From the Ground Up: The Interpersonal Politics of a Native American Peace System

Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Thomas A. Gregor, will undertake research on an indigenous cultural system for sustaining peace and avoiding conflict as it exists among the Mehinauku who along the upper reaches of the Xingu river in central Brazil. The Mehinauku are one of fourteen indigenous communities who live in relative peace. Though speaking six mutually unintelligible languages, local groups intermarry, trade specialty goods, and attend one another's ceremonies. Warfare among them is unknown. The overarching question that this research addresses is what sustains the Xingu system? Because previous research has indicated that the Xingu peace seems to emerge from "ground up," this project will focus on individuals and interpersonal relations using cognitive anthropological techniques. The researcher will reside in the village long house, do a genealogical mapping of local and intertribal kinship networks, and carry out in-depth interviews. He will use cognitive anthropological techniques, such as free lists, triad sorts, and cultural consensus analysis to elicit social categories and explore cultural variability. Moral judgments and moral reasoning will be evoked during the research by presenting informants with hypothetical "trouble cases" that probe generosity, sharing, self-sacrifice and compassion. The work will further document the villagers' capacity for empathy by exploring such practices as the tending of the sick and the bereaved and the sharing of food. The links of warmth between villagers enlarge the moral community and partially blur local ethnic affiliations. But in some respects the Xingu peace is an uneasy one, in which egoistic motivation, fear of violence and witchcraft also seem to have a role. The research will examine how fear of witchcraft deters aggression, how conflict is expressed within a generally anti-violent culture, and how children learn to contain emotions during adolescence. The research is important in that it is one of the last opportunities to understand a society that has successfully maintained peaceful relations with other societies. Peace is a profoundly important topic but the opportunity to observe it in the Upper Xingu is rapidly disappearing in the face of encroaching Brazilian society. The research also will contribute to the development of anthropological theory that links interpersonal and institutional aspects of culture.