This article examines Amazonian Urarina engagements with the system of debt peonage in light of the conceptual and ontological premises of the traditional subsistence economy. It argues that to view debt as a mechanism for harnessing indigenous labour is inadequate for comprehending the wilfulness with which Urarina indebt themselves to outsiders today, which should instead be considered in terms of local theories of agency and an aversion to immediate, market‐style exchange. This relational and hierarchically distributed view of agency is further implicated in ideas surrounding industrial goods, which are ascribed to the Devil as their putative maker and owner, and who is seen as the source of their power over people in this life and the next. If this brand of commodity ‘fetishism’ expresses moral ambivalence towards capitalism, it also mediates otherwise contradictory forms of production and exchange, repudiating the possibility of total rupture between persons and things. Résumé L’auteur examine ici l’engagement des Unarina d’Amazonie dans un système de servage pour dettes, à la lumière des prémisses conceptuelles et ontologiques de l’économie de subsistance traditionnelle. Il avance que la vision de l’endettement comme d’un mécanisme visant à capturer la main‐d’œuvre indigène ne convient pas pour comprendre la bonne volonté avec laquelle les Unarina s’endettent aujourd’hui vis‐à‐vis de parfaits inconnus. Au lieu de cela, l’approche doit s’appuyer sur les théories locales de l’agent et sur l’aversion des Unarina envers les transactions non différées, de type marchand. Cette notion d’agency relationnelle, distribuée de façon hiérarchique, se retrouve dans les idées liées aux marchandises industrielles, dont le fabricant et le propriétaire supposé serait le Diable, considéré comme la source de leur pouvoir sur les gens dans cette vie et la vie future. Quoique ce mode de « fétichisme » des marchandises exprime une ambivalence morale à l’égard du capitalisme, il médie par ailleurs des formes de production et d’échange qui seraient sinon contradictoires, réfutant la possibilité d’une rupture totale entre les gens et les choses.

How people conceive of happiness reveals much about who they are and the values they hold dear. The modern conception of happiness as private good feeling is the result of a long sequence of changes in dominant conceptions of the ends of life and of humanity's place in the cosmos. This invites reflection on how the very vagueness of happiness can account for its powerful claim to render diverse values commensurable. In arguing for the importance of a critical, ethnographic approach to happiness-one concerned less with gauging how happy people are than with how happiness figures as an idea, mood, or motive in everyday life-we highlight its relationship to values, as well as questions of scope, virtue, and responsibility. Whether real or elusive, the pursuit of happiness structures time in specific ways and is largely other-oriented, insofar as one's own happiness would seem best left in the hands of others.

Building on the importance of "play" in traditional sociality, organized team sports such as soccer are instrumental in promoting a new moral and political order among Urarina people of Peruvian Amazonia, one grounded in notions of roles, rules, and the abstract individual. As a vehicle of nationalist sentiment, highly amenable to ritualization and bureaucratization, sport is central to the process by which the state expands its territory and influence. Like warfare, but unifying rather than fragmenting in its effects, sport harnesses the energy and vitality of youth and co-opts them for other ends.

A b s t r a c tThe creative and ever-expanding appropriations of bureaucracy and documents on the part of Amazonian peoples today transcend simple dichotomies between orality and literacy, state and non-state power, and domination and resistance. The papers collected here highlight the specific forms taken by such engagements and the ways in which they assume a key role in local political processes, offering new perspectives on issues ranging from the everyday workings of the state to local theories of language and materiality. In this introductory essay we draw particular attention to the importance of documents as mediators which facilitate new forms of communication; to the prevalence of bureaucratic magic and ritual; and to the ways in which regional bureaucratic and documentary processes are closely linked to both wealth and violence.

Drawing on the case of the Peruvian Urarina, this article seeks to understand the present high demand for Western trade goods among native Amazonian peoples by situating it within a broader economy of desire with roots in historical experiences of colonization. The relations of ‗taming' that have long been a feature of encounters with outsiders, mediating an opposition between ‗savage' and ‗civilized' states, have become a central part of the caring dynamic between husbands and wives. This is increasingly focused on the provision of commodities, which are construed as akin to wild pets in need of taming and whose acquisition is a quintessentially male pursuit, much like hunting. While exacerbating existing gender asymmetries, this process points to gender as a key point of articulation between the subsistence economy and a penetrating market, and exemplifies the ‗decoding' effects of capitalism, through which spheres of exchange are conflated and desires intensified.Keywords: Amazonia, consumption, gender, modernity, Peru. RESUMÉNTomando como referencia el caso de los Urarina de Perú, este trabajo investiga la demanda actual por artículos de consumo de los pueblos amazónicos, caracterizándola como una economía del deseo, la cual tiene raíces en las experiencias históricas de la colonización. Las relaciones de ‗domesticazión' , que durante mucho tiempo, han sido una característica de los encuentros con foráneos, las cuales median entre salvajes y el estado civilizado, han llegado a formar parte central del cuidado dentro de la pareja conyugal. Esto es cada vez más acentuado en el suministro de productos básicos, visto como algo similar a las crías de animales silvestres, y cuya adquisición es una actividad esencialmente masculina. Este proceso incluye al género como un punto clave de articulación entre la economía de subsistencia y el mercado, y demuestra los efectos -decodificantes‖ del capitalismo, a través del cual las esferas de intercambio se confunden y los deseos se intensifican.Palabras Clave: Amazonía, consumo, género, modernidad, Perú. In Amazonian Brazil, Ewart (2002) and Gordon (2003) have argued that it is not utility but the exotic qualities of commodities that can be most appealing: present-day desires are a continuation of a long-standing proclivity to incorporate alterity, to invigorate society through interactions with the ‗enemy-others' of which whites are, today, the best exemplars.Fisher (2000) has meanwhile pointed out that native peoples often appear not to distinguish between necessities and luxuries, and that the intrinsic attractiveness or the seemingly innate superiority of Western manufactured products cannot explain the relatively restricted types of goods desired, nor the quantities considered satisfactory.