"Our children? Sold to the state. They will come back in cans of tuna." -- Analysis of a rumour on social policies in the Peruvian Amazon
This presentation suggests taking seriously a rumor circulating among the Maijuna, a Western Tukanoan indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon, regarding social policies such as cash transfers, school food, and old age pensions implemented since 2012. Based on a long ethnographic investigation among the Maijuna, it examines how this rumor constitutes a complex political expression of the socio-political and environmental tensions at play in their relationship with the State. Circulating particularly among Maijuna mothers, the rumor conveys the idea that the State is purchasing their children through cash transfers, and that one day, the State would abduct the children, kill them, and condition their flesh into cans of tuna. This paper aims to explore the heuristic potential of the rumor by conducting analyses on: the provision of exogenous and industrial foods to children in connection with local food fears, particularly regarding canned goods; family allowances and the multitude of controls they imply; local concerns about schooling and youth migration to cities; conservation policies and threats on their territories and resources; and the centrality of the relational schema of predation in this group. Through a contextualized ethnography, this paper will apprehend the rumor as a revealing indicator of the Maijuna’s distrust towards contradictory state policies in the Peruvian Amazon.
Date: 20 February 2024, 17:00
Venue: 64 Banbury Road, 64 Banbury Road OX2 6PN
Venue Details: Seminar Room
Speaker: Emmanuelle Ricaud Oneto (Institut Agro Dijon, Laboratory of Political Anthropology (CNRS/EHESS))
Organising department: The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH)
Organiser: Theodor Borrmann (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: theodor.borrmann@wolfson.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Theodor Borrmann