Ritual and the origin of sexuality in the Alto Xingu

This chapter disputes the validity of an approach, focusing on one Amazonian social complex – the Alto Xingu area of central Brazil. Through an analysis of the Xingu material on myth, ritual and kinship it seeks a more exact understanding of gender and power than a simplistic notion of patriarchy or male control would allow. The chapter constructs the Xinguano philosophy of production and personhood, which is founded upon concepts to do, on the one hand, with making, ownership, parenthood, and correct, restrained sexuality; and, on the other, with ‘unmaking’, with loss, death, aberrant sexuality, violence and destruction. The idea of sanctioned sexual violence conflicts with the normal tenor of male-female relations and the Xinguanos’ strong preference for calm, peaceful and respectful social interaction. Anthropologists who work in the Alto Xingu report that both men and women there find the subject distressing.