Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes ongoing processes of making "real" humans through the productive relations of women with "outsiders". Connecting desire and power in women's participation in the capitalist economy, the paper questions notions of women as passive socio-political agents in an Amazonian context.

Paper long abstract:

Based on research in Peru between 2009-2011, this paper examines the productive power of indigenous women beyond the "village" and their role in regenerating community life through their work as "cooks" outside the villagen and in different contexts. I will emphasise the relations between desire and power in women's participation in the capitalist economy and their role in regenerating community life. Indigenous women's productive capacities as 'cooks' have often been misrepresented as "exploitation" for which I will also question notions of women as passive socio-political agents in Amazonia.

Indigenous women sometimes work away from their communities leaving behind kids in the care of their relatives who "adopt" them and raise them as children. This paper will argue that women's (re)-productive work beyond the community has not only been overlooked, but has been misunderstood. Rather than viewing these relations as being based on "exploitation", this paper accounts for the agency of the women involved, with specific focus on how their own desires and the desires of others, mostly men, are made productive in terms of indigenous ontologies - pertaining to power and the centrality of extending kinship. Through their relations beyond the village and the "work" of making young children into "real" humans, these women are central to the process of the making of new generations of indigenous people.