How to Fish With Respect: A Transformation of Human-Fish Relations in Riverside Amazonia

Abstract

Riverside inhabitants of the Middle Xingu River Basin, in the Brazilian Amazonia, frequently say that it is important to respect animals and the forest spirits who protect them. In recent decades, however, the development of an iced fish industry in the region has changed what respect means and how it is expressed when it comes to fishing. This article analyzes shifting attitudes toward fish by focusing on the transformation of the notion of panema, a word that denotes an acquired state in which one becomes incapable of hunting and fishing. I argue that the commodification of fresh fish has not altered the animistic principle that fish are imbued with an interior state of mind and other markers of personhood. Commodification, however, has decreased the importance of spirit owners and increased the importance of the mental state of the fishers in their accounts of their activities. I pose that such transformation can only be properly accounted for by breaking down the analytical distinction between political economy and ontology and focusing on how the riverside inhabitants see it as a normative issue, measured in regard to respect.