Critique of Anthropology

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'What it Means to be Caboclo' : Some critical notes on the construction

of Amazonian caboclo society as an anthropological object
Mark Harris
Critique of Anthropology 1998 18: 83
DOI: 10.1177/0308275X9801800104

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 Commentary

’What it Means to be Caboclo’

Some critical notes on the construction of
Amazonian caboclo society as an anthropological
object
Mark Harris
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester

In this shortarticle, I use the analysis offered by Stephen Nugent in Critique

of Anthropology 17(1), to continue the sobering deconstruction of Amazon-
ian anthropology and, in particular, non-Indian Amazonian peasantries. My
aim is to extend the discussion of the concept of culture to the relevant
Amazonianist literature not considered by Nugent. The purpose of the
exercise is to stimulate a dialogue between those interested in things Brazil-
ian Amazonian and to clear the ground for a new research agenda in the
area. I also address a much wider issue - the nature of Amazonian anthro-

pology and its specific ethnographic tradition. What are its parameters?
And how is it different from other regional anthropologies?
Nugent’s article concerns the conditions of existence within which par-
ticular polities and social configurations operate. The case cited is Brazil-
ian Amazonia in the last thirty years. He is interested to document the
formation of the social identity amongst the heterogeneous historical peas-
antries (caboclos) of the Brazilian Amazon. The focus on identity is con-
cerned with its production in relation to global socio-economic
transformations or externalities, rather than its cultural attributes. Indeed,
for Nugent, this historical peasantry is unique in Latin American terms,
because there is no indigenous primordial baseline. In this sense, they are
somewhat similar to Mintz’s reconstituted Caribbean peasantry, virtual and
modern artifacts of the European expansion into the New World.
The starting point for Nugent, and for this article as well, is the problem
of representation of what he ironically calls ’deviant societies’. These aber-
rant societies in the Amazon are unlike those which traditionally occupy the
anthropological gaze in the area. They ostensibly have little ’culture’, and
their way of life is the direct result of the history of European colonialism
and the consequent destruction of indigenous Amerindian societies begun
in the 16th century. Historically, there has been no collective identity
expressed amongst the peasantries in the region, even though they occupy
structurally similar positions. Instead, allegiances are definitively local:
Vol 83-95; 002487]
18 ( 1) 83-95 [0308-275X(199803)18:1,83
Copyright 1998 © SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

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patron-client relationships, residential kindreds and communal associ-

ations. Despite the ’globalization’ of Amazonia, there has been an histori-
cally unprecedented flourishing of regional social practices and ’cultural’
forms, which are ethnographically fascinating.
Nugent’s project is ’a consideration of the anthropological problematic
from a level or scale at which the other is not the target moving against the
fixed field of disciplinary ... certainty, but is implicated as the necessarily
threatening other, whose definition makes possible the claims of domi-
nance/reference by those engaged in anthropological work’ (1997: 36).
Nugent is arguing against mid-century comparative anthropology. He is
instead positing Amazonia firmly in the history of Western expansionism
and anthropology’s connivance in that process. The other is not a priori
other; only in the process of anthropological attention or state intervention
are ’caboclo societies’ created other. This perspective fits well, of course,
with the proposal that caboclo societies are ’artifacts’ of Western inter-
vention in the area. The problem lies not in caboclo societies per se, but the
lack of a pre-discursive encounter with caboclos. They are already con-
structed in a particular fashion before anything is known. This has the rather
unedifying effect of the rejection of any empirical evidence which contra-
dicts assumptions (see for example responses to work by Anna Roosevelt).
As I will show in the following section, it is not surprising that the main
American anthropologists to write on caboclos (Wagley, Moran and Parker)
have portrayed their culture as a ’template’ for the indigenous rural popu-
lation of the Amazon basin, something which they emerged into. They live
in rural riverine areas, they have a diversity of economic activities, therefore
they must be caboclos. Clearly this Geertzian notion of culture contradicts
the very idea of a historically and materially produced identity, inextricably
linked to externalities (although the externalities Nugent refers to through-
out the article are not just outside factors, but are in fact internalized real-
ities of daily life). The making of the modern world cannot be divorced
from the making of an anthropology of the caboclo.
Overall, Nugent’s article makes two interrelated points. The first is that
the use of the concept of culture implies a fundamental difference between
us and them, the West and its others, which is postulated in idealist terms.
Thus identities are synonymous with cultures and are constituted as auton-
omous generating systems. However, as the example of the Amazonian-
caboclo attests, such an argument is almost risible. The social reality of
Amazonia is a ’deeply context-bound process’, linked as much to global
socio-economic transformations as local negotiations.
The second argument is that the ascendency of research into Ama-
zonia is directly linked to global socio-economic transformations. The
attention being given now to caboclos is a direct consequence of Brazilian
national policies, the rise of ecologism, and the need for a stock of cheap
raw materials available in tropical areas. Such scientific awareness in
Amazonia is thus not the result of an enlightenment regarding the

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 85

anthropological importance of mixed-blood peasantries, but forces firmly

outside the academy. This is a sobering vision of anthropological practice
and one that is reflexive on a historical scale.
Nugent’s main writings have made an important contribution to the
development of Amazonian anthropology (1990, 1993). He has helped to
broaden its preoccupation with Amerindian societies and ecosystems with
his concern for a general vision of the Amazon and its place in the modern
world. In the rest of this article, I shall develop two points. The first is the
representation of Amazonia, its people and history, in the context of its con-
nection to externalities; the second is grossly called a ’pro-peasant’ position.
By the term ’pro-peasant’ I am drawing attention to an analysis that deals
effectively with the peasantries’ formation and historical participation in
regional processes. The inspiration for this kind of analysis comes from
Sidney Mintz’s approach in the Caribbean.
Charles Wagley, Emilio Moran, Eric Ross and Eugene Parker have also
tried to show how the caboclo is not a maladaptation, but their analysis
hinges on a linear sequence of events, the fusion of cultures and an intrud-
ing environment. The Amazonia I am interested to reveal is intercon-
nected through trade, credit, migration, exchange, conflict and the search
for commodities, and where the actions of large numbers of people take
place outside the purview of the state in the informal economy, rather like
Braudel’s vision for his history of Europe. Nugent provides an adequate
frame of analysis for envisaging this Amazonia. The frame of analysis
includes aspects such as the historical role Amazonia has played vis-a-vis
Brazil and the global economy, recent state intervention, transnational
capital development projects, structures of regional relationships, the
importance of merchant capital and how social reproduction is achieved
under non-industrial capital conditions.
My intention is to consider the different positions in contemporary
anthropology of Brazilian Amazonia. I begin with two questions. The first:
is there something here which has its own historical trajectory, something
which offers an alternative to Brazil, to Europe, a history with a future which
defies submergence? The second is: what difference does it make to include
caboclos in the anthropology of Amazonia?

Amazonian anthropology?
[T] he failureto recognize caboclo culture [on the part of Amazonian anthro-
pologists]may be as much a mark of the failure of the anthropological prob-
lematic as it is a mark of the socio-historical peculiarities of non-Indian
Amazonian peoples. (Nugent, 1997: 41)

To answer my second question we should begin to look at the material

written by researchers on the indigenous tribespeople in the Amazon. I use

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86

recently published material, regarded as relatively important contributions:

two review essays and two collections of articles.
The quincentenary of obliteration in the Americas was marked by a
flurry of publications. One example was the three volumes of L’Homme, the
French anthropology journal, collectively called ’La Remontee de 1’Ama-
zone : anthropologie et histoire des societes amazoniennes’ (Descola and

Christine-Taylor, 1993). Despite marking the quincentenary, only seven out

of the twenty articles in the volume interest themselves in a historical per-
spective and only two of this seven consider the long-term effects of changes
in political and social organization and relations vis-a-vis the nation-state of
the countries they discuss. Peter Gow’s article concerns a people of mixed
descent in the Peruvian Amazon, who have experienced significant state
intervention and historical integration. According to Gow, they have never-
theless maintained a distinct identity. Apart from Gow’s efforts, there are no
articles on mixed-blood peasantries, who do not explicitly claim a separate
identity (from a nation-state), otherwise derogatively known as cholos,
matifos, riberinhos, varzeiros, caboclos, cambas, depending on region and
context. In other words, there is little interest in integrating the lines of
research in Amazonian anthropology. My contention is that their continued
separation is a function of an anachronistic anthropology. The key issue,
though, is upon what basis do we integrate them - clearly not in terms of
symbolic or structuralist analysis. One suggestion is that they be brought
together in terms of the history and political economy of connections in par-
ticular areas - for which Taussig’s Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man
(1987) is an impressive benchmark.
I base this assertion in part in the work of Anna Roosevelt, who also has
an article in the L’Homme extravaganza. Her recent edited volume draws

together contributions on research on Amazonian Indians (1994). Her per-

spective is historically deeper than the one presented by most of the con-
tributors to L’Homme. The archaeological work Roosevelt has carried out
demonstrates the technological and social complexity of pre-Colombian
societies living on the floodplain of the Amazon river. Following the
destruction of these societies through European expansionism, she claims
that aboriginal societies re-formed themselves in other ecological domains
and were forced to regress socially and economically. The conclusion is that
contemporary indigenous societies bear little relation to their aboriginal
antecedents; instead they are the ’geographically marginal remnants of the
people who survived the decimation’ (Roosevelt, quoted in Viveiros de
Castro, 1996: 186). Whether one agrees with the specific details of
Roosevelt’s thesis or not, her general argument is convincing enough.
I would want to integrate an important process which is neglected in
Roosevelt’s work and the edited volume - what happened post-decimation?
The aboriginal population may have been destroyed, dispossessed and dis-
placed, but in their place a new population grew up, the children of the
sexual unions between Indians (mostly women, and those unable to re-form

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elsewhere) and Europeans (mostly men). It is vital to include this new popu-
lation alongside what was taking place in the re-formation of aboriginal
society, since they were both heavily mediated by the influence of religious
missions and the representatives and policies of the Portuguese Crown (see
Alden, 1973; Kieman, 1954; Maclachlan, 1973). What was taking place in
the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries was crucial to the building of contem-
porary Amazonia. I am arguing for a more integrated vision of the making
of Amazonian history; there seems little justification for not having this
general vision.
And yet such a separation, between aboriginal society and colonial
society, is understandable despite their common origins. The development
of serious anthropological interest in Amazonia came about once the con-
nections were extremely distant, some two centuries in the past. In addition,
the political economic situation in the 20th century was pitching Indian and
peasant against each other, in the battle for resources, rubber, land, gold
and wood and so forth. Each had begun their own history, with the colonial
peasantry never being collectively aware of any other possibility than a form
of mercantile capitalism and an oppressively oriented patron-clientelism.
What are the implications of such a generalizing vision?
They would probably not look like two recent reviews of Amazonian
anthropology by Paul Henley (1996) and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
(1996). Again there is a consistent separation between the present of
Amerindian social life and the past which has generated it, in anything
other than cultural terms. Henley opens his review with the following:

Native Amazonians are now thought to number about a million people, scat-
tered over nine countries. They constitute less than five percent of the region’s
total present day inhabitants and no more than twenty percent of the estimated
pre-Columbian population. (1996: 231)
Despite acknowledging the small proportion of the so-called native popu-
lation, and the fact that another 19 million people live in the Amazon, he
continues the article without any further mention of this ’other half’ and
their anthropological status. This would be acceptable if the article did not
set itself up as a general review. Its main title is ’Recent Themes in the
Anthropology of Amazonia’. Amazonia is thus constituted as an anthropo-
logical object through sole attention to what is considered proper study: the
tribally bound, ethnically strong society. It is incredible that such a position
can still be intellectually maintained in anthropology today. Are we to con-
clude that the other 95 percent are without culture, kinship, social life, and
thus are anthropologically uninteresting, and even more worrisomely,
without rights, pawns in the global process?
In an otherwise brilliant interpretive review, Viveiros de Castro (1996)
has a similarly restricted notion of what constitutes Amazonia. Entitled
’Images of Nature and Society in Amazonian Ethnology’, he deals exclu-
sively with the literature on Amerindians. This limitation is somewhat

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88

strange, since it is in discussions of sustainable development and natural

resource management that the separation between what are called folk and

indigenous strategies has been drawn. Edited collections by Posey and

Balee (1989), Goodman and Hall (1990) and Redford and Padoch (1992)
are examples of such efforts. Are we to conclude from Viveiros de Castro’s
review that those excluded Amazonians do not have a construction of
nature and society? Candace Slater’s (1994) and my own work (Harris,
1996) suggest not.
In sum, most anthropological attention in Amazonia has been devoted
to Amerindian societies; non-tribal, deculturated mesti~o communities are
not well represented. The presumed split is set up as between the traditional
and authentic against the acculturated and heterogeneous, a division which
is the result of anthropological discourse. The question which lies beyond
this article is how come Amazonian anthropology, at least in its European
form, has been so committed to a highly idiosyncratic portrayal of the
region.

Against identity and belonging?

The history of reconstitution, migration, allegiance to different nation-
states, economic boom and bust, and external intervention in the hetero-
geneous peasantries of Amazonia makes it very difficult to represent them
and to know the limits of research. My purpose here is not to review the
literature in a systematic way, but to problematize the particular construc-
tion of caboclo ’society’ by North American and European anthropologists
and to show some ways forward, in short to look at the notion of a caboclo
culture as it has been portrayed by anthropologists of the area.
There is a strong empirical basis for separating off the history of Ama-
zonia from that of the states of which it is a part. The atypicality of Brazil-
ian Amazonia, for example, compared to the rest of Brazil has led authors
like Parker (1985b) and Cleary (1993) to treat Amazonia as a separate
domain, both historically and in the political economy. The relationship
must be more ambiguous than the above authors recognize: Amazonia is
also an abstraction and few people represent themselves as emphatically
Amazonian. The question takes us back to the problem of representation
-
are caboclos and riberinhos, the indigenous rural population, primarily
Amazonian or primarily Brazilian or neither? The full answer to this ques-
tion lies beyond the bounds of this article, but it is useful to consider how
this has been answered by other authors.
Charles Wagley (1976 [1953]) and Eduardo Galvao (1955) conducted
the first serious anthropological studies of the non-tribal population of
Amazonia in the 1940s. Wagley’s interest in caboclo society was ostensibly
to document the varied aspects of modem Brazil. His interest in caboclos
stemmed from his primary work with the Tenetehara and Tapirap6 Indians

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and his view that they would soon become acculturated and mix with rural
Brazilians. In other words, they would end up becoming caboclos.
Wagley premised his discussion of caboclo culture with reference to
the fusion of races: the Amerindian and the European (and the African).
Common phrases include ’the culture of these Amazon caboclos ...

derives many important patterns from the aboriginal Indian cultures of the
valley’ (1976: 225), and ’the material objects used by the caboclo are for
the most part of European origin, many of them manufactured abroad or
in Southern Brazil; yet many residues of aboriginal tropical forest culture
remain’ (1976: 225-6), and ’Amazon folk culture ... is a regional variety
of Brazilian national culture, sharing many elements developed in Brazil
out of its Old World heritage’ (1976: 226), ’Amazon folk culture contains

many patterns of Iberian origin preserved by isolation from colonial times’

(1976: 227), and ’it might be said that all Indian residues in contempor-
ary Amazon culture relate directly or indirectly to the environment’. In
sum, Wagley had an unproblematized idea of who caboclos were and
where they were coming from. They were Brazilian, but distinctively Ama-
zonian in character due to the prominence of aboriginal culture and the
limitations placed on society by the environment. This Amazon folk
culture emerged over a period of time, with the fusion of races, cultures
and experiences. The mixing of races meant the integration of separate
cultures. The major problem here is the link between race and culture.
What does it mean to say that caboclo culture has its origins in Iberian and
Amerindian ways? What does it help to understand and where does it point
to?
Wagley’s quasi-evolutionary view set the tone for future studies of the
caboclo. The work by Emilio Moran (1974), Eric Ross (1978) and Eugene
Parker (1985) followed Wagley’s path. Interestingly, despite Wagley’s
important contributions to the formation of Brazilian anthropology, he
seems to have had little direct influence on contemporary Brazilian anthro-

pologists who have worked with this Amazon folk culture (see for example
work by Furtado, 1993; Lima, 1992; Loureiro, 1985, 1987; Maues, 1990,
Sousa Santos, 1982). Most of these anthropologists generally seem more
concerned with questions of the political and economic nature of the peas-
antry (Maues excepted).
Moran gave more prominence to environmental constraints than
Wagley, departing from him to claim that the caboclo is ’the most important
adaptive system in the Amazon’ ( 1974: 136 and see also 144). For Moran, the
caboclo was a cultural type, which emerged as a result of the ’tupinization’
. of Iberian and non-Tupian cultures. ’Tupinization’ implies a historical
process, but there is no explanation of why such changes were occurring, and
therefore no theory of socio-economic transformation. Ross is much clearer
on the historical production of a caboclo culture. He outlines the different

stages which were crucial in the formation of contemporary patterns of

relations. He also has a wider understanding of underdevelopment in the

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Amazon (something which Wagley and Moran attribute to severe environ-

mental restrictions). Ross attributes the low productivity of the floodplain
not to any lack of local wisdom but to the relationship it has to the ’metrop-
olis’ which has ’severely altered and limited the productive and political
potential of the peasant class as a whole’ (1978: 218).
Cultural and human ecology is nevertheless the dominant paradigm in
which these authors are operating. This is not surprising since the environ-
ment was deemed an important determinant in the development of culture
and society in the Amazon, following work by Betty Meggers and Julian
Steward. It is unexpected, then, that so much attention is given to history
by Moran, Ross and Parker. They clearly recognized the importance of
history, but, without an explanatory framework that was historical in
essence, they could do little more than document its linear progression and
speculate on its effects in the formation of caboclo culture.
Parker has provided the most detailed account of the Portuguese domi-
nation in the history of the Amazon and how it relates to caboclos (1985b).
Like Moran’s tupinization, Parker uses the term ’cabocloization’ to refer to
the ’events and conditions that in large part destroyed Amerindian society,
transformed the Amerind and resulted in the emergence and solidification
of caboclo class and culture in Amazonia in the 19th century’ (1985b: 1-2).
There is no need to go into the details of Parker’s excellent documentation
and organization of the material. What interests me here is the use of con-
cepts and their intellectual history.
All the above authors note the flexibility of caboclo culture: it can incor-
porate outsiders who in turn will be cabocloized, and it integrates outside
influences without losing its distinctness. However, it is difficult in this
regard to know what holds it all together. The term ’cabocloization’
assumes an end product, a goal to be reached. Culture almost exists inde-

pendently of human efforts, it hovers over the Amazon and absorbs

anybody who comes near it. And yet, paradoxically, this culture is an adap-
tation, a historical process. But Parker’s history of the Amazon is presented
as an ineluctable procession of time, where people act out laws and react

collectively. The following passage is typical: ’Their previous mode of exist-

ence shattered, surviving Amerindians adapted to the new socioeconomic
conditions as best they could. This transformed Amerindian was now the
caboclo of Amazonia: a solitary actor struggling to adapt without benefit of
script or history’ (1985b: 39). The overall effect is to naturalize social con-
frontation and to divorce culture from daily reckoning between individuals.
It is interesting to note the main title of Parker’s edited volume, The
Amazon Caboclo. This creates a sense of an individual forged in the fusion of
cultures and here it is on show for the first time, standing proudly with its
own history and place in contemporary anthropology. However, the

problem is fundamental to the whole issue. Does culture work by way of

individual adaptation to it or through collectivities? And perhaps more
challenging to Parker’s formulation of the caboclo problem, why, if he can

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identify a caboclo Amazon folk culture, are people not aware of it? Why is
there no collective identification with it? Why is it not aware of itself?
The other contributors to Parker’s volume are similarly unreflexive and
uncritical of the use of concepts; though there is some excellent material.
What is striking about the volume is its organization. The reader is pre-
sented with two sections, one on history, which ends in 1920, and the other
on contemporary perspectives, 1970s onwards. The impression is that

following the full establishment of caboclo culture in the rubber boom,

history stopped. What follows is the timeless present and continual reifica-
tion of caboclo culture. Thus many introductions to the caboclo will begin
in the following way: ’The main characteristics of traditional caboclo, or
Amazon peasant, culture can be summarised briefly as follows. The caboclo
lives isolated in family dwellings, generally on the banks of rivers, small
streams (igarapés) or ox bow lakes (igap6s).... They plant maize, rice,
beans, bananas, plantains they add to their larder by fishing and by
...

hunting’ (Wagley 1985, but see also Parker 1985b). My point is that accord-
ing to these authors caboclo culture was solidified at the beginning of this
century and expressed itself in the kinds of ways briefly touched on above.
Once this way of life had been created, a template was created which was
portrayed as timeless; it no longer needed to be explained, simply docu-
mented. There was little or no sense of history continuing and caboclo
society evolving in relation to regional and national intervention - in short,
no vision of 20th-century history and how Amazon caboclo might be chang-

ing in its new conditions of existence.

The object of this brief critique of the representation of caboclo culture
is to emphasize the different positions in the literature. The one outlined
in this section is distinctly North American; it has its origins in Steward and
cultural ecology (for an excellent review see Roosevelt, 1981). The rigidity
of the Amazonian environment was considered to limit the development of
the social. Social history was a kind of billiard ball game, with different
forces clumsily hitting into each other as they progressed aimlessly in time.
Parker hardly mentions words such as capitalism, mercantilism, reproduc-
tion and class. If an historical perspective was of such crucial importance,
why was it presented in such an implausible, bourgeois way? (See Eric
Wolf’s criticism of such histories in his introduction to Europe and the People
Without History, 1982. )
There are many contradictions in the work presented above. In con-
clusion, arguably the biggest was the disparity between reality and construct.
Wagley et al. recognized the difficulty of representing non-tribal Amazonia:
. that the caboclo term was problematic (it is derogatory and its meaning
changes historically and from region to region), and that whoever was
called caboclo rejected the classification and rural communities were
ambiguously local, global and historical adaptations, and that there was
great heterogeneity and no collective identity. To resolve these problems
these authors turned to history and documented what they thought was the

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emergence of a folk culture that determined local outcomes. The result

made no sense at all. They had no theory of how this folk culture came to
be possessed, where it lay, who controlled it, whether it was contested, or
the nature of uneven development or shifting identities and so on. They
solidified something that did not need to be and set themselves a number
of irresolvable problems in doing so. The caboclo cultural type had no
sociological and historical content.
For this reason I am interested in an intellectual history of Amazon-
ian anthropology as it has been conceived of by North American and Euro-
pean professionals. My contention is that if the issues are irresolvable
maybe the founding assumptions are mistaken and a more constructive
project should be proposed. It is significant to note that, as far as I am
aware, Parker, Ross and Moran have not continued with their interest in
these matters. Moran, however, continues his interest in ecology and
human interaction with the environment (1993).
The position Nugent has developed over the past 15 years has been
critical of this tradition (see 1981 for example). He does not presume he
can give the caboclo a history or a culture. Instead he is prepared to go

along with the ambiguity and complexity in pinning down what or who is
a caboclo. The caboclo for Nugent is not a template for folk culture but a

general term for the coalition of historical forces in Amazonia that con-
tributed to current social reality - hence the title of his major work, Ama-
zonian Caboclo Society. The object is not a particular community or town, but
an inclusive sweep which extends to the northeastern frontier, migrant

communities, Japanese farmers, capital-intensive projects, Santareno

kinship and mercantile reproduction.
David Cleary, in a similar vein, attempts to construct a different agenda
for Amazonian studies. In the aftermath of what he sees as failed state inter-
vention, he considers the major issues to be the role played by the informal
economy, the simultaneous decomposing and recomposition of the state,
the complexity of livelihood composition, the synergic relationship
between economic sectors and the rapid urbanization, paradoxically com-
bined with the blurring of the distinction between urban and rural (1993:
337-45). To this list I would add access to and control of land and water
resources. What is refreshing here is the lack of interest in representing the
caboclo through ethnicity or race, as something inherently distinctive or as
a cultural type.

Cleary also contends that current political economy theories are inad-
equate for explaining the heterogeneity of Amazonia. We are no longer
dealing with a state in expansion or decline, or massive national integration,
but a vast and interconnected region with a complex past which operates
and has operated on its own terms. The salient social categories are far too
complex to be singularly defined but this does not mean that they cannot
be sought. Cleary’s list above provides a starting point.

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Conclusion

In this commentary I have touched on a series of issues dealing with the

way in which anthropologists have studied the variety of peoples living in
Amazonia. The thrust of my argument comes from the marginalization of
large numbers of its people from anthropological studies of the area. This
exclusion is a function of the history of anthropological research and the
construction of its objects, rather than the lack of interest these marginal-
ized people hold for academic research. I argue that this situation is unten-
able in an anthropology conscious of a modem, fast-changing and
interconnected world. As a result of the narrow focus much interesting
material has been overlooked. I have examined some of these issues here,
material which also substantiates a research agenda for those studying non-
Amerindian Amazonians. In addition, the restricted gaze is under threat
from another source. In some areas of Brazil there has been a dramatic
increase of previously mestiqo and caboclo people identifying themselves
as indio and therefore as indigenous. The reasons for this shift are complex,
but what is clear is that the representation of Brazilian Amazonian social
life as ’proper’ Amerindian culture and society in European-based anthro-
pology is completely outdated in contemporary Brazil.

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Anna Grimshaw, Stephen Nugent and John Gledhill for stylistic
improvements and critical discussions.

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z Mark Harris received his PhD from the London School of Economics. His article
’The Rhythm of Life: Seasonality and Sociality on the Amazon Floodplain’ is due to
appear in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, March 1998. His current
project is the joint edited (with Stephen Nugent) Other Amazonians: Historical Peas-
antries of the Brazilian Amazon. Address Department of Social Anthropology, Roscoe
Building, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
[email.mark.harris@man. ac.uk]

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