The Fabric of Trust
Discover the 2025 awarded project "The Fabric of Trust: History, Otherness, and Formal Friendship among the Awajun of the Upper Cahuapanas (Northern Peruvian Amazon)", selected by the Louis Dumont Fund for Research in Social Anthropology.
The project
This research aims to produce the first ethnographic study dedicated to the Awajun people of the Loreto department, where large communities were established over the course of the twentieth century, in coexistence with another Indigenous population: the Shawi.
The study seeks to describe Awajun theories of historical change and otherness, as well as the contemporary relationships and practices that underpin the production of individual and collective memory. A multi-scalar corpus of historical narratives will be compiled, comprising autobiographical accounts, community foundation stories, and origin myths, with the aim of identifying the features and transformations of Awajun social organisation. Particular attention will be given to interethnic friendship in a context shaped by the pacification of formerly hostile relations between Indigenous groups during the twentieth century.
This research takes place in a context where the recently established Autonomous Territorial Government of the Awajun Nation is seeking to demarcate physical borders between peoples through diplomatic negotiation among leaders, in a region where social boundaries were previously shaped by conflict.
Gabriel Crovetto Effio
Gabriel Crovetto Effio is a doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). He is affiliated with the Social Anthropology Laboratory at the Collège de France. Since 2015, he has carried out ethnographic research in the northern Peruvian Amazon. His current fieldwork focuses on the relationship between history, myth, and friendship among the Awajun people of the Upper Cahuapanas (Loreto).
