Images of cannibalism, death and domination in a "non violent" society

Abstract

The author shows how the Piaroa (Venezuela) have managed to avoid any kind of violent resolution of the tensions and conflicts, both within themselves and with the neighbouring societies. Nevertheless, they systematically use the idiom of prédation and cannibalism in two fundamental domains of their social existence, all that pertains to the causes of diseases and "natural" death and to the means of revenge on the one hand, the set of relationships of humans with natural species, both animal and vegetal, necessary to human subsistence on the other hand. For each of these domains, the possession and regulated usage of "cultural capabilities", as they were acquited in primeval times through violence, enables Piaroa men to mediate the dangers of the "otherness", while maintaining the boundaries of the Piaroa universe, both moral and social.

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