Couvade

Abstract: This article analyses the process of producing kinship among various Amazonian peoples, focusing primarily on the Wari', a Txapakura-speaking people living in Western Amazonia (Brazil). It argues that the production of kin cannot be related exclusively to the domestic or intra-tribal domain, since kinship emerges through a constant dialogue with non-human entities. By examining the significance of alimentary taboos associated with couvade practices in a number of groups, it shows that the new-born is made human by means of the production of its body as a human body in contraposition to animal bodies. ... [la naissance] n'est pas la simple addition d'individu supplementaraire a telle ou telle famille, mais une cause de desequilibre entre le monde des hommes et l'univers de puissances invisibles... (Clastres 1972: 12) During the same period in which anthropology debated the relationship between the 'biological facts' of reproduction and the socially recognized ties of kinship through the works of Durkheim, Malinowski, Rivers, and later Radcliffe-Brown (an enduring dichotomy according to Schneider 1984: 193), Levy-Bruhl - exploring the phenomenon of primitive participation - noted with some surprise that in the most varied ethnographic regions, procreation was no assurance of kinship with the child. This was not because paternity or even maternity - could not be recognized, an important issue in theoretical discussions at the time, but because the child born to a woman could still be reckoned to be non-human: the child of an animal. Levy-Bruhl was not referring to mythic episodes in which such cases were abundant, but to the facts of quotidian life: 'The idea that a child of normal appearance may nevertheless not be "human" is a familiar one to the primitives' (Levy-Bruhl