This book is an ethnographic investigation of the Urarina, an indigenous
Amazonian society occupying the Chambira Basin of northeastern Peru.
The interplay between the cultural and the material conditions of Urarina
society is the book’s primary focus: it explores the ways in which an indigenous peoples of Peruvian Amazonia organize their existence with regard
to production, exchange, and the consumptive desires framing their lives.
I assess the historical reproduction of Urarina society as it has both been
inspired by and resisted the violence of the colonial and postcolonial encounters. In offering a history of local-global interconnections, I document
the Urarinas’ involvement in regional and international political economies,
namely petty-commodity production mediated through relations of debt
peonage.