How to integrate socio-cultural dimensions into sustainable development: Amazonian case studies

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How to integrate socio-cultural dimensions into sustainable development: Amazonian case studies Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen* and Sanni Saarinen Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 59, Helsinki FIN-00014, Finland Fax: +358 9191 23107 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author

Matti Kamppinen Department of Cultural Studies, University of Turku, Turku FIN-20014, Finland E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: The best means of integrating socio-cultural dimensions into the study and politics of sustainable development are through the ethnographic analysis of cultural models and patterns of behaviour. This is particularly mandatory in those contexts where the perception of reality is radically different from the Western point of view. We illustrate how the understanding of the Amazonian embodied thinking about relating to other subjects helps to comprehend their sustainable lifestyles and interaction within a natural environment. Through their bodies, the Amazonian native peoples and mestizos try to control and form a subjectivity that today is reflected in their striving to have better education, contemporary rites of passage and new skills that are appreciated when learned in their interaction with the dominant society. This means that the ‘traditional’ cultural models and patterns of behaviour are reproduced in interaction with new non-native actors, and the conditions for sustainable development consequently change. Keywords: Amazonia; sustainable development; indigenous peoples; mestizo populations; subjectivity; control; relationship with natural environment; Brazil; Peru. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Virtanen, P.K., Saarinen, S. and Kamppinen, M. (2012) ‘How to integrate socio-cultural dimensions into sustainable development: Amazonian case studies’, Int. J. Sustainable Society, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp.226–239. Biographical notes: Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen is a Researcher in Latin American Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. She is also an Associated Researcher in Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative/EREA, Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre La Défense, France. She has carried out fieldwork in Acre Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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state, Brazil. She defended her Doctoral Dissertation in 2007 on indigenous youth in Amazonia. She has published, e.g. in the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Identities, Anthropos and Estudios Latino Americanos, and in edited compilations published, such as, by Ashgate. Sanni Saarinen is a Doctoral Candidate in Latin American Studies in the Department of World Cultures at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Loreto, Peruvian Amazon, where she studies cultural sustainability. She has published in Int. J. Sustainable Society. Matti Kamppinen is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Turku. He has studied models of environmental risks in Peruvian Amazon and Western Finland. He has published, e.g. in Biodiversity and Conservation, Futures and Insight.

1

Introduction

In the field of sustainable development, rational decision-making requires that all the relevant dimensions be taken into account and evaluated and that action be based on the holistic consideration of the situation. As a result, decision-making faces a multitude of dimensions: ecological, economic, political and socio-cultural. Due to the large number of different dimensions, the decision-maker in sustainable development has to cope with the so-called dilemma of rational decision-making: on the one hand, he/she has to take into account all the relevant aspects of the situation, yet on the other hand, the more aspects integrated into that decision-making, the more difficult it becomes to reach a rational, balanced solution. Of the several models developed for managing multi-dimensional decision-making, the most prominent is economic commensuration. According to this model, economic utilities are attributed to different dimensions, and hence they can be weighed against each other. For example, utilities (costs and benefits) can be attached to the putative services provided by ecological systems, and thus ecological dimensions to be integrated into the overall economic decision-making (Kamppinen and Walls, 1999; Vihervaara and Kamppinen, 2009). The integration of socio-cultural dimensions has proven to be less straightforward and more difficult. For the purposes of sustainable development, the primary strategy for the decision-maker is to understand (describe, explain and predict) the roles of the traditional practices and customs that are based on different worldviews, and to understand how they either contribute to sustainable lifestyles or hinder their emergence and therefore have an impact on sustainable development. Instead of economic commensuration, socio-cultural dimensions must be analysed by means of systems thinking that enable the decisionmaker to understand the roles of the socio-cultural factors in current and future developments. Sustainable development projects attain the best results when based on negotiation between different actors. In this negotiation process, people from different cultural backgrounds understand the basic ideas of sustainable development in different manners, and therefore, they also harbour very different expectations for the projects. Acknowledging these differences already during the decision-making phase is

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fundamentally important for the overall success of the projects (Leeuwis, 2000; Saarinen and Kamppinen, 2009). Sustainable development has become an extremely popular concept and in the name of sustainable development, various projects have been realised in different parts of the world. According to the widely used Brundtland Report’s definition, this concept refers to ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987). Sustainable development is, however, a problematic concept owning to its vague meaning, which can be interpreted in almost all possible ways, depending upon the given situation (Elliot, 2006; Hopwood et al., 2005). The core of the concept of sustainable development encompasses, on the one hand, the human needs to conserve natural resources, and on the other, the needs to improve life quality. The concept of sustainability we are adapting is composed of two elements. The first point is that it is based on risk assessment: sustainability means balanced success in ecological, economic, social and cultural dimensions, and consequently the avoidance of catastrophic losses. The second point is that our concept of sustainability is ethnographic, open to ‘native’ substantial definitions. In the following, our case studies illustrate how sustainability is materialised in the Amazonian context and how the Amazonian people currently aim at sustainable living. These concepts of sustainable development, nature or development are foreign to them (‘development’ has been based on Western linear thinking). But they speak about the importance of achieving a good life, their relations to non-human beings inhabiting their environment and about their necessity to earn money or to educate their children. By studying all these interrelated aspects of their lives, it is possible to gain an understanding of their way of attributing meaning to sustainable development. In our case studies, we analyse three Amazonian native and mestizo ways of relating to their natural environment and explore how their understanding of control and subjectivity help them to comprehend their sustainable lifestyles. We will focus on how the Amazonian people’s thinking of their natural environment and their embodied interaction particularly with the subjects, other than their kin and how these are related to success in sustainable development and to the changes taking place in the contemporary world. We show how the ways in which non-human beings, as socio-cultural facts, affect the dimensions of sustainability, particularly ecological sustainability. We start with a discussion on Amazonian interaction with non-humans and later demonstrate how the same cultural model transforms the relations with new non-native agencies in our three case studies. The keys in the interaction with new human agencies influencing the Amazonian lived worlds are subjectivity and control. While planning sustainable development projects, it is important to take into consideration these socio-cultural aspects. Our analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Amazonia. The examples have been collected from an indigenous group living in the Western Amazonia of Brazil, the Manchineri people and from two rural communities in the Peruvian lowland, Atalaya and San Rafael. Atalaya is an indigenous village of about 200 inhabitants of Iquito and Quichua Indians, and San Rafael is a mestizo community of 400 inhabitants in the vicinity of the town of Iquitos. The Arawak-speaking Manchineri is a population of approximately some 900 persons and they live in the indigenous territory of Mamoadate, which is divided into nine villages, and in the urban areas of Acre state. The Mamoadate and Atalaya communities are situated far from the nearest towns, so visits to

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the city by Indians are occasional. San Rafael is a typical ‘progressive’ mestizo village, benefiting from being in the vicinity of the town of Iquitos by means of eco-tourism. All the communities included in this study hunt, fish and engage in slash and burn agriculture, but they have also integrated into a market economy. As the Amazon region has become the focus of environmental conservation, the systematic combinations of the ways to the relate to the natural environment, traditional customs and ecological impacts, have all become a relevant object of research in the process of understanding the holistic and systemic nature of sustainable development. It is important to understand how the Amazonian people themselves try to achieve better life quality today, e.g. through their negotiation with new human actors. Especially in those areas and cultural contexts where the perception of reality is radically different, sustainable development faces the challenge of social and cultural filters. As our Amazonian cases show, the way to understand and generate sustainable development starts with the ethnography of the culture.

2

Relations between subjects as elements of the overall sustainability in Amazonia

In the cosmologies of the many Amazonian peoples, some plants, animals and natural elements are believed to have souls or spirits, and consequently they are regarded as subjects (e.g. Arhem, 1996; Descola, 2005; Viveiros de Castro, 1996, 2004). These volitional subjects are very human-like: they can think, feel and act in a social and an intentional ways. They also form a moral community and interact in various ways. Humanity, e.g. the capacity to think, involving morality and sociability, is an essential attribute shared by all the cosmological agents in the Amazonian cosmologies, and the differences between the different agents are based on their different bodies. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1996, 2004) argues, that all the species see themselves as humans: they see themselves as living in the houses, eating normal food, hunting other animals, etc. But as all species see the world from the different point of view of different bodies, the other beings cannot be seen as humans in normal conditions. The Amazonian logic of interaction between beings is based on the idea that behind the different bodies is a shared humanity. This enables humans to understand and interact with non-human beings and simultaneously, due to being differently bodied, make a distinction between themselves and other beings. What especially makes one essentially human is one’s close relationships with other humans that are based on mutual caring, sharing and physical proximity (e.g. Overing and Passes, 2001; Vilaça, 2002). Non-human beings are usually invisible, but they may become visible in dreams, rituals or while one is alone. Despite their invisibility, they are experienced as real and people may sense their presence in other ways: the non-human beings can produce different sounds and can make their presence known through the changes in the weather or through acts directed towards humans. For the Manchineri people, those who live in Atalaya and San Rafael, some animals and some plants, especially those related to curing and natural resources, have their own personalities. In Atalaya and San Rafael, the people of the water (aquaruna) are also believed to be the owners of the rivers, lakes and their species. Typical to the Amazonian worldview is that there are masters and owners of the forests, waters and other elements (Arhem, 1996; Descola, 2005; Fausto, 2008). The basic premise underlying the different subjects forming the cosmic web of social

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relationships is shared in all indigenous and mestizo cosmologies (see also Santos and Barclay, 2007). In other words, the perception of ‘nature’ is affected by the various culturally postulated non-human (spirit) beings. The variation of the same cultural model (of shared humanity and of non-humans as socio-cultural facts) throughout the Amazon has been the basis of the Amazonian traditional people’s sustainability (Carneiro da Cunha and Almeida Barbosa, 2000; Conklin and Graham, 1995). The conservation in indigenous lands has been intense, and technology and land rights, for instance, have only improved it (Nepstad et al., 2006). The plant and animal spirits affect strongly the ways people behave in relation to the natural environment. The native ways of hunting, fishing and agricultural activities take into account the places of the forest spirits. For example, hunting is conceptualised as being social interaction between people and what is referred to as the mother or father of the forest. The mother or father of the forest is one of the most important non-human beings in the communities where we have conducted out research. This being is believed to be the guardian of the forest area and its animals. Among the Manchineri people, it is known as kajpomyolutu (elsewhere in Brazil it is also known as caboclinho or curupira), while in Atalaya and San Rafael, the being is called yashingo or chullachaqui, both also commonly used names among the other mestizo population of Peruvian Amazon (Gow, 1991; Luna, 1986; Regan, 1983; Virtanen, 2007). The mother or father of the forest is a highly ambivalent being: it can occasionally help people by leading them to places that are abundant with game, but in other situations, it can also transform itself into a dangerous being who can make people seriously ill or can even kill them (Virtanen, 2007). Although it is never an arbitrary being, it acts upon certain norms and rules. The relationship between the forest resources and the mother or father of the forest has often been compared to that of people who have their own domestic animals, and therefore, its behaviour seemed understandable to the people. In Atalaya and Mamoadate, it was often said that this guardian of the forest allows people to hunt for their own needs, but will severely punish people who over-hunt, over-exploit forest resources or harm animals and plants in other ways. Even if the negotiation with the mother or father of the forest is required for a successful hunt, people are rather afraid of it and try to avoid it. The possibility of encountering the mother or father of the forest when alone is especially dangerous, as a person can be taken permanently to the non-human world (see Gow, 1991; Opas, 2008; Virtanen, 2007). Whereas, the narratives related to the encounters with the mother or father of the forest, for instance, reflect the dependence and the respect that people feel towards the jungle forest, these stories also reflect the dangers of the forest and its fragility. In Atalaya, the ideal relationship between people and the mother of the forest was explained to be one of mutual respect. However, this respect must be maintained; otherwise people face the direct consequences. For example, if people start to behave in an inappropriate manner in the forest, the mother of the forest will punish them by hiding all the game or by making people seriously ill. So in Amerindian thinking, ‘nature’ is social, moral, human-like and the social relationships with its different subjects people establish are controlled. In the communities where we have conducted research, the social interaction between the humans and the spirits of the forest or waters is about knowledge about the norms, the rules and the points of views of the other beings. Similar beliefs about the interaction with the plant spirits become clear in the narratives of curing. The traditional healers of Atalaya, for instance, refer to plant spirits as their helpers. Without their help, curing would be impossible. Curing is, therefore, a social interaction between

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the healer, the patient and the spirit. This means that human well-being requires constant negotiations with the non-human beings, such as in hunting and healthcare. The spirits transform the natural environment into a moral realm that is laden with social rules of appropriate behaviour. Despite that, people distinguish between the village and the forest, between the human-habited area and the area beyond it (see Ellen, 1996). Apart from regulating the human relation with ‘nature’, the beliefs about the non-human beings of the natural realm are also related to the questions of the morality and sociability between the human community members (Londoño Sulkin, 2005; Opas, 2008; Overing and Passes, 2001; Storrie, 2005). In other words, sustainability is understood through sharing and caring between the community members, and not through the overconsumption for one’s own needs. The use of natural resources, therefore, is limited and one cannot secretly plunder them for personal profit. This morally controlled interaction with the natural environment has been the basis of the sustainability of the Amazonian communities. However, this is not to say that the native and mestizo people would be sustainable a priori, because when lacking alternatives, information or resources, they may not be able to look after their environment. In other words, they are not conservers as such, but have a personal relation with their environment. Ingold (2002) has referred to the principle of the hunter–gatherers’ relation with forest subjects as trust, which is a combination of dependency and autonomy. Human illnesses are also traditionally caused by inappropriate human behaviour in the forest or in relations between the humans themselves. To address this, the shamans and healers are people with special knowledge about the relationships people ought to have with other cosmological agents. Negotiations with the subjects of the forest are needed to cure (reorganise) the relatedness between the subjects. In a continuous way, the fear and respect people feel towards the forest is also visible in the way young people are raised. In the puberty rituals of native peoples, high importance is attributed to the means to produce human subjectivity: the human body, and thus how to be a human member of the community. Among the Manchineri, the more complex version of the puberty ritual is still held in the more distant villages, because there living is the most dependent on their success, e.g. in hunting, fishing and under weather conditions that require appropriate relations with the subjects of their natural environment. The ritual protects young Manchineris from the dangers of the jungle, such as snake bites, attacks by predators, or diseases and ultimately from turning into an animal (Virtanen, 2007; see also e.g. Belaunde, 2001; Vilaça, 2002). Today, the puberty rituals have changed and this subject will be discussed in more detail later. Therefore, we can conclude that a practice is not considered to be sustainable if it does not take into consideration all the community members and the other aspects influencing the community’s well-being. Indeed, an imbalance in the environment has been associated with loosing control of the relationships between the subjects.

3

New social actors

During the period of renewed economic expansion in Amazonia in the 1960s and 1970s, the new highways, such as the Trans-Amazônica project, mining projects, hydroelectric dams, logging, as well as new means of communication, all brought the native populations in particular into even closer contact with the mainstream society. The

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governments launched major resettlement projects in the Amazon and established the local presence of military and state officials, the exploitation of natural resources and extensive forest clearance (Carvalho et al., 2002; Chirif and García Hierro, 2007; Heck et al., 2005; Porto Gonçalves, 2001). Since the 1980s and 1990s, the larger-scale logging and petroleum industries have brought new challenges, especially in Peru. The measures implemented by the governments to integrate the Amazon region with the rest of the states were pursued in the name of the modernisation of the nation state and implemented in the spirit of colonial and Western economic progressive thinking. The major economic projects launched were part of global transformations and were linked to market forces, designed without taking into account the social transformations that the process of modernisation had already brought about in the countries involved and in the traditional populations (Gomes, 2000; Little, 2001; Ozorio de Almeida, 1992). Before the new constitutions, during the Latin American military regime, the state considered the region’s indigenous peoples to be a barrier to development. In contrast, today some Amazonian indigenous peoples have switched to being regarded as the best conservers of nature and as the promoters of ‘modernity’ (Nepstad et al., 2006; see Ramos, 2003). This change has taken place simultaneously with the formulations of the ideas of sustainable development: development is no longer seen simply through the lense of economic growth, but requires that cultural and environmental dimensions are also taken into account (WCED, 1987). In the politics of sustainable development, the Amazonian indigenous peoples have formed strong political alliances that represent the environmental concerns and the questions about the rights of indigenous peoples as all being components of the same problem (Conklin and Graham, 1995; Pieck, 2006). Due to modernisation, the lives of native Amazonian peoples are changing rapidly. In the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazonia, the different governmental projects, as well as those of the different national and international non-governmental organisations, are becoming a part of everyday life for many indigenous peoples. In the communities of Atalaya, San Rafael and among the Manchineri, due to ranching, timbering and agricultural activities, and exploitative fishing and hunting in the nearby non-native settlements, the forest is no longer able to offer livelihood to everyone. In the closer contacts with the mainstream culture, new urban commodities have also transformed to address the needs of everyday life, and this has made people search for new sources of economic income. The Manchineri and the villagers of Atalaya and San Rafael participate in different ways in the market economy. Their modern commodities, such as the small outboard motors on their canoes or the chain saws have made their forestrelated activities easier, and even the distant rainforest areas have now become accessible. While the areas related to human-activities expand, the forest realm in which the interaction with the forest spirits occurs, moves further away. In Atalaya, for instance, people often stated that the mother of the forest as such is not changing, but that the places where it can be found is changing. The mother or father of the forest represents the places beyond the human settlements, especially those far from the cities. This makes sense and order of the forest spaces that are different from the areas involving destructive activities, such as timbering. The encounters with some spirits of the natural realm were reported to take place in the distant rainforest, far from the cities. In brief, the narratives about the spirits of the forest reflect the changes taking place in the environment. In the forest areas, the concerns of the people are closely linked to the hunting and to their coping with the environment, whereas in the villages closer to the non-natives and

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the urban centres, the principal worries are how to act with the non-natives or urban population especially. Nonetheless, in many villages, the non-natives are constantly present, as for instance, in the form of legislation, pollution and invasions. Moreover, some illnesses on the reserves are no longer caused by the cosmological agents but by non-natives. Traditional healers can usually cure only illnesses caused by the encounters with the different non-human beings. Therefore, due to new diseases, a need has arisen for new means of healthcare and industrial medicine. With the changes taking place in the Amazonian peoples’ lives, the social interaction with the different non-human beings is partly being replaced by negotiations with non-native people. State officials control new means of healthcare, education, land protection and forest practices that are linked to monetary needs. Thus, new knowledge and social skills are required, and they constitute an important way for the Amazonian people to obtain a sustainable life. As a result, their spokespeople try to find a type of control that helps them in the new communication spaces. In Brazil, the Manchineri no longer count on government assistance (e.g. FUNAI – the National Indian Foundation), but are aiming to become spokespeople for their own ideas and claims. Towards this end, they have looked for new types of resources and sustenance through cooperation projects with other institutions. The Manchineri Organisation, MAPKAHA, was founded in 2003 and it has slowly established partnerships with non-governmental organisations and the local government. Through the new kind of subjectivity as a group, they try to better control the inter-ethnic interaction. The MAPKAHA representatives deal with officials and try to negotiate the project funding and developments for the community (Virtanen, 2009). For instance, a cultural revitalisation and the territorial protection projects of the MAPKAHA were included in the IPDP – The Indigenous Peoples Demonstration Project (Programa Demonstrativo dos Povos Indígenas), which received funding from the G7 countries. The new infrastructure building programmes have also been established in cooperation with the local government. However, many of these projects are not carried out completely, as people have not been trained sufficiently to manage new resources. In Peru, the main reason for the formation of the community of Atalaya was the government law about communal territorial rights and educational policy (see Chirif and García Hierro, 2007): only legally recognised communities could have state schools in the villages. The need to guarantee better opportunities for the younger generation compelled people to change their previous lifestyles radically and to accommodate accordingly in their village-style lives. Moreover, in Atalaya, the everyday life of people is strongly affected by the new ‘conservation’ policy of the regional government. The village is a part of newly founded regional conservation area of Alto Nanay, Pintuyacu and Chambira, which operates under in the name of sustainable development. In that area, the law prohibits almost all the commercial use of the natural resources, even though the petroleum industry is allowed. (PROCREL, 2009). For people in Atalaya, the small-scale sale of forest products has constituted the base for their monetary economy, and a new policy has left them without any alternatives. The result is that people feel they have not had any real power in the decision-making process of the conservation’s area foundation. The whole process has shown them the urgent need to learn new social skills, such as acquiring a better knowledge of Spanish or of the legal aspects needed in the negotiations with government representatives. Nevertheless, the case is a clear example of a sustainable development initiative implemented without considering all the relevant socio-cultural aspects. Even the forest provides the main part of subsistence for the

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region’s rural people, in the current world, monetary needs are also important. Money is not only needed to cover certain everyday necessities, but also to improve life quality politically: to send children to school, to obtain motors for boats, to travel to the city for legal issues or to purchase radios to access more information. If these aspects are not considered, the initiative itself cannot be referred to as being sustainable. The village of San Rafael has seized the opportunity provided by eco-tourism. During recent years, this village has transformed into a ‘biodiversity village’ and has built services to house the tourists who come from the town of Iquitos. Numerous villagers are employed in that eco-tourism, and the overall appearance of the village has changed. These changes are due to the various development projects that have provided the resources for building the appropriate infrastructure. The cooperation with the different development project agencies is often seen as an opportunity to improve the life conditions in the village, even though the goals of the villagers may differ significantly from the official goals of the projects. When there are no conditions to reproduce or to value cultural traditions in everyday life and thinking, they may be transformed into folklore and utilised, e.g. to entertain the tourists. The environmental impact of this type of folklore processes is not known. One may hypothesise, that there are many ramifications: the deterioration of folk religion, e.g. allows for novel ways to utilise forests and other natural resources; some of these new ways are environmentally more burdening, some are not. The utilisation of folklore in eco-tourism, on the other hand, may pave the way for sustainable livelihood, since this does not imply materially intensive extractive actions such as forestry and agriculture.

4

New human ways to control and act in the contemporary world

In those communities in which we have been carried out our research, the hunting and fishing techniques have changed due to new technology, but the people’s relationship to their natural environment continues to involve negotiating with its non-human beings, such as the game masters and controlling the humans’ use of resources. The main form of this kind of negotiation that is still practiced is shamanism. The most major alteration in the relation to the environment is the appearance of new communication spaces: negotiations with current non-native or urban social actors (the state, governmental and non-governmental organisations, missionaries, researchers, etc.) that have become an important part of the indigenous socio-cosmology. It is interesting that the relations with these actors represent the same ambivalence as those with the non-human beings of the natural realm. Relations with these actors are necessary in order to obtain some urban commodities or to defend indigenous rights in the changing world. This is important for the continuity, but they can threaten people’s capacity to coexist well with their own community members. But how can one form subjectivity in the new types of social situations and obtain control? Most importantly, relations with the non-native or urban social actors can transform into favourable ones, such as in the form of materials and technology, only through the empowering process of learning new skills as a means of control. Many Amazonian indigenous and mestizo communities have to deal with a larger vocabulary than an ordinary Brazilian or Peruvian would normally face. Indeed state officials who interact with native populations frequently use complicated terms without explaining them, such as ‘project’, ‘biodiversity’, ‘biopiracy’, ‘indigenous’, ‘globalisation’ and

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‘budget’. Those who do not understand the meanings of these foreign concepts are mainly the inhabitants of the rural villages, but the officials may nonetheless still use these complex concepts. Rural people often feel ashamed when they do not understand all the words used by urban people. In the meantime, for many native people, verbal performance is one of the ways to mark status and political power (Turner, 1995). The contacts with the urban population, such as those who work with the people on the different sustainable development projects and even with the anthropologists, are also accustomed to acquiring better knowledge of the ways they need to act in the current world. Furthermore, sometimes these encounters make people notice their lack of certain skills that are needed in the contemporary world. These changes are also reflected in the current expectations of the village leader. Older people reported that previous leaders were important shamans who were able to negotiate with powerful non-human beings and enemy witches. Now more importance is attributed to the leaders’ capacity to negotiate with the representatives of the dominant society. A leader is, therefore, expected to speak Spanish/Portuguese well, to read, to write and to understand the complicated issues related to the development projects, conservation policy and the legal issues of the indigenous people. The leader’s position is also highly ambivalent. The leader or the community’s spokesperson is expected to have certain skills that ordinary people in the community do not possess, but at the same time, spokespeople who assimilate new symbolic resources, such as ways of speech, clothing and modes of living, or who even accumulate economic capital, are easily accused of having transformed themselves into the other (e.g. a representative of the dominant society). As a consequence, the people might feel they are no longer their kin, and do not defend them. People representing the dominant society are considered to be immoral because their logic does not involve sharing or reciprocity. Even if most people from the dominant society are seen as being politically and economically more powerful, they are regarded as being willing to steal and betray, and caution is therefore needed while interacting with them. Consequently, leadership conflicts are currently common in the native communities. Participation in the state education is one of the new rites of passage during which young people learn skills that may act as a control in power relations. Moreover, literacy is a new symbol of maturity and the community reinforces the conditions needed to acquire this skill in adolescence. Changes in the rites of passage of young people also reflect the forming of subjectivity in their current world in a safe way. Previously, the youth were educated to act in the world by performing a puberty ritual for them. This ritual prepared them for such social activities as taking care of the gardens, children or home chores, but today they are required to have various other abilities, such as knowledge of Portuguese, since they occasionally have to travel to the nearby municipalities for healthcare, to purchase commodities that are essential in their contemporary lives, as well as to negotiate with the new governmental and nongovernmental actors. In the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon, the government provides formal basic education to the rural and native communities. However, as the distances in the rainforest are great, the government rarely controls teaching in the villages. For example, teachers in Atalaya are usually only present for two months a year, and those children who have formally attended school during the various years can barely read, and have no opportunities to continue their studies in towns or to find proper jobs. People in Atalaya, as well as the Manchineri, regard the poor quality of their education as one of the main

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problems in their contemporary lives: according to them, without education, they are ‘like animals’ in their present society (see Virtanen, 2009). Some of the traditional practices have been discontinued or have been continued with new meanings, enhancing the subjectivity of some people as community members. The practice of the puberty ritual in the Manchineri communities, for instance, has decreased because new demands have caused young people to experience a different kind of insecurity, forcing them to assume new social roles with new requirements. Currently, the practice of traditional puberty rite continues, however, since it helps the Manchineri to build their ethnic identity, as it constructs the personhood of the youth as a member of the community. As non-natives tend to see indigenous groups as a different ethnic group, the traditional ritual practices help to maintain their subjectivity as different. Today, danger not only lurks in the spirit world (as shown in the relations to the mother and father of the forest, for instance), but also from the outside non-native world. It is important for the indigenous people to form their position as subjects who are able to interact, who can control their own acts and who are not to be dominated.

5

Conclusions

The Amazonian local population considers their natural environment to be a social entity with whom they interact, or with whose forces, energies and beings they are in a constant, active relationship. This has been the core of their sustainable communities, and has been noticed earlier (Carneiro da Cunha and Almeida Barbosa, 2000; Nepstad et al., 2006). The traditional culturally postulated non-human agents (such as the mother or father of the forest) have provided resources for patterned interactions with the natural environment. Today, however, the same caution is observed in those relationships with the diverse group of non-native actors in which local groups try to attain the subjectivity and control. This is reflected in the way local communities look for new skills, objects and ways to bring up and educate their younger generation. The aim is to construct balanced, non-harmful social networks in which communication is between persons. Negotiation with non-humans, such as in hunting or curing practices, can no longer alone guarantee sustainability. When new actors have influenced the natural habitats of the Amazonian native peoples, as they are today due to the state, non-governmental organisations, ranching, petrol industry and logging, subjectivity and control have to be created in new ways. Skills such as the capacity to speak Spanish/Portuguese with complicated concepts, and the ability to understand the legal issues concerning the indigenous rights, integration in the conservation policy or the development projects are all needed in new communication spaces. In this paper, we have illustrated how the Amazonian models of ‘nature’ are mediated through cultural conceptualisations. The Amazonian lifestyle relates to the non-human beings assumed to inhabit their natural environment, and today this conception is increasingly reproduced in the people’s interaction with non-natives, such as officials from the state, companies and non-governmental organisations. Sustainable development is about the simultaneous needs of conserving natural resources, improving life quality and living well within the social environment and the continual interaction with other subjects. Now subjectivity is also a means of forming personal contacts with non-natives, as local people have done in relation to the non-humans of their natural environment.

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The new negotiations are linked to the political and economic aspects of the sustainable development with new actors. From the viewpoint of the Amerindian thinking, the change is seen in the new perceptions of humanity. For Amazonian natives, their own humanity is no longer opposed solely not only to the non-human forest spirits, but also to particular cultural ‘deficits’, such as illiteracy, a lack of common language and the inability to represent one’s own ethnic background and traditions, meaning the person is incapable of acting appropriately in many of contemporary social spaces (Virtanen, 2008, 2009). The result is that the native communities no longer have control over the situation at hand as they once did to control their relations with other subjects. Participation by the native communities in the planning of projects does not alone ensure good results, but it fosters mutual and genuine communication. What is required is a knowledge of indigenous languages, an understanding of how indigenous people experience their natural environment, local ethnography and an understanding by the local communities of nonnative views. It is also important to note who is speaking in the name of the local communities. In conclusion, in order to understand and promote sustainable development in the target area, one should take into account the socio-cultural models through which the non-natives as ‘others’ are conceptualised and managed. For local communities, new social agents, such as development and education projects in the form of their pertinent actors, occupy the roles of the significant others in the recent interaction. The conceptualisations of ‘nature’ change, as it becomes culturally filtered through development agencies and through other social and political entities. Rational decisionmaking aiming at sustainable development should therefore grasp these dynamics of cultural models and the patterns of behaviour as they enfold in the day-to-day concreteness of people’s lives.

Acknowledgement For financial support, we are grateful to the Academy of Finland that has funded the research project in cultural systems, folk religion and modernisation in the Amazon (AMACULT) in 2007–2009.

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