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Women, Gender Relations and Decision-Making in Caboclo Households in the Amazon Estuary
Abstract
This contribution presents an ethnographic report of the social relationships between men and women in five households situated
in the region of Ponta de Pedras, Marajó Island, Pará, in the beginning of the 1990s. From these reports, Siqueira concludes
that the women’s power degrees in influencing household decision making is highly affected by the following factors: type
of rights they hold regarding land property, effective economic contribution and education, the latter not necessarily formal.
In these arrangements, the decision making process can be centralised on the masculine figure (the ‘head of the household’)
or else shared, in a negotiated way, between the spouses. Siqueira stresses that to understand and to valorise woman’s role,
as well as understanding the households’ dynamics in detail, is fundamental to the eventual success of projects aiming the
improvement of these families’ material life quality.
... Another study in Ecuadorian Amazonia explored frontier agriculture in settler households, finding that women tend to look after small animals and participate in agricultural planting and harvesting, but play a marginal role in land-use decisions and selling produce (Thapa, Bilsborrow, and Murphy 1996). Siqueria (2009) also analyses social difference within the household, suggesting that households can be a space of both cooperation and conflict, with intra-household power differentiated by gender, age, and rights of inheritance in three communities in the Amazon Estuary in Brazil. Also in the Brazilian Amazon, fishing methods and species caught are differentiated by the fisher's gender (Zacarkim et al. 2015), as are the impacts of dam construction for fishermen and fisherwomen (Castro-Diaz, Lopez, and Moran 2018). ...
... Most couples are con viviente, similar to common-law partners but without legal status, though two couples had legally married. Multi-sited households are common in Amazonia (Padoch et al. 2008;Siqueria 2009), and therefore I refer to a household as including all household members present in the household for six months of the year or more, whether present in the village or contributing from afar at the time of data collection. Village authorities in each location labelled these villages as mestizo, referring to mixed descent, though one participant self-identified as Indigenous. ...
... Second, previous research has identified the role of multi-sited households in Amazonian household composition (Padoch et al. 2008;Siqueria 2009), as well as gendered urbanization processes (Barbieri and Carr 2005). This study found that in this riverine Peruvian Amazonian context, seasonal migration mostly occurs during the flood recession to urban settings and exclusively amongst men, creating significant impacts for gendered livelihoods and gendered division of labour, as women are further burdened in livelihood responsibilities when their husbands seasonally migrate. ...
Gender is poorly understood in rural Amazonia. There remains limited understanding of how livelihoods are gendered or how labour is divided within the household. In this paper, I offer a conceptual framework for understanding gendered division of labour and gendered livelihoods in rural Amazonia. I draw on ethnographic data collected in two riverine mestizo villages located on the floodplains of the Ucayali River, Peru. I disaggregate riverine agro-fishing livelihoods by introducing the gendered and seasonal divisions of livelihood activities, highlighting how gender roles and livelihood seasonality need to be understood as co-produced. I suggest that rather than the annual flood being a ‘miserable’ period as previously suggested in the literature, the flood season and flood recession represent two socially distinct periods, with livelihoods rotationally focused within and beyond the household respectively. Gendered livelihoods are further complicated by household composition and life-stage, with single-headed households, particularly female-headed households, often over-burdened with productive and reproductive labour. This paper begins a necessary conversation of gender and social difference in Peruvian Amazonia, while questioning the relationship between gendered livelihoods and seasonality.
... While these household members share no biological ties of kinship, they may sleep under the same roof and contribute labour. Other "household members" do not necessarily reside at the same location, but contribute labour, food or money (Siqueira, 2009). Such households can be regarded as multi-sited and often result from circular or impermanent migration to nearby urban centres. ...
... They travel up to 2-4 days by boat to purchase açaí, then resell it in Belém, culminating in a trip as long as 15 days. In the region of Marajó-Açu, marretagem is one of the main economic activities, along with açaí production and shrimp fishing (Siqueira, 2009). Swine husbandry is encouraged by landlords in the area, since it is highly compatible with açaí production and offers high economic return for the land. ...
... Broadly speaking, to what degree have these drivers influenced land use change and household decision-making? Recent research (Siqueira, 2009) has begun to address internal household decision-making as a research issue. In turn, how does decision-making affect land use change and economic welfare? ...
The Amazon is widely regarded as a peripheral region, connected to international economies as a supplier of forest materials. However, little research investigates other ways Amazonian residents are connected to global markets, especially through the sale and consumption of mass-produced goods. This article presents ethnographic research investigating the risks and value of working as a direct sales representative for global beauty brands in three Amazonian communities. While direct sales offers potentially significant income, in practice, most representatives earn meager profits or just break even; many lose money, and some fall into debt. I address the question of why women would pursue an activity with a high risk of financial loss from an institutional and feminist economic perspective. The findings reveal that the risk of debt, as well as the potential household contribution from direct sales, derives from the particular institutional environment that characterizes rural Amazonian communities. The appeal of direct sales lies in the opportunities it affords for social inclusion and enhancing household well-being. These opportunities include access to discounted consumer goods, social bonds through sales relationships, and participation in “global sociality” through direct sales catalogs and products.
In much of the Amazon Basin, approximately 70% of the population lives in urban areas and urbanward migration continues. Based on data collected over more than a decade in two long-settled regions of Amazonia, we find that rural-urban migration in the region is an extended and complex process. Like recent rural-urban migrants worldwide, Amazonian migrants, although they may be counted as urban residents, are often not absent from rural areas but remain members of multi-sited households and continue to participate in rural-urban networks and in rural land-use decisions. Our research indicates that, despite their general poverty, these migrants have affected urban markets for both food and construction materials. We present two cases: that of açaí palm fruit in the estuary of the Amazon and of cheap construction timbers in the Peruvian Amazon. We find that many new Amazonian rural-urban migrants have maintained some important rural patterns of both consumption and knowledge. Through their consumer behavior, they are affecting the areal extent of forests; in the two floodplain regions discussed, tree cover is increasing. We also find changes in forest composition, reflecting the persistence of rural consumption patterns in cities resulting in increased demand for and production of açaí and cheap timber species.
In this article data on household food consumption is used to further understanding of subsistence strategies in three Caboclo populations on Marajó Island, Amazonia, Brazil. Data were collected using participant observation and 24-hour food recalls in 16 households for 7 consecutive days during the rainy (March) and dry (July) seasons. Marajó-Açu households (n = 6) had the highest levels of energy and protein intake relative to recommendations. This was probably related to their successful integration into the prosperous acai (a palm fruit) market of the riverine area. Praia Grande households (n = 6) had the lowest values for energy intake (rainy season), which supports the authors' ethnographic observations of some instability in the subsistence system of this population. Paricatuba households (n = 4) exhibited intermediate values of energy and protein intakes, but less seasonal variation in consumption than the other two populations. Despite the differences observed, food consumption does not appear to be a major limitation for any of the three populations. The data support recent hypotheses concerning the concomitant and multiple use of várzea (floodplain) and terra firme (upland) environments by the Caboclos and integration into the local market economy as the central strategies in dealing with the so-called socioenvironmental constraints of the Amazonian floodplain.
In much of the Amazon Basin, approximately 70% of the population lives in urban areas and urbanward migration continues. Based on data collected over more than a decade in two long-settled regions of Amazonia, we find that rural-urban migration in the region is an extended and complex process. Like recent rural-urban migrants worldwide, Amazonian migrants, although they may be counted as urban residents, are often not absent from rural areas but remain members of multi-sited households and continue to participate in rural-urban networks and in rural land-use decisions. Our research indicates that, despite their general poverty, these migrants have affected urban markets for both food and construction materials. We present two cases: that of açaí palm fruit in the estuary of the Amazon and of cheap construction timbers in the Peruvian Amazon. We find that many new Amazonian rural-urban migrants have maintained some important rural patterns of both consumption and knowledge. Through their consumer behavior, they are affecting the areal extent of forests; in the two floodplain regions discussed, tree cover is increasing. We also find changes in forest composition, reflecting the persistence of rural consumption patterns in cities resulting in increased demand for and production of açaí and cheap timber species.
Thesis (M.A.)--University of Colorado, 1994. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-120).
These are the proceedings of a symposium entitled Households: Changing Form and Function held at the Seven Springs Conference Center Mt. Kisco New York on October 9-15 1981. The symposium attempted to bring together anthropologists and social historians sharing a common interest in what the household does and how it works. The focus was on how and why households vary within and among societies or over time within a society. The papers are grouped under three main headings: the method and theory of studying the household household morphology and activity and households as persisting cultural forms. The geographic focus is worldwide.
cts of family lif e in Australia was urgently needed. He claimed that the confusion and contradiction in extant depictions of the Australian family were due to certain theoretical postulates and axioms adopted by some ethnographers. Principal among these was the attribution of Eu ropean characteristics to the aboriginal family without adequate investiga tion of the details of actual family relationships. As an antidote to such inclinations, Malinowski proposed that we begin the study of the family in societies diff erent from our own by attaching only a vague meaning to the term "individual family." For the essential features of the individual family, as of all other social institutions, depend upon the general structure of a given society and upon the conditions of life therein. A careful and detailed analysis of family life and of different aspects of the family unit in connection with other social phenomena is therefore necessary. Such an analysis enables us to describe the said unit in a complete and exact way (91, p. 6).
Landsat TM scenes for 1985 and 1991 are used to produce a georeferenced map of land cover and land use for an area of the Amazon estuary inhabited by three populations of caboclos with distinct patterns of land use. This information is combined in a geographic information system with ethnographic and survey research carried out over the past 5 years to develop representative spectral signatures which permit measurement and differentiation of land uses and the detection of change even between small areas of managed floodplain forest and unmanaged forest, and between three distinct age/growth classes of secondary succession following deforestation. Implementation of these procedures permit the scaling up or down of research at different resolutions. Three distinct patterns of land use are examined with differential impact on the environment. Mechanized agriculture at one site has eliminated virtually all the mature upland forest and is now dominated by secondary successional vegetation. The more traditional system of diversified land use at the next site shows a subtle cycling of flooded forest to managed palm forest through time in response to the price of palm fruit and cycling in the use of fallow land. A third site, based on palm fruit extractivism, shows minimal changes in land cover due to persistent specialization on management of flooded forest extraction. There is little evidence that the community with the greatest impact on forest cover is any better off economically than the two communities which have minimal impact on the landscape. This study suggests how a balance between use and conservation in Amazonia may be achieved in floodplain and estuarine areas, and the effectiveness of monitoring these types of land cover from satellite platforms.
This paper examines the recent development of the aa fruit economy in regional Amazonian urban markets (as a staple food) and more recently among national and international consumers (as a fashion food) and the consequences for agroforestry intensification by Caboclo communities in the Amazon estuary. The paper is based on long-term ethnographic research and field experiments; the aa fruit economy is discussed from agricultural, social, and economic perspectives; attention is given to its historical development, the structure of aa fruit production, its agents, the relationship among themselves and the urban market. Decadal price performance is presented for aa fruit and aa transportation costs and compared to major agropastoral products for the Eastern Amazon region. Dominant views about the economic rationality of rural producers' decision-making are discussed. Aa fruit has performed as well as and in some cases surpassed most agro-pastoral products of the Northern region. Economic returns for producers reflect linkages between price signals from urban markets, harvesting decision, and land tenure condition of the producer. Urban markets for the fruit is expanding and bringing new participants to the aa fruit economy further conditioning the ability of rural producers to take advantage of external markets for forest products. Discussion of factors conditioning agricultural development and integration between urban and rural areas conclude the article.
Introduction: Dimensions and dilemmas of house holding
- P E Barlett
- P. E. Barlett
Engendrando um novo feminismo: Mulheres líderes de base
- M Abramovay
- M G Castro
- M. Abramovay
Forest farmers of the Amazon: Human and landscape ecology of caboclo populations of the Amazon Estuary
- E S Brondízio
Towards a gendered analysis of the Brazilian agrarian reform. Occasional Papers
- C D Deere
- M León
Land use patterns on an agricultural frontier in Brazil: Insights and examples from a demographic perspective
- S Mccracken
- A Siqueira
- E Moran
- E Brondízio
- S. Mccracken
The Amazon caboclo: Historical and contemporary perspectives
- E P Parker
A ecologia humana das populações da Amazônia
- E Moran
- E. Moran
‘Trabalhadeiras’ e ‘Camarados’: Relações de gênero, ritualização e simbolismo numa comunidade amazônica
- M A Motta-Maués
- M. A. Motta-Maués
Antropologia ecológica de populações ribeirinhas do Estuário do Amazonas: Subsistência e adaptação
- W A Neves
Uma presença discreta: A mulher na pesca
- M C Maneschy
- M. C. Maneschy
Anthropological approaches to the household
- J T Peterson
- J. T. Peterson
Mulheres e seringueiras na Amazônia brasileira: Uma vida de trabalho silenciado
- L T Simonian
- L. T. Simonian
Organização popular e mudança
- M E G Reymão
- A M M Duarte
- M. E .G. Reymão
The ecology of food and nutrition: Patterns of land use and nutritional status among caboclo populations on Marajó Island, Pará, Brazil. PhD Dissertation
- A D Siqueira
Estratégias de subsistência da população ribeirinha do Igarapé do Paricatuba
- A D Siqueira
- E Brondízio
- R Murrieta
- H Silva
- W Neves
- R B Vietler
Mulheres da floresta: Uma história do Alto Juruá
- C S Wolff
The adaptive system of the Amazonian caboclo
- E Moran
- E. Moran
Estratégias de subsistência da comunidade de Praia Grande
- R Murrieta
- E Brondízio
- A Siqueira
- E Moran
- R. Murrieta
The census as an ethnocentric grid: Methodological problems in understanding the Caribbean household. Paper presented at Population Institute for Research and Training
- R Wilk
A mulher existe ? Uma contribuição ao estudo da mulher e gênero na Amazônia
- M L M Alvares
- Incao
Women in an Amazonian agriculture frontier
- A D Siqueira
- S Mccracken
- E Brondízio
- E Moran
- A. D. Siqueira
Programa Pobreza e Meio Ambiente na Amazônia)
- Poema
Mulheres da floresta: Uma história do Alto Juruá, Acre (1890-1945)
- C S Wolff
- C. S. Wolff
Estratégias de subsistência da população ribeirinha do Igarapé do Paricatuba, Ilha do Marajó, Brasil. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi
- A D Siqueira
- E Brondízio
- R Murrieta
- H Silva
- W Neves
- R B Vietler
- A. D. Siqueira