Professor Laura Rival

The Huaorani Indians of Amazonian Ecuador

Understanding Huaorani society and culture within a comparative framework constitutes the core of my anthropological research. I have so far spent a total of thirty-seven months with the Huaorani (1989-1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 2003, 2005 and 2008), and have documented many aspects of their lives. Shorter periods of ethnographic fieldwork with the Chachi (Cayapas) of the Ecuadorian Chocó, and the Makushi of southern Guyana have allowed me to appreciate fully the diversity of Amazonian ways of life. While primarily focused on the dynamic interaction between state schooling and culture, my doctoral dissertation also looked at a range of development interventions within Huaorani land, as well as at Huaorani representations of their forest world. This broad interest in indigenous and non-indigenous ways of conceptualizing and using the Amazon biome has allowed me to approach nature and society in terms of engagement, practical experience and perceptual knowledge.

The body and the soul in Amazonia

Significant developments have occurred in Amazonianist anthropology in the last ten years, not least the formulation of a new theory (known as perspectivism) to account for the particular forms of animism found in Amazonia. According to this theory, sentient beings share with humans the same dispositions, values and culture. This is consequential for the organization of society, the design of kinship systems, the practice of warfare, and the performance of many rituals, especially birth and funeral practices. I have researched body/ soul dualism in the context of warfare and other forms of violent ritual killing, focusing more particularly on native explanations of how the soul is attached to the body. This project sheds new light on Huaorani warfare, while providing a better understanding of the contexts in which soul continuity and body discontinuity are predicated. I am currently developing a new research project on ‘Vital and Technical Processes in the Production of Living Beings and Artefacts,' which looks at how life is conceptualized in Huaorani and other Amerindian cultures.

Ecological wealth, capital and the value of sustainability

The forests where the Huaorani, Chachi and Makushi live have been subjected to unprecedented rates of deforestation in the last thirty years, and large biodiversity conservation programmes were put in place in the 1990s to save remaining forests and protect both local ecosystems and indigenous rights. I studied ethnographically the implementation of a large integrated conservation and development programme in the Ecuadorian Chocó, one of the world's biodiversity ‘hotspots,' and analyzed the competing sustainable development discourses and new regimes of governmentality that emerged during that heroic decade. I am currently developing a more theoretically oriented reflection on sustainability as value, as well as a new research programme to document ethnographically various indigenous visions of social justice and ecological restoration. I am also actively involved in providing a social anthropological perspective on the emergence of a ‘green economy' in the build up to Rio+20.