Jivaroan Warfare'

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Jivaroan Warfare.
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Puzzle

• Why is it polite to spit on the floor when
  visiting a Jivaroan house?

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What needs to be explained? Peace or War?
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Smithian Approach

• Assume peace as human default condition.
• Take warfare as condition to be explained.
• Interpret war as competition for a limiting
  resource
• Territory
• Wealth
• Protein
• Reproductive Opportunities

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Hobbesian Approach

• a time of war, where every man is enemy to
  every man, wherein men live without other
  security than what their own strength and their
  own invention shall furnish them withal. In such
  condition there is no place for industry, because
  the fruit thereof is uncertain and consequently
  no culture of the earth no navigation, nor use
  of the commodities that may be imported by sea
  no commodious building no instruments of moving
  and removing such things as require much force
  no knowledge of the face of the earth no account
  of time no arts no letters no society and
  which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger
  of violent death and the life of man, solitary,
  poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

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Hobbesian Approach

• Assume warfare as the human default condition.
• Take peace (or the reduction in violence) as the
  condition to be explained or the state to be
  achieved.
• Interpret the form of warfare as a means of
  reducing losses.

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Approaches are complementary not contradictory

• Chagnon argues in both modes
• Retaliation enhances reproductive success.
• Retaliation reduces future aggression.

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Ethnographic setting
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Location of the Shuar
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People
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People
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Environment
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Gardens
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Gardens
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Manioc
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Manioc
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Bananas and Plantains
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Cocona and Papaya
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Achiote
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Cattle
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Conversion of Forest to Pasture
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Conversion of Forest to Pasture
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Dogs
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Chickens
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Agouti
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Armadillo
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Travel
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Travel
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Travel
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Jivaroan beliefs as coercive ideology(Harner,
1972)

• Hegemony humans persuaded to believe things that
  harm their self-interest.
• Coercion humans coerced to behave according to
  the ideology even if they do not believe it.

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Jivaroan beliefs as coercive ideology(Harner,
1972)

• If you have an arutam spirit, you cannot be
  murdered. If you have two, you cannot die, even
  through infectious disease (1972135).
• If you have an arutam spirit, you are fierce and
  have an enormous desire to kill. Killing shows
  that you have it (1972139).

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• Although you acquire arutam spirits through a
  vision quest, killing other people entitles you
  to one (1972140).
• If you don't kill someone every few years, your
  arutam will leave you and make you vulnerable to
  being killed (1972141, 142).

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• If you tell other people that you have an arutam
  spirit, it will leave you and make you vulnerable
  to being killed (1972139).
• The only way to show you have an arutam spirit is
  through your actions, by showing great
  interpersonal energy, assertiveness, and
  aggressiveness and by killing (1972139).

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• The ideology is coercive because it creates a
  situation in which ones best insurance policy is
  someone elses head.
• Defectors from the ideology who shrank from
  taking anothers head would risk losing their own.

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• By their fruits you shall know them. (Matthew
  716)

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Patterns of coalitional violence

• Intra-tribal feuding
• Avenging death of kin, wife-stealing, etc.
• Usually one person killed
• Raids over short distances by small groups
• Inter-tribal warfare
• No specific motive
• Usually many persons killed
• Raids over long distances by large groups, lead
  by kakaram

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Tsantsa
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Tsantsa
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Tsantsa

• Prophylactic measure against the avenging spirit
  of the deceased or muisak.
• After year of periodic feasts, trophy head was
  often traded for a shotgun.
• This gave ideology a material basis, killing gave
  men both arutam and a shotgun.
• Accelerated until half the men had arutam and
  shotguns and half the men were dead.

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How to prepare a Tsantsa

• Kill someone (typically an adult male with long
  hair cut in the traditional fashion from ambush
  with a shotgun).
• Cut off their head, leaving a generous fold of
  skin at the base of the neck.
• Run as fast as you can, carrying the head like a
  bowling ball.
• Go to where you have made a small camp, complete
  with fire and cooking pot.

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How to prepare a Tsantsa

• Cut the skin at the back of the head so that you
  can begin peeling the flesh of the neck, face,
  and scalp away from the skull.
• When the flesh is freed from the skull, boil in
  the cooking pot.
• Next retrieve the head from the water and fill it
  with hot stones to begin drying it out.
• Rub tanning agents into the skin to preserve it
  and make it into leather.

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How to prepare a Tsantsa

• Fill the head with progressively smaller and
  smaller hot gravels and sands to dry out the
  skin.
• As the skin dries, it will shrink and thicken
  until the head is the size of a man's fist.
• Stick pins through the lips so that you can sew
  them shut with long palm fiber threads.
• Block the eye holes with Desmodium seeds.
• Adorn with toucan earrings.

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Contrast of intra-tribal feudingand inter-tribal
warfare

• Strict norms govern intra-tribal feuding, but not
  inter-tribal warfare
• Reputation for arutam power and invulnerability
  much more likely to be established with an Achuar
  death than a Shuar one.
• Protection of in-group members at the expense of
  the out group.

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Rules of retaliation

• An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole
  world blind. Mohandas Gandhi
• In this case, a rule for limiting aggression for
  in-group members, not applied between groups.
• Ideology of arutam further slows cycle of
  intra-tribal feuding and enhances probability
  that feud could be ended.

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Rationality of system depends on starting
assumptions

• If one expects peace, a system that motivates the
  demise of half the adult men (and many others) is
  horrific.
• If one expects endless war, a system that
  motivates the protection of half the adult men is
  an attractive option.

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Towards a Behavioral Ecology of Spitting

• What should someone
• who expects war
• but wants peace do?

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Two messages

• I am so fierce and powerful that
  you dare not attack me.
• I am not an immediate threat to you,
• so you do not have to.

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Shuar Host
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Shuar Visitors
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Apachi Visitor
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Greeting and leave taking rituals

• Empty of meaning

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Greeting and leave taking rituals

• V Pujamek?
• H Pujajai. Minamek?
• V Minajai. Shing jak pujam?
• H Shing pujajai.
• time passes
• V Pujumata, weajai.
• H Ayu, pujumatjai, weta.

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Greeting and leave taking rituals

• V Are you there?
• H I am here. Have you come?
• V I have come. Are you well?
• H I am well.
• time passes
• V Stay there, I am going.
• H Ok, I will stay here, you go.

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Greeting and leave taking rituals

• Empty of meaning
• Message conveyed by forcefulness of manner.
• Signals both dont mess with me and I
  didnt come to harm you

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Manioc beer serving

• Woman sticks thumb in beer and sucks the beer off
  as she serves the bowl to the guest.
• Signals that the beer is not poisoned.

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Spitting

• Men continuously and copiously spit while
  visiting and conversing.
• Signals non-violent intentions.

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Sympathetic Nervous System Arousal

• Increase in respiratory rate, heart rate, and
  blood pressure.
• Increase of blood flow to the heart and muscles.
• Dilation of the pupils, the bronchioles and the
  GI tract.
• Inhibition of the salivary glands, or dry mouth.

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• If a visitor came to murder his host,
  he would not be able to spit to save his life.
• Serves as an honest signal of pacific intent, not
  because it is costly but because it is hard to
  fake given the details of human physiology.

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Afterthought on the horror of war.

• The death of a single Soviet soldier is a
  tragedy, the death of a thousand is a
  statistic.  Joseph Stalin

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Afterthought on the horror of war.

• By celebrating each death, it slows the pace
  of killing.
• Similar to Dani warfare.

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Change
Text in Spanish Saucisa presents Amazonia. For
the earth, the forest, and the brothers of all
the world. Text in Shuar All people unite
lets get high with najem (Banisteriopsis sp.)
and with maikua (Brugmansia sp.) Children of
Arutam
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