Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how different environments, the forest and the village, relate to different moral understandings and modes of interaction and cooperation among children in the indigenous Aché communities in eastern Paraguay.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I discuss how different environments relate to different moral understandings and modes of interaction and cooperation among children in the indigenous Aché communities in eastern Paraguay. The Aché used to live as nomadic hunter-gatherers in the subtropical rainforests; since the 1960s they have been settled on reservations after years of persecutions, disease, and deforestation. Settlement entailed dramatic sociocultural and economic transformations. Today, they live in villages and subsist by horticulture, but families continue to go on hunting treks regularly in the few stretches of forest that remain. The different subsistence styles on these treks and in the village utilize different forms of social cooperation that might entail and be entailed by different moral frameworks. Children learn these through keen observation and participation as they transit between the spaces. Analyzing everyday conversations and interactions in the peer group, with caregivers, and elders, I discuss here how Aché children develop an understanding of, respond to, and contest community norms of sharing, reciprocity, and cooperation, as they are socialized into navigating these two environments.