MATERIAL LIFE AND SOCIAL METAPHOR: CHANGE AND LOCAL MODELS AMONG THE WAYUU INDIANS OF COLOMBIA AND VENEZUELA (GUAYIRO, ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMICS-HISTORY, DEVELOPMENT)

The thesis explores the relationship between the environment and human beings, specifically between the material conditions in which the Wayuu (Guajiro) Indians of Colombia and Venezuela make their living and their social organization. Wayuu notions illuminate the activities that sustain Wayuu society. Their explanations and the material foundation from which they derive their livelihood is the focus of the research. Local models provided by both the people and the ethnographer are contrasted to produce a rich ethnographic picture.; A historical account of the last one hundred years brings together ecological, sociological, political, and cultural aspects of Wayuu society with impacts from the larger national states that surround it. Wayuu understanding and response to change is placed in the frame of their socio-economic formation. Labor migrations are closely examined along with their dialectic effect on Wayuu social organization, in particular stratification and "slavery," Wayuu productive activities and the environment. For the present day, horticultural technology and herding strategies are discussed in some detail, but herding and gardening are examined, not only as instrumental but as meaningful activities. The people's transactions and prestations are also presented but primarily as metaphors. Transactions involving cattle and women are understood as construction of social categories and world views rather than utilitarian projects. Earning a livelihood becomes a meaningful lifestyle through the people's explanations.; The arrival of a transnational coal mining operation in the 1980's to the ethnic territory provides the opportunity for examining competing Western and non-Western constructions of the relationships between humans and the environment in the semidesertic peninsula of La Guajira. The Wayuu socially based model of nature is contrasted with the mining operation's instrumental and mathematical model. Examination of these constructs illuminates both Wayuu society and the larger society that is besieging it. It is suggested that the model of reality that prevails is the one backed by economic and political power.