Riding a wave: Embodied skills and colonial history on the Amazon floodplain

Abstract

This article considers the taskscape of fisherpeople who live on the Amazon floodplain. It builds on discussions of skills which are limited by their focus on a small number of activities, weak contextualisation in relations of power and history and homogenisation of practice. I argue that skills should be differentiated and historicised and understood as composite and improvised abilities made up of various capacities. The wayin which skills are reinvented by each generation depends on the particular circumstances they confront. This improvisational ability has its genesis in the way Amerindians and poor colonists adapted to the colonial economy. The present of these floodplain dwellers can be compared to a wave that carries forward the history of past actions and embodies their potential.

Keywords:

• Skills
• embodiment
• history
• taskscape
• practice
• Brazil

Acknowledgments

Fieldwork has been carried out in the state of Pará, Brazil, in 1992-1994, 2001, 2003-2004 and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Board. I thank, for their encouragement, constructive criticism and editorial patience, Don Kulick, Dominic Boyer, Robert Gibb, the editors of Ethnos and two reviewers.

Notes

1. Other scholars have devoted critical attention to what they variously refer to as the practical. One problem is that the term has lost the focus Mauss gave ‘body technique’ (1979). Different understandings are given to: habitus (Bourdieu 1990), techne (Marglin 1990), a lived-in folk model (Bloch 1993), common sense and local knowledge (Geertz 1983), implicit meaning (Douglas 1999), implicit social knowledge (Taussig 1987), social practice (Descola 1996), embodied practices and the senses (Stoller 1994), and direct perception (Ingold 2000) and the pre-objective (Csordas 1990:6, 1994:7-12; Lambek & Strathern 1998:15).

2. Lima (1999) has argued that academics should discontinue the use of the word caboclo, because its local connotations are so pejorative, which include backwardness, stupidity and laziness. I am inclined to agree, and use instead ribeirinho (river dweller). However, I have come across situations where the term is used positively by those who would be called caboclo by outsiders (Harris 1999; see also Nugent 1993).

3. An example of a study that does not is Edelman (1993).

4. This passage is version of a piece that appears in Harris (2000).

5. The ngos working in the region clearly recognise this situation and respond to this global development concern with many programmes to strengthen women's position, such as interest-free loans, improving access to education in rural areas, better health care facilities, making sure fences are properly built to prevent cattle ruining gardens (thereby making agriculture possible).

6. Daniel was so concerned with Amerindian skills that he even proposed to ban fishing using poison because it involved so little skill and no effort (2003b:291).

7. This claim is based on my research of reports submitted to the state governor in the second half of the 18th century which are housed in the Public Archive of the State of Pará, Bele´m, Brazil.