Predatory Economies: The Sanema and the Socialist State in Contemporary Amazonia
by Amy Penfield
University of Texas Press, 2023 Cloth: 978-1-4773-2707-4 | Paper: 978-1-4773-2708-1 | eISBN: 978-1-4773-2709-8 Library of Congress Classification F2520.1.G68P46 2023 Dewey Decimal Classification 305.898087
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
A study of the modes of predation used by and against the Sanema people of Venezuela.
Predation is central to the cosmology and lifeways of the Sanema-speaking Indigenous people of Venezuelan Amazonia, but it also marks their experience of modernity under the socialist “Bolivarian” regime and its immense oil wealth. Yet predation is not simply violence and plunder. For Sanema people, it means a great deal more: enticement, seduction, persuasion. It suggests an imminent threat but also opportunity and even sanctuary.
Amy Penfield spent two and a half years in the field, living with and learning from Sanema communities. She discovered that while predation is what we think it is—invading enemies, incursions by gold miners, and unscrupulous state interventions—Sanema are not merely prey. Predation, or appropriation without reciprocity, is essential to their own activities. They use predatory techniques of trickery in hunting and shamanism activities, while at the same time, they employ tactics of manipulation to obtain resources from neighbors and from the state. A richly detailed ethnography, Predatory Economies looks beyond well-worn tropes of activism and resistance to tell a new story of agency from an Indigenous perspective.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Amy Penfield is a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Bristol.
REVIEWS
A great read that goes beyond well-rehearsed ideas about Amazonian cosmology to explain why concepts such as predation are integral to the means by which Amazonian people engage with their neighbors, the state, and extractive economies. Rather than simply dwelling on differences between Penfield’s Sanema informants and other Venezuelans, her detailed and textured ethnography shows how the state and its promises are imbricated in people’s lives, hopes, frustrations, and failures. This is exactly the kind of book that helps contextualize and give substance to key concepts that have emerged in regional scholarship in recent years. Its clear and engaging presentation, along with its depiction of Amazonian people living at the margins of wider Latin American political and economic processes, guarantees this book’s importance beyond the field of Amazonian ethnography. I very much look forward to using it in my courses.
— Casey High
Predatory Economies is an utterly engaging story of Sanema lives entangled in predation and desire amid the rush of gold, oil, and gasoline in Bolivarian Venezuela. Penfield brilliantly combines the best traditions of Amazonian ethnography with an astute analysis of the wider tentacles of predatory capitalism, offering a Sanema lesson on the ills wrought by the fever of endless growth.
— Bret Gustafson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Key Characters
Introduction: Locating Predators and Prey
Chapter 1. Predation, Then and Now
Chapter 2. Extracting Good Things
Chapter 3. Horizons of the Unknown
Chapter 4. Subterranean Forces
Chapter 5. Invoking the State
Chapter 6. Forest Papers
Epilogue: Predatory Economies in Amazonia and Beyond
Predatory Economies: The Sanema and the Socialist State in Contemporary Amazonia
by Amy Penfield
University of Texas Press, 2023 Cloth: 978-1-4773-2707-4 Paper: 978-1-4773-2708-1 eISBN: 978-1-4773-2709-8
A study of the modes of predation used by and against the Sanema people of Venezuela.
Predation is central to the cosmology and lifeways of the Sanema-speaking Indigenous people of Venezuelan Amazonia, but it also marks their experience of modernity under the socialist “Bolivarian” regime and its immense oil wealth. Yet predation is not simply violence and plunder. For Sanema people, it means a great deal more: enticement, seduction, persuasion. It suggests an imminent threat but also opportunity and even sanctuary.
Amy Penfield spent two and a half years in the field, living with and learning from Sanema communities. She discovered that while predation is what we think it is—invading enemies, incursions by gold miners, and unscrupulous state interventions—Sanema are not merely prey. Predation, or appropriation without reciprocity, is essential to their own activities. They use predatory techniques of trickery in hunting and shamanism activities, while at the same time, they employ tactics of manipulation to obtain resources from neighbors and from the state. A richly detailed ethnography, Predatory Economies looks beyond well-worn tropes of activism and resistance to tell a new story of agency from an Indigenous perspective.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Amy Penfield is a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Bristol.
REVIEWS
A great read that goes beyond well-rehearsed ideas about Amazonian cosmology to explain why concepts such as predation are integral to the means by which Amazonian people engage with their neighbors, the state, and extractive economies. Rather than simply dwelling on differences between Penfield’s Sanema informants and other Venezuelans, her detailed and textured ethnography shows how the state and its promises are imbricated in people’s lives, hopes, frustrations, and failures. This is exactly the kind of book that helps contextualize and give substance to key concepts that have emerged in regional scholarship in recent years. Its clear and engaging presentation, along with its depiction of Amazonian people living at the margins of wider Latin American political and economic processes, guarantees this book’s importance beyond the field of Amazonian ethnography. I very much look forward to using it in my courses.
— Casey High
Predatory Economies is an utterly engaging story of Sanema lives entangled in predation and desire amid the rush of gold, oil, and gasoline in Bolivarian Venezuela. Penfield brilliantly combines the best traditions of Amazonian ethnography with an astute analysis of the wider tentacles of predatory capitalism, offering a Sanema lesson on the ills wrought by the fever of endless growth.
— Bret Gustafson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Key Characters
Introduction: Locating Predators and Prey
Chapter 1. Predation, Then and Now
Chapter 2. Extracting Good Things
Chapter 3. Horizons of the Unknown
Chapter 4. Subterranean Forces
Chapter 5. Invoking the State
Chapter 6. Forest Papers
Epilogue: Predatory Economies in Amazonia and Beyond
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC