The gender of the prey. Jivaroan conceptualizations of kinship relations.

The aim of this paper is to explore the mental schemata governing the repre sentation of affinal and consanguineal relationsips among the Jivaro of the Upper Amazon. The study is based mainly on an analysis of the system of at titudes between kin and of a specific genre of mental speech, called anent, used to modify the relational dispositions of other subjects. The author d eals first with relations of matrimony and the web of connexions between co njugality and taming, between women and game animals, between seduction and predation. Through an examination of Jivaroan not ions about parent-child relations, she then shows how the complex of predation linked to affinity i s articulated to a representation of identify figured by vegetal cloning, a form of reproduction that is both monosexual (i.e., purely feminine) and m onogenerational, "mothers" being their own "daughters" and vice-versa. Thus , the production of "true persons" depends crucially on the masculine capac ity to kill, insofar as homicide is viewed as the principle responsible for the separation between generations, hence the creation of kinship.