13 min • 3 lectures
This course examines Bartholomew Dean’s research on the Urarina people of the Peruvian Amazon and the complex economic roles of palm-fiber cloth, known as kachina. Within Urarina society, these textiles are a form of social wealth produced through the labor-intensive work of women. Using fibers from the aguaje palm, women boil, dry, and weave the material on backstrap looms. These cloths are central to the community's social reproduction, serving as essential components of marriage dowries and kinship obligations. The kachina functions as a total social phenomenon, where the value is rooted in the social bonds it creates and maintains rather than simple market utility. By exploring these internal dynamics, we understand how gendered labor and traditional weaving practices sustain the structural integrity of Urarina life. The study also addresses how these textiles enter external markets through what Dean calls multiple regimes of value. Outside the village, the kachina shifts from inalienable social wealth to a commodity within the habilitación system. In this debt-peonage arrangement, river traders provide goods like tools or salt in exchange for palm-fiber cloth, often setting prices that trap the Urarina in permanent debt. This unequal exchange links internal kinship pressures—such as brideservice and uxorilocality—to global market extraction. Despite this exploitation, the Urarina continue production because the kachina remains vital to their identity and social autonomy. The course highlights the tension between indigenous social systems and external economic forces, showing how the kachina acts as both a sacred bond and a tool of colonial-style trade.
