Situating in Place Indigenous Engagements in Capitalist Market Relations

Abstract

We use a decolonial approach to political economy and a social conceptualization of space to examine how Indigenous cultural understandings and knowledge mediate market rationalities in context. Indigenous Awajún notions of tajimat pujut (“life in abundance”) and their horticulturalist practices are embedded in a relational ontology that situates humans as part of the ecosystem in the Peruvian Northwest Amazon. As the Awajún are increasingly incorporated into market economies, these notions and practices interact and, at times, converge with the instrumental rationalities of neoliberalism and notions of sustainability and equity that are embedded in local agricultural support programs. We detail these interactions by drawing on ethnography and secondary sources. In the case of the Awajún, we find that Indigenous rationalities are not entirely subsumed by neoliberalization. To the contrary, Awajún values of tajimat pujut and their relationship with the Amazonian territory mediate, transform, and delimit neoliberal governmentality practices. These discourses and relations coexist in tension with an emerging marketization of the Amazon, and are being reworked through contradictions that shape Indigenous productive decisions and impact the sustainability of the forest. Marketization creates opportunities for the native population to obtain income while promoting capital circulation in neighboring markets and amplifying nascent inequalities. Tajimat pujut resonates with discourses and policies relating to pro-poor sustainable local development, producing an Awajún preference for small crop production and aversion to forest depletion, contrary to mestizo preferences for intense monoculture. In this way, neoliberalization is rendered incomplete even as market relations are increasingly incorporated into Awajún economic practices.