Epistemological and moral ambiguity in the Yine social cosmos

Abstract

Like many indigenous peoples in Amazonia, also the Peruvian Yine people adhere to a social cosmology that can be called perspectivist. It includes a number of intentional beings which in different situations can transform into or be conceived of as being human. In such a transformative world, what most concerns the Yine is the epistemological ambiguity inherent in the situation: one can neverbe entirely certain of the human condition of the other person. In this paper, I shall discuss one aspect thus far little examined in relationto perpectivist cosmologies, namely morality. I shall do this by studying the causes and consequences of the epistemological ambiguity: How is the category of the human conceptualised among the Yine? In terms of morality, what separates humans from other beings with subjectivity? What consequences does this ambiguity have for the Yine daily life? I will suggest that in the Yine social cosmos a number of different human positions exist which are situated on a moral continuum without any fixed boundaries between them. Examples will be drawn from both the interaction between legitimate Yine humans and between humans and non-humans.