Economia selvagem

the long version

The book is an ethnography of the Xikrin Kayapó, a Northern Jê speaking people of Southeastern Amazonia, Brazil. It examines the relationship between this Kayapó group and the "whites", focusing primarily on the desire towards money and goods which is expressed conspicuously by the Kayapó since their regular contacts with the Brazilian society. Refusing both the utilitaristic approach (which normally sees this desire as a natural necessity) and the dependency theories (which consider this desire to be an artificially contingency created by the contact), the book shows how the objects of the alien peoples have always been a central aspect of the Kayapó political economy. Therefore, an important part of the book comprises a discussion of the Kayapó notions of what constitute objects of value, and how this value is unevenly distributed among the community members. And not surprisingly, the author shows that the foreigners, and specially the "whites", are considered as a privileged source of value for the Kayapó. Thus the objects produced by the capitalist system, namely money and commodities, have been consistently incorporated by the Kayapó ritual and economic system. But there is a second part of the book, important as well, in which the author explains how the Kayapó society has accomplished only awkwardly this indigenization of commodity. He shows that the Kayapó system of values has become somewhat saturated and enters in a state of paradox and inflation. In order to attain its goal in explaining the Kayapó society in its relation with the Western capitalist society, the book combines a historical approach with a structuralist one, moving constantly from processes of transformation to long term cultural forms (and vice-versa). The overall result is an innovative work with a broad thematic scope (ranging from kinship to politics, from economy to cosmology, from consumption to ritual), which has relevance to general anthropology.