Conflict, Peace, and Social Reform in Indigenous Amazonia: A Deflationary Account

Sociocultural transformations conducted by indigenous leaders in Amazonia have been described as prophetic, millenaristic or messianic, and contrasted to modern reformism. This article addresses this equation by investigating new ways to describe processes of change negotiated between indigenous actors. Though these processes are mostly absent from colonial or later sources, they should not remain foreign to ethnology as the three empirical cases analyzed here show.

What would prevent a group of 200, 500 or 1000 people to make decisions, to negotiate and evaluate alternatives involving significant sociocultural adjustments in their lives? Why has the regulatory image of Rousseau’s small community, meeting face-to-face to express a general will, never had the same impact in the anthropological imagination as that of the ‘noble savage’?

All interested are welcome!