ABSTRACT
Sociality is carved out in the daily round, in a series of economic processes that are at once material, conceptual and signifying. The series includes a variety of forms of production and appropriation of products, their distribution, circulation, consumption and transformation. Elias believed in the old-fashioned values according to which a man should hunt one day, and on the next work hard in his garden in order to be able to feed his family. The social world and the constitution of identity begin in the mae or ‘settlement’. This space is inhabited principally by human beings who are nabu kuin, ‘real kin’, and the relations between them ought both to define and, as they take their daily course, to create sociality. In everyday parlance the Cashinahua do indeed tend to associate types of people with distinct geographical zones corresponding to ‘outside’ and ‘inside’. A Cashinahua hunter seeks to avoid spirits and demons in the forest or along the river.
