Daniela M. Peluso

That Which I Dream Is True: Dream Narratives in an Amazonian Community

In an Ese Eja community in the Peruvian Amazon, people dream the names of their children. Apart from neo-Freudian perspective, naming dreams reflect, more importantly, multiple overlapping realities of time and space. As such, notions of agency, multiplicity, and transformation need to be examined for a proper analysis of dreaming. Drawing on multinatural perspectivism, the author examines eshawa, an Ese Eja concept of personhood that connects the self not only with the body but also with all species and an expansive sprit world. The author suggests that naming dreams are reminders of the still possible transformation between multiple worlds. Such an interpretation of dreams, as sources of knowledge and channels to cross realities, emphasizes the overlay between subjective dream worlds and public objective waking worlds rather than their “opposition.”

Partible Paternity, the Secondary Sex Ratio, and a Possible Trivers-Willard Effect

Partible paternity, the belief that a child can have more than one biological father, is widespread in lowland South America. An analysis of demographic data sets from four lowland tribes (Aché, Barí, Ese Eja, and Surui) reveals a systematic variation in the sex ratios of live births with respect to the number of fathers to whom the births are attributed. Births attributed to only one father show a sex ratio that is unexceptional for South America; births with two fathers are highly male biased, while children with three or more fathers are female biased. This pattern may be a manifestation of a phenomenon predicted by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis, which proposes that, in many circumstances, females in good condition might bias their offspring toward males, whereas those in poor condition would produce a preponderance of females. If, as suggested below, a woman with a husband and a single extramarital lover tends to be better cared for before and during a pregnancy than other women, this difference might result in the improved maternal condition required by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis for excess males, whereas women who accept two or more lovers might be preponderantly those who are already in distress, thus tending to produce female-biased offspring.

Traversing the margins of corruption amidst informal economies in Amazonia

ABSTRACT This article focuses on local idioms of extra-legal economic activity among indigenous Amazonians in eastern Peru. I argue that these idioms are part of a broader context in which indigenous people are compelled by a variety of factors to act in ways that are perceived as corrupt by other non-indigenous actors. I suggest that within such a context these idioms are not solely confined to the informal economy but are also used to refer to activities that fall within the formal economy, thus providing an indication for how the orthodox economy is imagined. I further argue that corruption within Amazonian economies is commonly perceived by non-indigenous people as contrasting with the workings of the orthodox economy without proper consideration of the economic conditions and bureaucratic structures that give rise to it. Lastly, I offer a morally based rather than legally based analysis of corruption and argue that, in the case examined here, corruption can contravene bureaucracy by restoring the humanity that bureaucracy rejects through its acts of indifference toward individuals.

Traversing and translating high finance: Mapping the frontiers of high finance: Art, anthropology & the material culture of markets (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

Symposium/workshop held on 25 April 2015 at the Royal Anthropological Institute. This workshop, held at the Royal Anthropological Institute, went beyond charting the frontiers of corporate investments by forming bridges between disparate terrains that might otherwise seem unconnected, and proposing new methodologies for exploring and communicating such links. Anthropologists, artists, accountants, hacktivists, economists, journalists, former brokers and educators traced their ideas and methods as they imaginatively and rigorously made links geared toward making visible the frequently invisible workings of finance. Presentations informed by conceptual and performative art and exhibits focused on themes of financial secrecy and transparency that arose throughout the workshop, entreating participants to focus on current global predicaments such as the economic crisis – not solely on its effects, but also importantly, its causes.