ABSTRACT
It was Reichel-Dolmatoff who stated in an early paper that the Yukpa2 Indians are not only warriors because of hate, envy, or pleasure, but rather that war is ‘a fundamental necessity for them’ (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1945: 62). In his chapter on ‘war’ ReichelDolmatoff does not elaborate further on this statement, but describes certain aspects of warfare (1945: 62, 64), pre-warfare ritual dance-fighting (1945: 64), fighting that occurred during maize-beer celebrations (1945: 65) and the resulting vendetta (1945: 66). Since the publication of Reichel-Dolmatoff ’s paper, anthropological observations of violent behaviour have been refined, masses of data have been collected and a broad theoretical discussion on violence and warfare in Lowland South America has taken place. The latter was pioneered by the scientific battle on Yanomami warfare (e.g. Albert 1989, 1990; Alès 1984; Chagnon 1968, 1983, 1988, 1989, 1990a, 1990b; Ferguson 1990, 1995; Harris 1984; Lizot 1989, 1994).3 Compared with those intellectual endeavours, in which some of the outstanding anthropologists working on the continent have been engaged, the aim and scope of this paper on violence4 among the Yukpa is limited and mainly socio-cosmological in its focus. I do not try to give a final or monocausal explanation as to why war or violent behaviour occurs, nor is it my aim to provide statistical data ordered by ‘etic’ western categories on the frequencies of different forms of violent behaviour. Rather, my question is how institutionalised forms of violence are structured according to socio-cosmological contexts.
