Working Paper No. 04/2009
UCL Anthropology
Working Papers Series
Department of
Anthropology
University College London
14 Taviton Street,
London
WC1H 0BW, U.K.
ISSN
1759-6688
Editorial Board: Sara Randall, Martin
Holbraad
Working Paper No. 04/2009
Published online
November 27, 2009
© Copyright rests with the authors
FOOD, GENDER, AND SHAMANISM: SOCIETY AND COSMOLOGY IN
AMAZONIA
LEWIS
DALY
Dissertation submitted in 2007 for the BSc Anthropology
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ABSTRACT
This comparative study
explores food and notions of the body in Amazonia. Following Viveiros de Castro
(1998), it argues that Amerindian ontology is 'perspectival' in that the body is
the seat of the individual's point of view. All animals share a human spirit.
What differentiates species, however, is their bodies as sets of affects,
dispositions and capacities. The central argument is that these bodily affects
are constituted by the practices of food production and consumption. These food
practices are gendered in Amazonia, and foods as tangible entities encompass
parts of those gendered individuals who interact with them. Thus, gender
differences and similarities are made socially comprehensible through the
gendering of foods. That human and animal species are differentiated through
bodily affects, and food in part constitutes these bodily affects, suggests that
gender differentiation in food stuffs and practices implies a fundamental
difference between the bodily affects of men and women in Amerindian ontologies.
This is termed 'gender perspectivism'.
