This is a very satisfying book. The Jívaro Indians of the jungles of eastern Ecuador, mainly because of the tsantsas (shrunken heads) which they produced, have long held a fascination for the American public that few other groups outside the western tradition can arouse. Indeed the technology for processing their war trophies is sufficiently a part of our current conceptual baggage to have given rise to the most common euphemism for psychiatrist or psychological counselor. This notoriety has continued in spite of a paucity of good anthropological data about the life way and belief systems of the Jívaro. Few American Indian groups who have survived in large numbers and who have preserved the major part of their traditional culture into the second half of this century have remained so inadequately studied. Harner’s concise and attractively produced monograph rectifies that situation and is that rare kind of book which is consistently valuable to the specialist and completely accessible to the interested general reader.
The fascination which the tsantsas hold for the modern urbanite is precisely in the aura of bizarre custom and irrational behavior which they project to us. It is the strength of this book that these trophies and the raids during which they are obtained are placed within a totally coherent world view. Once one understands the set of entities out of which the Jívaro generate their universe, the practices have a beautiful logic and seem almost inevitable. The lucidity of Harner’s exposition here, which he attributes mainly to the intellectuality of his Jívaro friends, makes the book a major contribution to the fields of primitive religion and primitive cosmology.
Even more interesting to this reviewer is Harner’s treatment of ongoing modifications of Jívaro culture over the last fifty years. The Jívaro subsist mainly by shifting, slash-and-burn agriculture, and until fairly recently the clearing of the forest had to be done with stone-headed axes. This time consuming and physically demanding procedure was the major bottleneck in Jívaro economy, and set limits on the amount of food produced. The introduction of machetes and steel-headed axes has greatly increased the amount of land which the individual Jívaro man can clear in a finite amount of time. The naïve expectation would be that such an increase in technological efficiency would lead to more intensive agriculture and a progressive increase in population density. Many earlier discussions of cultural evolution, especially those related to the spread of agricultural systems in Sub-Saharan Africa have proceeded as if such assumptions were valid.
In a brief review it is impossible to do justice to the sophistication of Harner’s analysis of what is actually happening, and again Harner gives most of the credit to his older Jívaro informants to whom he attributes an acuity as systems analysts which could not be matched among 99 percent of literate urbanities in the U.S.A. (I am not inclined to doubt Harner’s claim). Stated baldly, the presence of machetes and steel-headed axes makes it possible for a man working alone to clear enough land to support his immediate family. Well planned, communal work parties are no longer necessary, and as the result of the present individualistic work patterns only about two-thirds to one-half as much land is being brought under cultivation. The period of matrilocal residence after the marriage is being shortened or eliminated reducing the number of extended families existent at any point in time. To obtain trade goods, especially the now essential machetes and axes, it has been necessary for the Jívaro to increase inter-group trading and to establish formalized trading partnerships especially with the Achuara who were the traditional victims of the tsantsa taking raids. This increase in trade has led to a near cessation of hostilities between the interior Jívaro and their traditional enemies, the Achuara, and a great increase in all forms of intra-group hostility among neighborhoods of the interior Jívaro. There are economic benefits to becoming a shaman in this setting of increased trade. The number of trained shamans has greatly increased with a predictable increase in intra-group sorcery which also tends to disrupt and disperse the Jívaro social units. In crude summary the effects of the more efficient metal tools feed back through several loops to decrease the agricultural productivity of the individual Jívaro male, increase the level of tensions among individual males, and must lead in the long run to a greater dispersal of communities and an overall lowering of population density.
These systemic relationships are of great interest to those experts who are working to understand the dynamics of man’s adjustment to the tropical forest environment over the last 6000-7000 years. They should also have a more general interest to all Americans who are concerned about their own environment and the stresses it is undergoing. It is part of our total faith in technology to believe that crises in man’s relationship with his environment can and should be solved by innovations which will increase sheer technological efficiency while leaving other parts of the system unchanged. Harner’s Jívaro material is a convincing argument that such faith is unjustified. The social aspects of that complex network of relationships which we call human ecology cannot be neglected; and any simple, linear “solution” which involves just more technology or more efficient technology can be guaranteed to produce results which are unexpected and probably undesired!
