COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE Play, Drama, and Rank in Amazonia

Abstract

This article explores competition as a technique of social trans-formation in Amazonia. In recent years, the Shuar of Ecuadorian Ama-zonia have begun staging festivals to celebrate the unity and autonomy of their new sedentary communities. Festivals include sporting games and beauty pageants that create a positive spirit of competition through dramatization and ranking. In these competitions, the drama and ranking take place within a ‘play-frame’—a frame that separates the festival from everyday life, but also re-enacts new practices of commensuration that have become part of daily life via schooling, markets, and electoral poli-tics. If commensuration works against Shuar autonomy, the play-frame of the festival creates future possibilities for autonomy and mutuality.