-based societies. Its basic premise is that through the decolonization and indigenization of the classical concept of public wealth it is possible to grasp the uniqueness of indigenous images of personal and collective wealth. It further con- tends that the study of public wealth provides an exceptional opportunity to apprehend indigenous notions of well-being and the good life, in other words, to engage in an anatomy of well-being as it is conceived by indig- enous Amazonian peoples. This is a worthy and timely pursuit for three interrelated reasons. The fi rst has to do with the profound fi nancial crisis that has affl icted fi rst- world economies since 2007. This crisis, which only now (2014) begins to show some signs of abatement, has generated widespread discontent. And, above all, it questions the effi cacy and sustainability of capitalism as an economic order, as well as a way of life. This crisis has shown that whereas capitalism has been extremely successful in increasing the production and consumption of private goods, it has been much less effi cient in taking care of and ensuring the quality of such public goods as education, health, 3 4 Introduction equality of opportunities, and the environment. More importantly, the cri- sis has shown that John Maynard Keynes (1963) was only half right when he predicted, in the midst of the 1930 world economic crisis, that in a hundred years capitalism would greatly increase the standard of living of its members and enter an “age of leisure and abundance” in which, freed from the worries of the struggle for subsistence, human beings would be able to engage in what he called the “art of life” and learn “how to live wisely and agreeably and well” (Keynes 1963, 367). The present crisis has revealed that the emperor is quite simply naked. The discontented, or ga- nized in decentralized and loosely structured pop u lar movements, charge the system— politicians, bankers, corporations, and their wealthy patrons— with making the rich richer and the poor poorer (#OccupyTogether 2012), with driving the planet into fi nancial crisis out of sheer selfi shness and a reckless pursuit of profi t (Movimiento 15M 2013), with granting money and corporations the inalienable rights that belong to the people (Move to Amend 2012), and with using taxpayers’ monies to bail out irresponsible and greedy fi nancial institutions (#OccupyWallStreet 2011). Through their novel and often spectacular actions these transgressive movements have called attention to the strained relation between personal interest and the common good, corporate profi t and state duties, and private gain and pub- lic wealth. In his controversial Capital in the Twenty- First Century, Thomas Piketty (2014) argued that higher rates of return on capital combined with lower rates of economic growth have led, since the end of World War II, to extreme inequalities in the distribution of wealth in capitalist societ- ies, which has intensifi ed the feeling that something is wrong with “mil- lennial capitalism” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2001). By discussing radi- cally foreign understandings of public wealth, this volume provides new referents on which to rethink conventional viewpoints and everyday prac- tices and with them— may we dare hope—formulates, as Beth Conklin (chapter 2) suggests, “healthier life-politics and more equitable, inclusive economies.” The second reason, though more academic, is no less important. As a result of the increasing awareness that millennial capitalism has not only been unable to secure a sustainable growth but has also promoted a fran- tic consumerist lifestyle that has led to the rapid depletion of natural re- sources, the contamination of the environment, the disappearance of thousands of animal and plant species, the warming of the earth’s tem- peratures, the overcrowding and pollution of cities, and a general dimi- nution of the quality of life of human beings— always pressed to work more and become more indebted in order to spend more and acquire more material goods—there has been a renewed global interest on the topics of well- being, “happiness,” and the good life. This is particularly noticeable in the pop u lar media. Books on the subject of happiness have steadily Introduction 5 increased in number from 50 in 2000 to 4,000 in 2008 (Paredes 2012, 5). Anthropology was slower to pick up on this trend, but when it did, it did so massively. At the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), 112 of the papers presented had the word well-being in either their titles or their abstracts, 31 had the word happiness, and 11 had the phrase good life. Echoing this increased interest, the AAA or ga- nized the Vital Topics Forum, On Happiness, whose proceedings were pub- lished in their fl agship journal American Anthropologist in 2012 with Bar- bara Rose Johnston as guest editor. Anthropology News, the AAA’s monthly newsletter, also devoted its March 2012 issue to the topic of Health, Well- Being and Happiness. Doubtless, this growing academic interest has deep roots in a widespread feeling of dissatisfaction with postindustrial societies and a generalized craving for alternative models to achieve happiness and well- being (see Atherton, Graham, and Steedman 2011; Ferry 2005; Fischer 2014; Jackson 2011). Yet, as Mathews and Izquierdo (2009, 1) have pointed out, “there is no unambiguously single pursuit of happiness— rather, there are multiple ‘pursuits of happiness.’ ” Through a survey of the varied meanings of well- being, happiness, and the good life in indigenous Amazonian societies, this volume engages with and contributes to this bur- geoning new theoretical fi eld. Finally, the academic interest on this topic goes hand- in- hand with a po liti cal reexamination of what should be the aim of governments and intergovernmental organizations in regard to the well- being of the people they represent. What may be considered a good life in contemporary so- cieties? Is it possible to measure well-being and happiness? This trend began in 1990 when Pakistani and Indian economists, Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen, designed for the United Nations Development Program a new way of measur ing development intended to shift policy makers’ attention from economic factors to human well- being. Combining three indicators— life expectancy, average years of schooling, and per capita gross national income—the new mea sure ment, known as the Human Development Index (HDI), replaced older indicators based mostly on ma- terial aspects, such as per capita gross domestic product and standard of living. Although the HDI represented a vast improvement in regard to previous economists’ perspectives, it has been criticized for relying on traditional indicators and for omitting other material and immaterial as- pects of human well- being, such as environmental, emotional, and moral factors (Caplan 2009). As a consequence, new indices have been devised, such as the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2005 Quality of Life Index, which takes into consideration a combination of economic and social indicators.