Gender distinction in the light of bodily hierarchies among the Matsigenka of the Peruvian Amazon

Find out more about the winning 2024 project ‘Gender distinction in the light of bodily hierarchies among the Matsigenka of the Peruvian Amazon’ from the Louis Dumont Fund, which supports research in social anthropology.

This research project examines the way in which certain Amazonian populations, in particular the Matsigenka people of the south-eastern Peruvian lowlands, think about the distinction between the sexes. In particular, Raphaël Colliaux wants to investigate the fact that, for the people interviewed, the polarity of the two sexes is conceived in a similar way to certain asymmetrical relationships in the human body. According to her interviewees, one of the two hands, the two legs or even one of the two eyes has a privileged, more essential relationship with the rest of the body, which seems to be seen as a ‘whole’ capable of encompassing such opposing pairs. Above all, the testimonies indicate that in certain contexts, these asymmetrical relationships are likely to be reversed according to a logic whose implications he seeks to understand. For example, one very surprising element is that in the context of such hierarchical reversals, it is the perception of the sexuation of people that also appears to permute. He proposes to explore the idea that the Matsigenka develop a form of ‘gender perspectivism’ in this sense, which seems to be both close to and distinct from the notion of ‘perspectivism’ popularised by the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro to describe Amazonian aetiologies.